My Favorite Sport

The question was one I’d never before considered: How would I characterize myself?  Sidestepping thought, as I try to do as much as possible, I opened my heart and mouth to the voice of intuition.  Out popped: “I’m a very gifted person.”  

Not gifted talented, but rather someone who has received many gifts. 

I am definitely privileged. 

Besides worldly luxuries (like readable penmanship and winning every World Series game I’ve ever pitched tossing a Pinky rubber ball against our barn door), I was born seeded with this wacky point of view that, over nearly eight decades, has allowed me to increasingly respond in a life-affirming way to pretty much whatever presents itself:  

Everything is a gift, 

and the business of life is discovering how come

Don’t mistake me for someone who knows what he’s doing.  

Heartbreak and destructive choices are not strangers.  At best, I’m like the second grader who, upon announcing to her parents she was running away from home and was asked by them how she intended to support herself, replied, “Teach first grade.”

Shows you it doesn’t take much to enjoy a reasonably peaceful heart and aid a few fellow travelers along the way. 

One of them, a person I’ve been in dialogue with for a while, recently asked if I would articulate my purpose and vision for her.  Ah, my favorite sport: taking a fresh look at what’s vital to life.

Purpose is my “reason for being,” one served by every breath I take.  Vision is how I aspire for that purpose to show up; what it looks like, feels like.  And what it takes to pursue that end: skills, understanding, and so forth.

My sense of both begins with how I feel the universe works.  Not that I’m an expert; I just find it useful to have an opinion since that opinion is the context in which my every choice lives.  True for us all?  Seems so to me.

The specifics of my metaphysical outlook might be a distraction here because in a very practical sense the purpose of my life boils down to one thing: growing my capacity to love.  Further, I find every experience (even the most chagrin producing) a sacred teacher serving that purpose.  Hence, why everything is a gift.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to growing love is our addiction to beliefs, particularly the belief that other people and outside events make us happy or otherwise.  That we’re victims, in other words.  There may be no greater gift we give ourselves than cracking the nut of that misperception.  We acknowledge that how we define our world actually creates our world.  We commit to being responsible for our every feeling, thought and action.  And with that commitment the great adventure of being human kicks into high gear.  

Among the questions we tackle is: How would I know a healthy person if I saw one?

My definition of health is only incidentally related to physical or mental well being, for it is the act of growing resilience: learning to respond with kindness, compassion and understanding to everything.  A lifetime undertaking to be sure.  Yet the practices fundamental to this growth are ones we can improve our mastery of all the way to, and including, our last breath.

1. 1. Managing fear and pain.
   2. Learning from our experience, our greatest teacher, some would say our only teacher.
   3. Gaining ever-deeper understanding of what is essential––what we cannot live without: in our life, and in the moment.
   4. Aligning commitments with action, and action with commitments.

Growing love more and better through these four practices is at the heart of my purpose and vision.  As is that fancy cliché about every one of us: 

No one is who they think they are. 

No one is that small. 

Our capacity for self-discovery is immeasurable.