It's interesting!

"May you live in interesting times," states the old Chinese curse, and without doubt we do. Until the last decade I thought living in interesting times would be fun and exciting. Now I'm not so sure. The world is changing so quickly that even the calmest among us feels agitated and anxious. Before we can catch up with the events of last week, they have spun into newer more complex versions of themselves. We are lost in a sea of uncertainty while the worries of today and tomorrow lay in wait.

This interesting world is one we created and must now take responsibility for. We must conquer frustration and impatience and our own ignorance and solve our problems, including the most pressing, climate change—before which all other problems fade to oblivion. What good are your devices if no network exists, if there is no food or fresh water, if your home is under water, if the Gulf Stream has quit streaming?

Naomi Klein is a Canadian writer who gave six years and a great deal of thought to the problem of global climate change, and I recommend her book, This Changes Everything. It's not an easy book, but you will be glad you read it. There is also a documentary film by the same name.

Klein's book reminds us in heart-wrenching ways that this interesting world, this beautiful, endlessly fascinating globe spinning through space, is our only home, and we must protect it with the same strength and energy we protect our children or ourselves. There are ways to do this if we act quickly and with collective strength, and her well-documented book is an excellent resource, a good place to start.

But what we also need to do, I think, in addition to marching and writing letters and donating money, and paddling kayaks in opposition to Shell, is to remind ourselves of our selves—or our souls if you prefer. Our disconnect from Earth has grown slowly over time. Conveniences like electric light and steam generation; and coal, oil and gas, and the digital revolution, enticed us away from Earth's natural pace and rhythm. But ever so gently, so that we hardly noticed how alienated—and destructive—we have become.

I am lucky that I have easy access to the natural world and have learned that if I pay attention it will speak to me. The caw of a crow, the sound of wind through the firs, the sudden bolt of a young deer, all work to bring me back to the present. Suddenly I am out of my head and back on the pavement paying attention to now. Nature is willing to help us if we only pay attention.

And while a charming landscape is helpful, it's not required. We can attend while sitting in front of our always captivating screens by simply remembering that we are alive; that we are in the world now. We may not like where we are but what matters is that we acknowledge the moment, that fleeting moment that is gone before you can name it. Life and Earth are gifts, and acknowledging that, however briefly, will serve us all.

It's about time

I often feel I don't have enough time. But what does it really mean, to have time? In Einstein's world time is relative. It's the fourth dimension, intricately linked to space itself—spacetime. In the non-relativistic world, our world, time is treated as a constant, but it never feels constant to me. In my world the clock ticks ever so slowly or far too fast.

We learn early to succumb to the demands of the clock; we unquestioningly accept its rule. But our willingness to live by its precepts feels oddly mistaken. Have we trapped ourselves by our devotion to time and clocks and timeclocks and efficiency and productivity?

Whenever I could I turned my back on those demands. I've loved many jobs while regretting the time I needed to give them. I never wanted my precious hours to go to a career, a company, or a boss. Which probably explains why my retirement is so meager! But it seemed to me—and still does—that this life, every life, deserves to be honored by filling its allotted days with what one values; not by exercising the skills that others value—even when well paid for them. Sometimes those values overlap, of course, but that is a rare and wonderful thing.

Henry David Thoreau said, "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment." I'm with Henry. We need and deserve time to sit, watch, listen, learn, love, and enjoy. 

In America finding such time is difficult. Unlike most countries in the world the U.S. has zero national requirements for vacations or holidays. Most European countries have 30 days of paid vacation, and employees are required to take it. With holidays, Austrians got 38 and Brazilians 41 paid days off in 2014.* Yet many Americans work multiple jobs and get no days off, while being called lazy by vacation-loving politicians.

This is not a healthy way to live, and the discord, anger, and division we see around us are, I think, a direct consequence of valuing productivity—and capitalism—over life itself.

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Whether we measure time in days, seasons, or decades, we are always paying homage to it. We do things from time to time, are present for the time being, will be there in no time, arrive in good time, and are frequently behind the times.

I expect we've all had the experience of time stretching as we travel. The strangeness of everything we see makes each moment unique, and the moment that followed behind it will contain some other uniqueness, some sight never seen, aroma never breathed, words never heard. Three weeks can feel like three months when everything is new. And then we return home to friends, excited about the stories we have to tell, and they say, "What, back already? Didn't you just leave?" Nothing deflates the eager story teller so quickly—which may be a good thing.

What contracts time, it seems to me, is habit, routine, or activities done mindlessly. Driving a well known route, you blink and realize you're at your destination and wonder how you got there. Your travel and time are lost in the fog of automaticity, the antithesis of mindfulness. 

But no matter how we shape it or cut it or use it or ignore it, time will never retreat. It may stretch or bend itself beyond understanding, but as long as we're on earth, time will be with us. We are nothing without it. For what is life but time?

* from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

From now to a memory

I stumbled onto a TED talk about memory this morning and since that's a subject I'm keenly tuned to, having lost family and friends to Alzheimer's, I watched. Joshua Foer's talk is about competitive memorizing—who knew?—and he shows us some of the tricks competitors use. But the heart of his talk is this, that you must work to remember. And you must pay attention to the present. I latched onto that because it's what I believe too, and we're always ready to adopt an expert when he agrees with us. But in this case my experiences support my belief.

We've done a lot of traveling through the years and have been rewarded with wonderful memories. Most remain bright and clear because when you travel as we did, with little money and almost always by car you must, if you are to keep going, pay attention to the present. If you're on the road in a foreign land, following roadsigns you can't read, eating foods you don't know, struggling through a conversation in mutually unintelligible languages, and seeing strange and beautiful things every minute of every day, you can't help but be present and alert. Otherwise, to quote recently deceased author Chinua Achebe, "things fall apart."

Some of the sites and some of the conversations we had during those travels are burned into my soul. It is day-to-day living that depletes our memories, it is the deep ruts we carve for ourselves and the mundane activities that fill our lives: eating, bathing, cleaning, working, shopping, commuting. Not to mention all the electronic distractions. Yet even in this we find relief when we pay attention.

On my routine daily walks I am often so deep in my mind that I only surface when I'm about to be hit by a car. Most days I cannot tell you what I saw or heard. But when we pay attention, memory works. A few days ago I was obliviously walking the asphalt path when a sudden movement on the left caught my eye. I turned to see eight deer, the closest standing less than ten feet away. I had already passed most of them and would have missed them entirely except for that nod of the head. Of course I stopped and greeted the ladies—they were all ladies—and we stood and looked at each other. Then, not wanting to spook them I moved on.

On another day Ray and I were walking, not speaking just walking, when I looked up and saw two birds circling high above us. "Look," I said, "are those vultures?" And as I spoke one of the great birds turned toward us and the morning sun lit up his white head and tail feathers. We watched as the bald eagle circled lower and lower on a descending current of air. Then suddenly he flapped his wings and was off again, disappearing over the tops of the pines. I remember that, just as I remember the deer, because they were events that drew me out of my routine and into the present.

Distractions like those are frequent here and we are lucky, but anyone can be aware. I sometimes pretend I'm on a trip just to practice the awareness that I know goes with traveling. It's not hard, it just takes remembering to do it.

Give yourself a present today. Step out of your routine for just a moment and notice your surroundings; pay attention. Don't, as Foer says, "be so lazy that [you're] not willing to process deeply." Look hard. Your present is your present, and it can be a memory.