Need Demotivated? I Can Help You

Yes, you read that right.  I think it's time for Grandma to share some of her own tips for constantly demotivating herself.  Not sure how funny this is going to be, though I started with an idea of parodying yet another of those about 8,790,000 online articles about how to get yourself to do something you ought to do when everything in you cries out No! Or at least, most of you does, and hey, it's July.

But what about demotivating yourself?  A mere 59,000 entries about something all of us do most every day.  You can see this is a field crying for more content.  Meanwhile, exploring this got to be fun right away.  I took the quiz on demotivate.com, whose motto is, "If you're happy and you know it, find another site."  Their other motto is,

 Life sucks, give up.  

The quiz told me I am ~

On your way to true demotivation You are headed on the right path, just pick up a few bottles of vodka, wait til your dog dies and you will begin to finally feel how worthless your existence really is!

It's interesting to a demotivator to look up images for "Life sucks."  On one hand, you quickly get sidetracked into things like Cheezburger, which collects "epic fails," the best of which involve trucks whose drivers were probably both stoned and working above their pay grade.

At least half of what comes up on Google about demotivation is trying to motivate you in a sickening sweet way.  Now, I don't blame the people who make those posters, and sometimes put them on Facebook.  I know lovely people who do that now and then.  They are just trying to feel better.  I blame the society for making us all want to BE SOMEONE, and telling us that you can do anything if you try.  Especially when it tells you you can feel better if you try.

(Parenthetically, you really can't make yourself feel better, take it from an expert.  What you feel, you feel, including long bad moods that are profoundly karmic in nature.  But you're not allowed to be depressed and listless, are you?  It makes your friends nervous.  Actually, moods - energies - are catching, that's been studied, too. It feels good to be around a hypomanic, for a while.  Same is true of a depressive, except backwards.

[Even more parenthetically, I had the perhaps unique experience of being yelled at in a psych ward by another depressive for being depressing.  Specifically, I was playing Barb'ry Allen on the piano, which is not nearly so bad as cracking gum loudly and glaring at someone who is playing a sad song.  Psych wards are full of passive-aggressives, of course, the resident doctors being the worst.])  

Okay, where was I?
 
I wanted to be a little Zennish for a moment. I wanted to say that, while demotivation from outside can work, unfortunately, motivation from outside does. not. You can find learned articles about experiments that demonstrate that, if you are a scholarly type.  If not, allow me to summarize:  a sign on your wall, a post-it on your computer, people telling you to cheer up (don't you hate that?), these things do. not. work.  I know I am annoying you with my feeble cliched attempts to emphasize the point, so I'll make the point and run:  to be sustained in an effort, your motivation has to be internal.

Nor is internal motivation always good.  For example, you may have internalized at a very young age that if you were only good enough, your father would love you.  At least respect you.  And actually, painful life things like the delusion that you can make rejecting parents notice you often lead people to work hard and do good things.  Though mental constructions like that (if you only work hard enough . . . ) are often proven to be incorrect (are delusions, in Buddhist terms) with disastrous results.

And this post is long enough, so click here for a coffee mug that will help you stay pessimistic.  It's hard, with all these puppies and kitties on Facebook. Remember, they only enjoy life because they have little tiny brains not capable of hanging onto elaborate mental constructions.  Bless them.  Well, bless us all.

DalaiG has a webcam

Voila, the world today is full of toys!

Woman trying to look pleasant all the time, just looks goony.*

Woman trying to look like nice grandma, looks fundamentally harmless.  Of course, that could be useful.

How woman actually looks when not trying - like she is thinking.  Oh no!

I feel perpetually guilty for not posting here (make up your mind!) so this morning I was trying to copy in a little sign I made for myself in a text box - words of teacher Yvonne Rand. But I can't get it to copy and it doesn't matter, anyway. So here is the text:

Why be unhappy
about something you can change?
Why be unhappy
about something you can’t change?

Now, why be unhappy?  

I don't set out to be unhappy.  It's just that this morning I feel this certain hmm . . . I don't know. Actually. I can't say anything's wrong.  I just have no goals, no drive.  And don't feel like doing what I think I should do.  Hmmm, that's different.  I'm not, like, amused or delighted, dopamine flowing, whatever we mean by "happy."  My senses are not being occupied by something like Grand Budapest Hotel, thank God (they were yesterday - I was too bored to walk out).  I'm just - oh, here.  Kind of interesting.  Of course I hurt somewhere, but that's life at 71 2/3 years old.

Anyway, hello everyone.  Do me two favors today:

1.  Don't smile when you don't mean it.

2.  Don't ever tell me to smile.  (Or your daughter, either.)  Hey, if you don't like someone's mood, go away.

~~~

* I know I should edit those washed-out photos, but they don't pay me enough.
update:  I have no drive, no goals today either, but that's fine with me.  Maybe that's the secret.

The Truth About It

[Right about that time, this song was popularized by Three Dog Night.]

Your first yoga teacher - maybe it's like your first love:  wonderful.  George came to our small town and brought us yoga to candlelight and such music as an ethereal recording of the Panamian nose flute, and this was the early 70s. It was part of the revolution, which was good, but not all good.

One of his pieces of wisdom comes back to me often.  He would say, as we lay there at the end imitating corpses, "It feels good to relax."  And boy, it did.  George was flawless.  But there was one thing I still disagree with him on; now and then he'd murmur, almost as if talking to himself, "It's all good."  My life wasn't.  It was highly unsatisfactory.  In fact, the years to follow that first yoga class would be the most painful of my life.  Mania and depression almost killed me.  Sometimes I realize how lucky I was to live through it, and I suspect it's true, that God, the universe, tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

I can disagree with George's positivism today from a more respectable position, since I am 70 now, officially old. So  I've been thinking about this question of how it all is for many years, more diligently than I thought about (or practiced) down dog.  Now I have Zen to back me up, I believe, when I say, It's not all good.  The Buddha's first teaching was that life is difficult, unsatisfactory.  But it's not all bad; a lot of it is beautiful, fun, interesting, or at least feels good.  What it is, it all just is.

It is. 

I must admit, that looks like a bald statement, and one that hardly needs saying.  I mean, obviously, it is.  But I myself have spent a great deal of energy in my life trying to escape or control it.  From not accepting it to hating it.  At the moment I'm working to cultivate equanimity; it's been a theatrical year with some really bad depression. If equanimity came naturally, we wouldn't have to cultivate it.

But to be calmly accepting of reality is not natural; what's natural is desire and aversion, greed and hatred, and don't forget delusion.  Maybe one of those delusions is that if we wear only organic cotton and eat vegan and practice a chronic smile, it will all feel good.  Or maybe that's a another desire, and a natural desire, too.  We are equipped to feel pain and pleasure, hunger and satisfaction.  Pain hurts - it is unnatural to like it, and generally good to avoid it.  But sometimes it just is. Life is still worth celebrating.  Sometimes.

What the little cat knows

Contemplation

The Little Cat loves routine. Three times a day my cellphone alarm goes off, I come to the kitchen and take my immunosuppressants, I feed her.  While I take the pills she rubs daintily around my ankles.  After she tastes the food she jumps up on my kitchen chair and holds her front legs up to me, an invitation to let her climb on my shoulder and settle down on my chest, purring.  The world is running the same old way, and she feels safe. Food, safe shelter, predictability, these make her actively happy.

It makes sense for an animal to be anxious about change; predictability spells out food and shelter to them.  So I suppose that we, in our animal body, are the same - comforted by routine.  But we are capable of understanding that things always change.  I mean always, every minute.  That's what organic life does.  Here in Ohio, you can count on the blue sky being gone in an hour, the temperature dropped 20 degrees.  People complain about it all the time, wanting the more equable skies of California, perhaps, without the mudslides and early freezes, of course.

Suzuki Roshi once said that the central teaching of Buddhism is "Things change."  When I first read that years ago, it didn't seem real inspiring.  Now that I am 68 many experiences have taught me that it's true.  Some 70 tornadoes went through the American midwest yesterday.  A high wind is the ultimate in chaos.  No telling where that tornado will touch down, whose house will be leveled.  Me personally, last summer I had the shock of being offered a kidney by a friend.  This promised to give me many more years of life, to take me from what had become very old age and physical degeneration back to being an active 68-year-old.

Since then I've had either 8 or 9 UTI's and two or three hospitalizations, lost count.  Inbetween all that, I've had glimpses of feeling alive all over again.

So far the UTI's are unpredictable and we've been unable to prevent them.  The good luck is that - so far - the bacteria involved have been responsive to antibiotics.  So far.  The spread of resistant bacteria is scaring everyone in the medical field.

Like all other living things, from strawberries to Bengal Tigers, our safety is never guaranteed.  We ourselves and all forms of life constantly change, and age.  Felt great Wednesday, Thursday woke up with urge incontinence, a fever, and urine full of white cells.  So we had to postpone the bladder scope that we hope will tell us why I have all these infections, and thus how to stop them. Had to cancel three appointments on Friday.  I reminded myself of The Five Remembrances (you can find them at the bottom of this page), which many Buddhists recite every day .  I focused on  "I am of the nature to grow ill; I cannot escape illness."  That is, don't count on anything.  And don't get too caught up in your desires; that way you won't be too disappointed.

Years ago I knew a woman who was convinced that if she did the right things and had a strong will and stayed hopeful ("a positive attitude") she would survive metastasized cancer and live to be 94, the number she felt entitled to after taking a test in a women's magazine.  She died at 72, pissed off, still sure that if you only did all the right things, all of them, you could live, well, forever.  Still not accepting reality, I'm sorry to say, which is, Do what you can, and let your craving for a certain outcome diminish.  Life is as unpredictable as a high wind.  Take refuge.

A kidney-failure friend just lost "my altruistic donor," who already gave a kidney to someone else.  He intends to keep searching hard for a donor.  He writes, "There's always a way if you work at it."  I wouldn't say this to him, but I thought, Yes, there is a way things are going to happen, but sometimes that way is not the way you want.  That's when your spiritual practice really comes into play.

Against Positive Thinking, Again

Well, February almost over.  I had ideas to blog about today between about 10 and 11, now mostly gone.

Danger everywhere was one of them.  I am now doing mask and gloves when I scrape the litterbox, worry about touching own face or food after touching the little cat, which I do a lot.  It seems astonishing to say this animal is worth the risk to me.  But a facebook friend, Rusty, writes that his mother died of a virus you catch from a litterbox.  I recall New Year’s Eve saying, I don’t even want to live feeling like this, then going to Cat Welfare.  I so much mourned Sheba, the loss of an animal in the house.  Many tx patients feel like this, and do have pets.

I am discouraged with yet another UTI bad enough to require hospitalization, and a dangerous IV in my arm leading to my heart.  Taking a shower is a big risk, means wrapping arm very carefully in plastic wrap and silk tape.  It never stops, and it’s all making me feel hopeless, like why do I bother?  start looking - there is danger everywhere, everywhere.  A wooden-handled knife, are bacteria hiding in that wood?  Leftover cooked chicken in the frig could have listeria, you can get a horrible stomach infection.  No church food of course, no potlucks or buffets, you are taking your life in your hands to eat chili from Wendy’s which is at least governed by some sanitation laws.

A friend shares my discouragement - I do so many things to be healthy, she says, and she does, yet this.  Add to this in my case a badly damaged relationship with my tx surgeon, contradictory orders, and worst of all, his nurse (I assume he ordered her) throwing a tantrum at me because my PCP put me in the hospital where he has privileges.  She was probably just repeating the tantrum he threw at her.  I am waiting to hear about being assigned to someone else.  Yet, as Tom comments, sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.  Yes, you are stepping into unfamiliarity.  I have low expectations now.  By and large, doctors I have met over the years in teaching hospitals are unbearably arrogant, given to telling you what they are going to do without explanation of the options, and to hell with the common knowledge that patients do best when they feel in charge of their care. 

Cellphone alarm.  Now what?  Time for noon pills.  Rapamune.  Siroliumus, that is.  One after another these meds make me feel sick.  Nose bleed, upset stomach, headache, just plain disgusted with the medical profession.  It’s one thing to be sick and old and die, another thing when someone has promised you a new life and you get one infection after another (because of the immunosuppressants) and never a week off to feel good.

And this moodiness caused by who knows what - big weather keeps coming thru, I have fibromyalgia, which can cause depression among many other things.  Not helped by the conflict with Dr. God touching on my ancient beginningless issues around an abusive father not acting like a father should.  Well, of course, your ideas and expectations get you in trouble.

Good mood, bad mood - who the hell am I?  One day I love this new book of poetry I got by Tony Hoagland.  The next day it is boring.  I am bored by pretty much everything.  Okay, opportunity for a major Buddhist insight: Wun is constantly changing, influenced by everything, many of those things invisible to our stupid blinkered western eyes.  Hang on, this too will pass.

And you feel what you feel.  I've been arguing on facebook against "positive thinking," which is a synonym for what?  Optimism, which is often unfounded.  You hope, you get disappointed.  Just experience without judgment.  I told my friend Bob Parks, "Positive thinking is against my religion."  He is a minister widely read in various religions, and told me how he gently encourages people who are very ill to be with their experience.  He knew exactly what I was talking about.  So often that's all you need to comfort you a little, which is all anyone can do.

Where happiness is

More thoughts this morning on positive attitudes. Looking for joy is like knowing what you really, really hope is inside that Christmas package. If you do get it, there comes that moment when you feel let down.

Thinking about another way to say the Buddha's basic teaching.

1. You have a subtle, constant craving for a sense of absolute security* and constant pleasure** that, in the very nature of things, can never be satisfied.***
*impossible. Earthquakes, melanoma.
**impossible. Ask any alcoholic.
***you are a carbon-based life form that ages, gets sick, and dies, and so do the other life forms. No sooner do you get things exactly how you like them than something changes.

2. Your insistence on trying to fulfill your impossible dream leads to frustration and disappointment, and doing stupid things. You are like a child busy digging with a little tin shovel for buried treasure that doesn’t exist, and ignoring the beach and sea and sky.

3. You don’t have to keep acting like this.

4. You can change your purpose. You can decide to stop digging and experience actual reality, think straight, and live decently.
Then the legend tells us how; the Eightfold Path, which still makes a lot of sense.

Alright. So, experience Thanksgiving.

Live Really is a Bowl of Cherries

Every so often I get something in my inbox from Positive Ron, PositRon for short, about how having “a positive attitude” is the key to happiness. This isn’t something he debates. He just knows it’s true.

Maybe I should say "she," PositRonni, because these cheerful, upbeat missives usually come from women. Yet, they express belief in that weird uncombed male relative, Will. Remember him? PositRonni and Will believe we can choose to be happy, choose to see only what we like, look on the bright side of the mountain, not the shade. Ronni and Will are joined at the hip, both of them sure, pretty sure, anyway, that you can boss yourself into happiness.

Now, we do have many opportunities to affect our lives, most of them daily and boring. Like this: if I always put my car keys in the basket by the door, I am more likely to be able to find them than if I throw them down wherever. A little habit that makes life a bit less stressful. Fewer frantic occasions trying to find the keys, running late, anxious. We can impact our experience in bigger ways. Think before we say yes to something that’s going to crowd the calendar. Quit smoking. Take up painting. Figure out how to drop that grudge.

But Ronni isn’t sending me posts about working toward a better life. She is telling me, with hope in her voice, to just block out what I don’t like. Pain, sadness, discouragement, frustration, those things are undesirable, so let’s not let them in. Cool, as long as it works.

My most urgent positive thoughts come in little notes from the most determinedly cheerful lady I know. Her daughter recalls the time she pushed her mother to acknowledge a painful truth. “Well,” the woman said, with finality, “that might be the way it is, but that doesn’t mean I have to think about it.”

The deceptively pretty bowl of fruit on that woman’s dining room table is actually a ceramic piece. The artificial cherries are not nourishing, but they will never go bad. Real cherries have pits, and sometimes a faintly rotten taste, or a tiny worm. Some look ripe but are sour and hard, and you can’t necessarily pick out the sweetest one. I don't think that's what the song means by "Life is just a bowl of cherries." But in fact, that’s what cherries are like.