Author: James Browning

Ready To Be Changed

/ James Browning

natureThe paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space; we’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete… By Dr. Bob Moorehead

Within the hurricane of modern life my experience has included thinking lots of money fixed everything, only to find it fixed nothing and after a point only created a lack of appreciation. I have been loved deeply but walked past it thinking something somewhere else would be better, but nothing was. I chased success, achieved it and discovered it contains its own unique way of ‘undoing’ a person. There have been years when I knew more people and had far fewer friends than now.

Each and every broken stepping stone has moved me ever onward, often staggering and involuntarily falling forward. But keep moving I did and now on the far side of the mountain, life is very good. Imperfect certainly, just as I am. The landscape changed very little. Instead I did.  Lessons that arrived didn’t teach simply because they came into my life. Nothing was learned until I opened myself and was ready to be changed and became grateful for each difficulty that was my teacher.

We were all born equal,
but where we are in life now
is of our own making
Stephen Richards

But Are We Grateful?

/ James Browning

Green-Forest-Wallpaper-green-20036570-1280-1024What an irony it is that these living beings
whose shade we sit in,
whose fruit we eat,
whose limbs we climb,
whose roots we water,
to whom most of us rarely give a second thought,
are so poorly understood.
We need to come,
as soon as possible, to a profound
understanding and appreciation
for trees and forests
and the vital role they play,
for they are among our best allies
in the uncertain future that is unfolding.
From ” The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees,
and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet” by Jim Robbins

water%20sunset%20sunHere in plain sight I make a public commitment to pay more attention to the abundantly present, but mostly overlooked, building blocks of  life such as trees, water and the sun. All deserve my earnest gratitude and will receive more of it. I will look up and take notice realizing that the greatest bounty of life lies outside of me and not within my usual thoughts.

The things that most deserve our gratitude we just take for granted.
Without air we cannot live for more than a minute or two. Everyday
we are breathing in and breathing out, but do we ever feel grateful
to the air? If we do not drink water, we cannot survive. Even our
body is composed to a large extent of water. But do we give any
value to water? Every morning when we open our eyes, we see
the sun… offering us light and life-energy, which we badly need.
But are we grateful to the sun?
From “The Jewels of Happiness: Inspiration and Wisdom
to Guide Your Life-Journey” by Sri Chinmoy

Minute By Minute Trivial Goodness

/ James Browning

226P80301-560x373Have you ever heard anyone complain of having too much joy in their life or heard about a person who got sick from an overdose of happiness? It is possible for anyone to receive too many blessings or have too much to be grateful for? I don’t know of any. I do believe the quantity of joy and happiness each person experiences is largely derived from their attitude about living.

Each person generally finds what they expect to find. Certainly life is challenging and there are days when just getting through it is a major accomplishment. However, on a generally average day each person comes in contact with the amount of happiness or sadness anticipated. I have framed it before as “expect mostly good things and the sun will shine lots of them on you. Expect mostly bad things and the sky will rain sh!t on you all day long”. It’s not what happens, but how one frames them in the mind that shapes a persons existence.

Feel free to label me as some new age, hippie-dippie and blissed out late middle-aged man. I could care less how others think of my positive attitude about life. A hard-earned lesson here on this revolving blue ball called Earth is that more than any other factor, it is “I” who create the reality I exist in. Once I stopped blaming parents, previous spouses, employers and such, things changed markedly.

Shining the bright light of self-examination was scary stuff at first because I did not like what I saw. It was initially unnerving to accept complete responsibility for “me”. However, in time with good effort and much kindness I began to accept myself. Through making changes needed and keeping my commitment to them I began to live the sort of life I had long dreamed of, but previously prevented myself from having.

I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin. And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.

But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience. From Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life” by Shauna Niequist.

So many years were spent chasing a bold life; one worthy of awe and accolades. That sort of life gleaned from movies and advertising never assembled itself for me because it does not exist. It is the American way for us to seek the impossible; to desire what can never be; to always want more than we have.

There are extraordinary moments in my life, but most of the are humble and small. In learning to appreciate the minute by minute trivial goodness of living I made the discovery I had long been living a remarkable and exceptional life. What a great gift to arrive at that realization and begin living in a way that embraces that reality. I am profoundly grateful for the insight.

When life is sweet,
say thank you and celebrate.
And when life is bitter,
say thank you and grow.
Shauna Niequist

Who Am I?

/ James Browning

welcome_to_the_good_life_by_CYWORLDThe following taken from words spoken almost a hundred years ago by twentieth-century Indian Guru Sri Ramana Maharshi is heady stuff and took me a few reads to let it soak it.

Every living being longs to be perpetually happy, without any misery. Since in everyone the highest love is alone felt for oneself, and since happiness alone is the cause of love, in order to attain that happiness, which is one’s real nature and which is experienced daily in the mindless state of deep sleep, it is necessary to know oneself. To achieve that, enquiry in the form ‘Who am I?’ is the foremost means. ‘Who am I?’ The physical body… is not ‘I’. The five sense organs… and the five types of perception known through the senses… are not ‘I’. The five… vital functions such as respiration, are not ‘I’. Even the mind that thinks is not ‘I’. Devoid of sensory knowledge and activity, even this [state] is not ‘I’. After negating all of the above as ‘not I, not I’, the knowledge that alone remains is itself ‘I’. The Self, one’s real nature, alone exists and is real.

What I end up with in boiling down the Guru’s line of thinking is: when everything I think, feel or can do is stripped away, it is there “I” am to be found. It is only then when I am in touch with the essence of myself can I be truly happy. I get it and am grateful for light into my understanding. It is in the letting go; letting go of everything, where “I” am to be discovered.

We carry within us
the wonders we seek
without us.
Eric Butterworth

Letting Go of Regret

/ James Browning

amazing-sunrise-on-the-track-hdr-250896If I had followed through on the childhood dream of being a scientist, would my life be better or worse? What would my life be like now if I had married a different person when I was twenty-two? What might have been if I had left for the woman I loved when I was thirty-five? How might life be now had I not been so careless with money when it was flowing in freely?

Questions…meaningless, worthless questions, but knowing that plainly does not stop me from playing the shoulda, coulda guessing game occasionally.

In an article on psychologytoday.com, Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D. wrote:
We often associate regret with old age – the tragic image of an elderly person feeling regretful over opportunities forever missed. Now, groundbreaking new brain research shows how this stereotype may be true, at least for a portion of the elderly who are depressed. On the other hand, healthy aging may involve the ability to regulate regret in the brain…

A new study conducted by researchers at the University Medical Center – Hamburg, in Germany provides an exciting demonstration of how healthy older people may actively disengage from regret when nothing can be done. Young people, who, presumably have more life opportunities for change and depressed elderly, who, presumably, have a deficit in emotional processing, were more regretful when confronted with missed chances for financial gain.

These researchers scanned the brains of three groups of subjects using MRI technology: Young people with average age 25, healthy older people with average age 66, and depressed older people, also 66 on average. All participants worked on a computer game during the brain scan in which they had to decide whether to keep opening boxes or rest. Each box could contain an amount of money or could contain a devil emblem that meant they lost all their money and ended that round of the game. To prime regret, researchers showed people after each round how far they could have gone to earn more money.

Behavioral strategies differed between the groups in a way that was consistent with the brain findings. Whereas the young and depressed elderly took more risks on subsequent rounds, the healthy elderly did not change their strategies across 80 rounds on average. Overall, the riskier strategy did not lead to more money, suggesting that the young and depressed elderly took on extra stress for no gain.

An exciting implication of this study is that brain functioning does not merely deteriorate in old age, but that aging can result in better emotion-regulation and stress management. This is consistent with other research showing old people have less intense negative emotions and are happier than middle-aged people on average. Feeling that one has done the best one can, given the circumstances and letting go of regret can lead to self-compassion and peace. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201206/the-neuroscience-regret

After reading that article I feel better and believe I’m in the “healthy group”. As the years pass there is less regret and I am more often filled with contentment and happiness. Getting here did not happen accidentally. In the last decade there has been great personal exertion to grow, heal and improve that have paid off. While some of the growing pains hurt like hell, the overall results are something I am ecstatically grateful for.

A man is not old until
regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore

To Learn and Grow

/ James Browning

Beautiful-Nature-beautiful-nature-1600x900Another new day has arrived I am blessed to get to live. Some things I do will be well done. Others mediocre at best. Through it all I will try to live the hours better than yesterday. I will do my best and be content with it, yet knowing life will continue to improve me day by day if I live with intention.

 “The true measure of greatness is our capacity to navigate between our opposites with agility and grace — to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never to stop trying to get better.”

Constantly seek to learn and grow, but accept yourself exactly as you are.

Learning and growing require a willingness to look honestly and unsparingly at our shortcomings. Start with your own greatest strength. When you overuse it, it’s almost surely a window into your own greatest weakness.
In my case, the strength is drive and passion. Overused, it turns into aggressiveness. By being aware of my inclination to overuse a strength — by recognizing my own vulnerability — I was able to make a different choice.

Add Value to Others and Take Care of Yourself

Gratifying our most immediate needs and desires provides bursts of pleasure, but they’re usually short-lived. We derive the most enduring sense of meaning and satisfaction in our lives when we serve something larger than ourselves. Giving to others generates an extraordinary source of energy.

Selfishness is about making your own gratification paramount. Self-care is about making sure you’re addressing your own most basic needs, so you’re freed and fueled to also add value to others.

Focus Intensely and Renew Regularly

Unlike machines, however, human beings aren’t meant to operate at the highest intensity for very long. Instead, we’re designed to pulse between spending and renewing energy approximately every 90 minutes.

The world’s best performers — musicians, chess players, athletes — typically practice the same way: for no longer than 4 ½ hours a day. They also sleep more than the rest of us, and take more naps.

These great performers figured out that when they push for too long, their attention wanders, their energy flags, and their work suffers. But because they’re so focused when they are working, they get more done, in less time. Taken from “Six Ingredients of a Good Life” By Tony Schwartz http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/12/six-ingredients-of-a-good-life.html

To find balance between who I am and who I wish to be is my intention this day. To wish for no more than I am, but know it is made possible by living each day well. For the every breath I take today, I am grateful!

2 things:
If it makes you happy, do it.
If it doesn’t, then don’t.
Unknown

Simply This Thing, and Then the Next

/ James Browning

fragile_as_we_are_by_nelleke-d5dqyfsIf we tune-in on thoughts of failure, illness, discouragement, despair and hate, the charts of our lives will take a sharp downward course.

If we tune-in on thoughts of victory, love, hope and faith, our lives will become larger, finer, more worth while.

If we tune-in on the surface things that break like bubbles and leave us nothing, our lives will be shallow and empty.

If we tune-in on the deeper things, eternal principles of plain living and high thinking, the riches which men have put into immortal literature, art and music, then entire personalities will grow and expand.

If we permit ourselves to become selfish and cold toward others, the springs of love and sentiment will dry up leaving us but the husks of life.

If, on the other hand, we are kind and thoughtful and considerate of others; if we strive always to pluck a thorn and plant a flower wherever we think a flower will grow, riches more valuable than much fine gold will enter our lives.

Saint and sinner, prince and pauper, the things men tune-in on become a part of them and make them what they are. Lilly Ames-Light

A hard learned, greatly meaningful lesson of my life has been nothing stays the same; given time every thing changes. Impermanence is the only constant that life offers. My attitude toward living is the fountain of richness of for my existence. Embracing living as it comes with as little consternation as possible is the key to my happiness. “It’s all good, even when it is bad”. I am grateful.

Life is perhaps after all simply this thing, and then the next.
We are all of us improvising. We find a careful balance
only to discover that gravity or stasis or love or dismay or illness
or some other force suddenly tows us in an unexpected direction.
We wake up to find that we have changed abruptly in a way
that is peculiar and inexplicable. We are constantly adjusting,
making it up, feeling our way forward, figuring out how to be
and where to go next. We work it out, how to be happy,
but sooner or later comes a change-sometimes something small,
sometimes everything at once, and we have to start over again,
feeling our way back to a provisional state of contentment.
Anne Giardini

Sometimes…

/ James Browning

A_trail_into_the_clouds_by_endoftherainbow

Sometimes…

Doubt is the opposite of faith, but sometimes doubt can be a pathway to faith.

Sometimes…

Weakness is the opposite of strength, but sometimes weakness can be the pathway to strength.

Sometimes…

Addiction is the opposite of sobriety, but sometimes addiction can be the pathway to sobriety.

Sometimes…

Infidelity is the opposite of fidelity, but sometimes infidelity can be a pathway to fidelity.

Sometimes…

Failure is the opposite of success, but sometimes failure can be the pathway to success.

“Enough” by David W. Jones

It pleases me to know the kind of person I have become: most definitely imperfect; but imperfectly whole and happy. It feels extraordinary to now say “I love me!” and feel the authenticity of the words.

Gratitude abounds for a balance I feel within me the majority of the time. In being thankful for what is, I must have gratitude for what brought me here: heartaches, miracles, problems, blessings, difficulties, good fortunes, setbacks and lots of love. All that and more shaped me even though I frequently resisted with great tenaciousness.

Thankfully life is stronger than my will and when it overtook me, real happiness began. How wonderful it is to lose to the goodness of life and the power of love.

A loving heart
is the beginning
of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle

Photograph by Nick Owen

What A Child Sees

/ James Browning

cd54c7a9782e7f71540ec11044a71de5No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice. Marisa de los Santos

It was a long week and still fighting off the remnants of a cold, I knew once arriving home going anywhere wouldn’t happen. So an obligatory visit to the land of craziness, Wal-Mart World, was made after work. My fatigue caused me to walk back and forth unable to find things a good bit. By the time I got near the registers I was shuffling through exhaustion. Then came the wake up call.

A young couple with two children was over one lane and the late 20-something guy was griping at the woman telling her stupid she was. Everyone within twenty feet could hear him. Never will I forget the look on the woman’s face: one of absolute unhappiness and shame. She appeared hopelessness as if she had no choice except to endure her choice, the man she was with. Her head was bent downward which suggested she had known this treatment time and time again. The bruise beside her left eye made me think she likely faced worse later. Knowing that tugs strongly at my heart, but there is nothing I can do except tell about her here.

As bad as I felt for the young woman, I felt worse for the children. A boy around five and a girl around three stared straight at their parents taking in every thing that was being said. They were learning how a husband treats a wife and that a woman must accept what comes. How awful. I doubt if that relationship will ever improve. I hope the wife gets away from the her as#h*le husband some day.

So how does such a dark scene end up in a gratitude blog? Simple this: I am deeply thankful for parents who raise their children with respect and understand far more is taught by what a child sees than what they are told.

There is nothing more pathetically sad
than a parent who teaches a child not to hit
by spanking them. Well, that, and adults
who think hitting someone will solve a problem.
Anitra Lynn McLeod

If You Don’t Love What You Do…

/ James Browning

berlin1

I had been busy deafening my parents for years by creating high-pitched squawking melodies on my “recorder”, the closest thing we had to a wood instrument at home. On band day I was so excited to finally get to see and hold a genuine, shiny flute in my 10-year-old hands.

I picked it up, my eyes gleaming, and held it to my lips. “Pfffffffffffffffffffft.” Nothing. I tried again, blowing into it like the 12-year-old owner of the flute had showed me. Again, nothing but a music-less “Pfffffffft.” I couldn’t believe it. My heart-felt heavy in my chest, and tears pricked at my eyes. I gave up, and handed her back her flute. Next, I decided to try the clarinet. It wasn’t the flute, and I wasn’t a huge fan, but at least it was still in the part of the orchestra that got the pretty melodies. “Honk-screech!”

Feeling even worse, I made my way to the back of the room where the brass instruments were. Someone handed me a French Horn. I held it to my lips, and out came a full, rich sound totally recognizable as belonging to a musical instrument. I shrugged, and wrote down “French Horn” next to my name, as by default this was obviously my instrument.

I played the French Horn for five years, including the first couple of years of junior high school. I hated the thing. I never got the good parts of any musical piece. In my second year of junior high school, my apparent “rare talent” for this instrument got the attention of a professional French Horn player in the city. He even offered me free private lessons after school. (It really was so kind of him to do that, I hope he never reads this). The plan was that I’d play in a major youth orchestra, and eventually play professionally.

I don’t remember how, but somehow I managed to quit the darn thing, despite everyone’s excitement about my supposed talent. I didn’t get much respite though, as fairly soon after I got sucked into the vortex of being a “gifted student in the Sciences”. I was finally spit out by the system at the age of 28. By then, I was not surprisingly a suicidally depressed Emergency Medicine resident. Same phenomenon, different vocation.

People don’t mean any harm by identifying talent in kids and giving them opportunities to develop that talent. If the child actually enjoys the activity, this is a fantastic thing. A friend of mine in junior high was discovered by a professional ballet company, and within weeks accepted an offer of a full scholarship at the best ballet school in the country. She dances professionally today at a well-respected company. But she loves ballet – this is the difference.

I so wish that some grown-up had encouraged me to choose the musical instrument that I loved passionately, along with the reassurance that I could learn how to play it. I wish that someone had seen past my “gift for science” and paid equal attention to how much I loved my creative writing classes.

You can only go so far on talent alone. If you’re good at something, it gets noticed and valued by others, and it certainly opens doors. It can generate much-needed income, which can be important. Yet when it comes to truly fulfilling your potential and knowing the joy of doing what you were made to do, the only thing that will give you that experience is what you love.

I fully appreciate that you can’t always do what you want. Economic realities are what they are, and it would be foolish for many people to abandon the job that pays the bills in order to pursue their passion. Then again, there are plenty of people who have done just that, and have done very well.

Regardless, if you’re honest with yourself about what your true passion is, you owe it to yourself to pursue it in some form, even if you never quit your day job and you never earn a penny doing what you love. The key is to do what you love, somehow. From “Being Good at Something Doesn’t Mean You Should Be Doing It” by Dr. Susan Biali, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prescriptions-life/201203/being-good-something-doesn-t-mean-you-should-be-doing-it

And so it is with great gratitude within the last year I discovered what I have long done as a profession was never what I truly loved, but instead what I chose to make money doing. The avocation has treated me well, but is far from the work I want this life to leave behind. This is the year I change direction and follow my dreams. For the inspiration and new courage to try something new, I am thankful.

Until a person can say deeply and honestly,
“I am what I am today because of the choices
I made yesterday,” that person cannot say,
“I choose otherwise.”
Stephen R. Covey