VOTE FOR YOUR LIFE

Some days it’s harder to get started than others. Today was that kind of day. Lisa had to pry me out of bed.

“It’s election day!” she said. “Time to get up and vote.”

You would have thought she was ten and it was her birthday, or that she was successfully running for mayor.

I wasn’t having any of it, especially not at 6:15 a.m.

“Let’s go get coffee. And then we can vote! We can be there just around 7:00 a.m. when they open. Then I can go to school.”

Lisa is a teacher, kindergarten and first grade.

Can’t you just see her in the classroom, “Look, kids, I voted!” as she shows them her red, white, and blue, “I Voted!” sticker stuck on her shirt?

Makes a grump like me just want to scream. Doesn’t she know I have things to think about, and things to be worry about, and things to be grumpy (I refuse to say depressed.) about?

Doesn’t she know that I woke up worrying about the recession, which is wearing me down financially and emotionally, at around 4 a.m., and couldn’t get back to sleep until about a minute before she woke me at 6:15 a.m., with her shuffling and getting ready and printing out the newspaper's Election day guide to the various candidates and ballot initiatives?

She had been preparing for this for days.

I wasn’t having any of it. I was genuinely tired. I still am, as I write this. (Can you hear the tiny violins playing in the background?) I would vote later in the day, at some reasonable hour, like 7:00 p.m.

“Be gone, with thee, woman, and let me sleep, or at least let me lie here feeling sorry for myself.”

She must have sensed my thoughts, or simply inferred from the pillow over my head that I wasn’t going anywhere. That’s when she broke out with one of her secret weapons. She was dressed and ready to go, but she quietly layed down in bed next to me, the guy with the pillow over his head, and snuggled close behind me. That’s all. She said nothing, but I could feel her back there. She rested her hand on my back. She took her time, the sneak, and just layed there breathing, of all things, right next to me.

And a lot of crap just drained away from me.

Yes, the economy is tough. Yes, I’m not sure where all the money will come from. Yes, real estate prices are still drifting downwards. Yes, I’m frustrated, but it’s a fine Tuesday, Election Day Tuesday at that. And my coaching practice is going well. And the kids are amazing. And I live in a great town, in a great, though somewhat bruised, country.

There are no thugs outside my door. Armed police wouldn’t break in and arrest me for criticizing the government, as they had just done to a billionaire (have they no respect?) newspaper publisher in Russia. Nor would they harass me if I voted for Daffy Duck for governor of California this fine Election Day morning. I know this is not true of all voting places in this great country of ours, so we need to be like Lisa, and get up real early and be one of the first to vote, and keep on voting, and keep on teaching those little kids, and those not-so-little kids, and those big kids, and those adults, and ourselves how to live full, passionate lives.

Tough economy or not, bad night’s sleep or not, grouchy or not, it’s time to get up, and be thankful for all the blessings in our lives, which if you are really lucky includes being blessed with someone in your life who knows how to get you out of bed and into your life when you’re not so sure how to do it for yourself.

Or maybe it’s your eyes that can bless you and help you get out of bed by showing you the magnificent light pouring through your bedroom window. Or maybe it’s your ears showering you with the raucous sound of crows from a nearby telephone wire. Or maybe you are blessed by the knowledge that your child needs to be awakened and fed and taken to school.

            Some days it’s harder than others. We all know those days. That’s when you have to try your hardest. That’s when you need help, like I did. But you have to let the world in so it can help you, whether it’s the touch of another person, the whistle of a teapot, or the light streaming in your bedroom window. The world is here for you, but you have to let it in.

            Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
            are heading home again. 

            Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
            the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

                                                Mary Oliver

I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com  805/680-5572.

SCARE YOURSELF TO THE CORE

The half turn of your face

toward truth

is the one movement

you will not make.

                                                David Whyte

Sometimes, we turn away from the things that scare us and sadden us. Sometimes, we turn away from the truth that calls us, the love that awaits us, and the life we say we so dearly want. And, we don’t even know it.

In our time and place, one great turning away is from the body, from what is going on in the chest, the heart, the stomach, the shoulders, the legs, and elsewhere.

It’s a turning away from what we feel.

We struggle with the world, with sex, with joy, with love, with sadness, but we struggle from the neck up. One of the simplest and most powerful techniques of Tantra Yoga is simply to learn to use the breath so we can withstand greater and greater waves of pleasure during lovemaking.

As I write this I feel a bit of tension in my stomach. Part of me has a judgment about what I am writing. As soon as I become aware of the tension in my stomach, it eases and the words continue to come. I think of a friend and how she will possibly criticize these words as wrong or trivial. I feel it, take a breath, and am again able to continue.

We are comfortable feeling a certain size. As soon as someone begins to praise us and we feel ourselves getting ‘bigger’, we quickly deflate ourselves. Thanks, but no thanks, we say. We can almost begin to feel ourselves cracking.

Well-known relationship specialists Gay and Kathleen Hendricks say that often relationships suffer from what they call “The Upper Limits Problem.” The relationship is only allowed to get so big, only allowed so much intimacy, only allowed so much joy. Problems arise simply because one or both partners has reached the upper limits of how much happiness they can stand. Their comfort zones have overheated. Their rivets have popped. Their bubble…you get the picture.

If you look closely, you know this all too well.

Not so fast, we say. Not so high. Not so happy.

We’re afraid.

If we get too happy, we feel our unworthiness.

Or like we’re doing something wrong.

Or like we will be punished. 

We fear that we’re like Icarus in the Greek myth who used wax to fix wings to his body, who, as he approached the sun and the wax melted and the wings tore loose, was plunged to the sea where he drowned.

Many of us have a bit of the myth of Icarus buried in our chests.

It’s not always easy to make that half turn, but that’s where the truth of our life lies, the truth of what we are afraid of, the truth of the questions that have been waiting for us, the truth of who we want to be before we die, the truth of the music we hear when we are alone at night, the truth of what we long for and love.

One of my friends calls this turning towards the truth ‘leaning in’. Another calls it ‘curling around’. It really is that physical. It does require wrapping your body and heart around it. It’s getting cozy with what you fear, with what you don’t like, with what you want to get away from, with what you love and yearn for.

Hard to look,

but you know it has to happen

and

that it takes only the half turn of your face

to scare yourself

to the core.

Seeing again

that strange resolve in your new reflection.

Go for it, wrap yourself, body and soul around your life, and make it a good one.

 Please share. Namaste.

BE A HAPPY LOVER: THE VIDEO

Statistics are crazy and sometimes they’re tossed around like rice at a wedding, but if you’re not a statistician and a specialist in the field it’s hard to know what they mean.

That having been said here are a few stats for your consideration.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonya Lyubormirsky, states that 40% of our happiness is set by genetics and possibly unchangeable effects of early experience, 10% is due to our circumstances, like being rich—though money only helps make you happy when you are close to being poor, above that, money has a rather small effect on your happiness—and a whopping 50% of our happiness is due to us, to what we do with our lives, and more importantly, what sense we make of our lives, what meaning we give it, how we think about it and how we respond to it.

This is not a new idea, but old wisdom is no less wise and no more common simply because it’s been around for a while.

Epictetus, in “The Art of Living”, said, “People are not disturbed by things, but by their view of them.”

William Shakespeare, no slouch when it comes to understanding human nature, wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

Of course this is often a lot easier said than done, but no one said it was easy, just that it was possible.

The performance artist, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed’s partner, said in a recent interview, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a human being, and being human is hard.” 

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to pick up the gauntlet and fight for your share of happiness, or whether you want to live your life at the mercy of that 50% that you seem to have little or no control over.

But before you go off thinking that it might be too hard for you to make yourself a good life, take a look at this guy’s video clip, and know that no one has a monopoly on hardship, nor on happiness. Your life may not always be easy, but there’s a lot you can do to make it a good one.

Namaste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILYziCZjAWM

HOW NAKED SHOULD A GUY GET?

I saw a guy change his life last night. Last week I saw another guy change his life.

Three weeks ago I saw another guy die because he couldn’t see a way of changing his. He was 39 years old. He died because he stopped talking.

How do you have the necessary conversations, the talks that come from deep in the heart and the soul and free the spirits, both dark and light, that reside there? How do you unburden yourself? It’s hard to do it alone. Grace helps, as do other people who care and can listen. This takes a lot of guts, and many guys can’t do it, at least not alone.

A guy at the gym explained to a buddy of mine that they were looking at the football game at 6:00 a.m. because, “Guys look at sports so they’ll have something to talk about with other guys.”

Maybe guys play certain sports so they can touch each other without fear of having their sexual orientation brought into question. I know my son thrives on touching me. He’s eleven. I wonder how much longer that will last.

My dog Iko is a guy. He touches me all the time. But he’s a dog.

Real guys can have it hard. We have a tendency to isolate. As we get older, if we’re not careful, we end up like lone grapes withering on the vine. If it weren’t for our women, most straight guys would have no emotional contact with another human being. Gay guys can have it even harder. I guess that’s why being alone as you age is worse for a guy’s health than smoking and drinking.

So reach out to other men. Figure out how to do it. Have the balls to meet with other guys. Not just to chitchat, but to share the journey of being a man.

Men die, on average, seven years earlier than women. Maybe it’s because women talk to one another, and guys too often don’t, not about what matters.

The right kind of talk is not cheap. It’s priceless.

And sometimes, not being able to talk can kill you. Just ask the family of a thirty-nine-year-old man who lost a son, a brother, a father, and a provider.

If you are interested in joining a men’s group or starting one of your own, please contact me at drjohnluca@gmail.com. And help yourself to a good day.  

HOW LITTLE IS A LITTLE WHITE LIE?

            Once in awhile, you wear designer knockoffs, Chanel sunglasses you bought from a sidewalk vendor for ten bucks.
            And that Louis bag? Bought at a street market in Rome.
            You didn't steal them. You weren't going to buy the real ones, and you're not stopping anyone who is. You don't hide the fact that you wear them from your friends.
            It's about as little as a little white lie gets. It's no big deal.
            Right?
            Maybe.
           Women who thought they were wearing fake designer shades, even though they might be wearing the real thing, were more than TWICE as likely to cheat and lie when observed by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and the University of North Carolina.
           These same women were much more likely to judge people as dishonest, untruthful, and unethical.        
           That's just from wearing or thinking they were wearing a pair of fake sunglasses that were randomly handed to them. These women didn't even go out and buy them.
           How much damage are we doing to ourselves and the people we love when we 'lie' in some way, or misrepresent ourselves? What toll is it taking on us and our relationships? How likely are we to find the life and love we want in a world that we see as more dishonest, untruthful, and unethical.
           I'm not knocking people who wear knockoffs. And who tells the truth and nothing but the truth all the time? But it of utmost importance to be aware of who we really are and what is most true for us.
           The great teachers have always said, "The truth will set you free."
           Try the sunglasses. If they don't work, maybe the truth will.