Chop wood, carry water

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” — Zen Kōan.

On a flight from Puerto Rico to Houston a couple years ago, I sat next to a man on the plane who was returning from his first trip outside the mainland U.S. I was closing out a weeks-long visiting my family there, time I didn’t know how badly I needed until I arrived and didn’t feel like I could, or really wanted, to leave. Piping hot Puerto Rican coffee in the moka pot every morning, hours-long walks around my family’s technicolor neighborhood, sitting at the ocean’s edge in total peace while also giggling as competing suitcase-sized speakers blasted reggaeton. Questions—and reminders—from my aunt about what I was hurrying around for anyway.

The man next to me was thrilled about his trip, while also being very respectful of my time and space on that packed plane, too. He couldn’t wait to go back, even though he’d had to visit the emergency room for slicing his foot open on a bottle while out skateboarding, I think it was. He’d splurged on his business ticket and I’d been upgraded; his energy and excitement when he heard I had family in PR, that I’d been somewhat often, reminded me again of my deep luck.

After we talked for a bit, I turned back and took out my journal. It was the same version of one I’d been using for years: a monogrammed Shinola journal. “Wow, I have the same one!” he said, and took out his. It was even the same color. I’d bought these for years and gifted them often, and I’ve never seen another one out in the wild. I still haven’t.

He asked what I liked to write about. I told him, a bit of everything, and that I used to write as my “Job,” (capital “J”), burned out from it afterward, and then once I started to mediate found my way back to it, words pouring out, and my writing different. More fluid, more surrendered, more exploratory.

“I meditate, too!” he said, and he asked me about my practice. Sometimes you can feel it—I do. When other people inhabit that liminal space often, when they find a way, despite everything else in our lives today, to total presence, when they’re the type of person or have the type of habits that can allow for just being there with a moment’s totality. It brings it out more in me, too, and reminds me of how things can really beC and the purity of things. For some friends it’s through prayer and faith, others movement; others I’ve met it’s just however they are or whatever they’ve figured out thus far in their lives, and it really works.

My seat mate didn’t practice Vedic meditation (akin to transcendental, a 20-min, twice daily, practice) as I did, but he was as familiar with it. We talked a little about our experiences, what it’s like to sit with all of it and explore both the cosmic and mundane, whatever is being served in those moments of silence.

At that point I’d been practicing for three years. “It’s both subtle and profound, I’ve found,” I told him. “It’s like everything has changed and nothing has changed at the same time.” “Exactly!” he replied. It’s like that Zen joke: “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” I laughed. I hadn’t heard this before, and it fit. Wouldn’t you know it.

Joke, riddle, axiom, whatever it feels like it is, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. A lot has started to shift in the world, and especially the U.S., since November 2023, and in ways that hurt my heart and stir my soul. I don’t know what to do often, but I do know that I’ve learned over the years (meditating) that for myself specifically, acting from a place provoked reaction does not improve outcomes for me or have the impact I intend. I need to sit with it a bit. I need to feel it all, and see what comes through on the other side. And, sometimes, that makes me feel like I’m doing nothing, especially when so much seems like it’s unraveling so fast.

I came back to this Zen koan, and draft in blog, when last night my inspiring friend Lilian (and an incredible writer herself https://liliancaylee.substack.com/) texted me and said, “It is people like you and your words who keep me together.”

I thought, and felt like, I’d been doing nothing. And here was a friend sharing how she was gathering strength from my typing on a train, thousands of miles away. Because I came back to something I’ve always felt compelled to do: writing. And because I was reaffirming my belief in something that felt like the only possible thing I can really do, and the only path forward: Be myself. Root into what feels right. “Before [this moment]; chop wood, carry water. After [this moment]; chop wood, carry water.”

I’m doing all the same things, and I’m also doing them differently. I am the same person, and I’m also a different one. We’re all the same, and we’re all different.

We are the revolution, right?

For Lil, and The Good Gossip

Ikigai: On purpose

Ikigai (生き甲斐, lit. 'a reason for being') is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living. (Wikipedia)

I began watching Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix with my parents. The first episode takes place in Okinawa, Japan, and the last—and perhaps most lasting—concept introduced as a way to understand and respect the longevity of residents is that of ikigai.

I think we do this very American thing in the U.S. of overcomplicating this quite a bit. We make it tied to profession; we put it in a box of branding; we think we need to pitch it in an elevator and that it is one big, fixed thing. This is my life. This is my purpose.

But, wait: “More generally (ikigai) may refer to something that brings pleasure or fulfilment.[1]” And purpose can change in every moment. Maybe it’s meant to morph.

I’ve been looking forward to find my “purpose” rather than orienting to the here and now, the life being lived. The sunshine gives me purpose; writing this little thing brings pleasure and relationships give me the most beautiful reasons for living.

Ikigai; life on purpose.

Our thoughts are just thoughts

I had this thought the other day. Our thoughts are just thoughts. They are not our responsibility; but what we do with them, is. Do we choose to identify? Do we hold on? Do we let them go, and fall away to the earth to be absorbed and transformed into whatever may be needed?

And for some guidance on moving past them, and transmuted them, I highly recommend Byron Katie’s Four Liberating Questions.

Who am i without this? / Byron Katie's Four Questions

Author Byron Katie developing something called Four Liberating Questions, a brief self-inquiry process that is as simple as it is profound. It’s also called “The Work,” and I’ve found it to be an incredibly effective method to move beyond thought traps, controlling thoughts and negative thoughts. The background:

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts I suffered, but when I didn’t believe them I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always. And I invite you not to believe me. I invite you to test it for yourself.

– Byron Katie

And now for The Questions. It goes like this:

  1. Is it true?

  2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

  3. How do you react when you believe that thought?

  4. Who would you be without the thought?

When I’ve shared it with others, they’ve found it as powerful and effective as I have. At this point, I find myself moving through the questions almost automatically, often in my head. When I feel particularly stuck, however, and especially when I first began using them, I would journal out the questions and my responses.

I’ve made it a bit of my own by asking myself the question, “Who am I without this?” when I find myself particularly attached to an idea, thought or identity. It’s sometimes scary to answer, but on the other side of all those feelings, it’s always liberating.

See Byron Katie’s page for more, including the invitation on the home page: “Meet your Internal Wisdom. The Work is meditation. It is a method of inquiry born directly out of Byron Katie’s experience. This practice allows you to access the wisdom that always exists within you.”

What is mine

I wrote before about the importance, freedom and benevolence I’ve found in understanding what isn’t mine—to take on, carry, understand, process, etc. (A therapist would probably call these boundaries from codependence or enmeshment? I’m currently reading Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab.) At the same time, that clarity also makes it more obvious to me what is mine, and, as a result, makes it ever more important that I take responsibility for that. And something we’re always responsible for, I continue to remind myself, is how we react, or, more ideally, *respond* to any situation. (A “response” factors in an extra bit of time for conscious choice, and I’ve found meditation so very helpful in moving me from reactions to responses.)

I think we’re each given a little packet of things in this world that are our LEGOs of life to build with, play with, work through, create with and understand; challenges and inclinations and interests and such. Sometimes we may build with others using our own set, but we still need to take responsibility for our pieces. And even if we don’t particularly like all of our pieces, well, that’s our set, that’s set, and maybe what we can do is use them to make something we love.

That is growth

Someone pointed out to me once that I said, “that’s growth!” a lot, and that they liked that I celebrated that, even the small things. This, in particular, was after something very silly that I can’t remember and I’d said it as a joke, but I appreciated that, because I didn’t even really realize I was doing it, or had done it other times before. (And that, I guess, shows us in and of Itself how valuable, and even critical, other relationships are to reflecting back our own growth, and, as a result, encouraging us to grow even more!)

My therapist called them “sparkling moments,” I think, which reminds me of the little Christmas lights I see twinkling in my Tía Nora’s neighborhood in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, where I sit outside writing this as I listen to the little coqui frogs chirp.

When I was here a year ago, I wasn’t writing here. This place did not yet exist, this blog, and now, here we are. That’s growth!

Gratitude is a choice

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and I woke up and went to bed reflecting on what my friend Brooke often says: “Gratitude is a choice.”

I spent the day mostly offline, not having to work (grateful), with family and family friends (grateful), cooking and enjoying a fresh, healthy meal (grateful), doing Zumba with my lifelong neighbor and friend for an hour, her leading a class of all ages, all of us dancing, smiling, shaking it out (grateful).

How am I grateful? Let me count the ways…

Happy Thanksgiving!

I can choose fear, or I can choose trust

Yesterday, after I finished lunch, my mind started to take me to a place of potential future outcomes that very immediately felt scary. It pertained to something I was processing into a new understanding, a new reality, the other week. Through the waves, I had found—I have found—a wider stability, a deeper capacity to be in the now, rather than what if’s. Still, there are moments, and that’s OK. The voice that settled me as those frightening possibilities began to form as thoughts in my head, said, “You can choose fear, or you can choose trust.”

I choose trust. I chose trust in that moment, and I choose trust in writing right now. The reality is what it is; the rest, and me, is whatever I choose for it to be.

Grow curiously

I bought a Monstera at the Mar Vista Farmers Market not long after moving to Los Angeles. I was with my friend Katie, and I named the plant Moana. It had had already nearly outgrown its farmers market pot, and the nice people there repotted it for me, and I took it home to put on my dresser in my bedroom, where stretches awake to reach the morning sun and cranes to see the sunset color Century City and the Hills in the distance a gentle pink.

A week into settling into her new home, both pot and place, Moana was reaching in new directions, taller than before, splaying out, welcoming it all in. I sent a photo to Katie and she responded with emoji smiles, admiring comments and said, “I love how they grow, so curious.”

To grow curiously; what a beautiful, playful concept. How much more enjoyable, fun, easeful, experimental and gracious is all growth, all learning, all possibility, when rooted in curiosity? So much more, I feel.

May we all always grow curiously.

For Katie, with whom curious growth led us to life abroad in Buenos Aires and on many beautiful trips, from Japan to Santa Barbara, and I’m sure more to come

If it's never enough, then it's always enough

I used to be an “inbox zero” person. I felt the compulsive need to clear my emails every day, the red bubbles a constant reminder of what I was missing, didn’t do, needed to do, the lack.

I got so tired. I was doing this, it felt like, in every aspect of life. It was never enough; it couldn’t end, it wouldn’t end. And then I realized, I decided, I didn’t want to do it anymore. And the choice had been mine the whole time. To decide what was enough, and when was enough. Because if it was never enough, then it was also always enough. It was all for me for to decide. And it’s also yours.

(More than a year into turning off red notification bubbles, opting out when it feels most supportive, unsubscribing from many emails and doing large-scale deletes, it really feels so good, and I highly recommend it. I recently cleared out 150 emails, mostly newsletters I just wasn’t going to get to, and I had so much more mental clarity afterward. I decided I’m OK with what’s left unread.")

Both of these things are true

When I was thinking of creating this blog, this is one of the first sayings I can remember repeating with friends: Both of these things are true. It was back in Brooklyn, and that summer when that first heavy wave of COVID lifted and we all got a little reprieve, to be outside in parks, to reunite with a little less fear, to be in some form of revelry and normal. I spent a lot of that summer with a core group of Brooklyn friends after moving across the Williamsburg Bridge; we started most weekends on my rooftop and then walked up Berry Street to The Lot Radio, which somehow could stay open past midnight, everyone sitting in clusters on the triangular street corner among warehouses, a church, and McCarren Park, between Williamsburg and Greenpoint where no cars really went and the little Lot Radio stand could blast music and there was, one time, a pop-up fashion show at 2:30am. We called it the vortex, bopped around to different groups, had conversations with a lot of lines like “I have a lot of air in my (astrological) chart,” and ,for a suspended time of reality, felt like anything was possible in those endless summer days-to-nights.

At some point “both of these things are true” started to come up, be said and ring true. Things were hard and weird in the world, and, still, we were really having a great time. We were holding all these truths and, in acknowledging them, I found capacity for so much more. I learned to be able to hold them without them having to be so heavy. They could just be there, in the same space, and I could be with them, coexisting. Life got richer, easier, fuller, more beautifully complex, in acknowledging the multitude of a moment, and the prismatic refractions of any one experience.

I had dinner with one of these friends, who also had since moved to LA, last weekend. It was our first time getting together in a couple months, and it felt like a homecoming, that way it always is when we reconnect with people with whom we have a relationship of love, acceptance and knowing. I told her how challenging the week had been in my personal life, and also how some big, beautiful things had come from it, like registering for Reiki Level 1 training. She held the space for me and thanked me for sharing with her. It was a less emotional moment and, still, I felt that deeper level of processing and sharing do me good. We continued with the evening, laughed about instances where we were like, it’s not that deep, and made plans for a beach cabana getaway in a couple weekends.

A few days ago she checked in and said she had been thinking of me this week. In the message, too, she shared a heartfelt reminder: “Friends are here for the worries, too.” The worries, the fun; both of these things are true. I guess, after all, it is one.

For Sam, who thrives and alives in both NYC & LA. Happy to have had you in both places for days & nights of saying & playing.

Do one less thing

Sometimes I think life is a rotation between the two sides of the same advice coin, a back-and-forth flip that is sometimes quick, like both in one day, and, other times, we’re on the same side for some time. Before, it was Do this one thing. Right now, it’s: Do one less thing.

Do one less thing, make one less plan, make one choice less, say one less thing, deliberate one time less. There’s a peace that comes in granting that, I’ve found. A space for settling, and for something to naturally shift.