I would like to throw a huge party for the hundreds of people I have worked with over the past decades.
My memory is loaded with their faces beginning with a college-break summer job in California at age 19. Later, returning to the state as fast as I could, people I worked with and for became an important part of my serious quest to be employed and financially responsible.
Being responsible was a mandatory trait for all Midwest farm family’s kids. Parents were expected to produce a financially responsible child capable of weathering whatever weather came his/her way. Being happy? Desirable, but not a high priority, actually.
Recently I was reading Heidi Zuckerman’s column on “How often do you land on things being “just right?”
Zuckerman quotes the children’s story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”—where most things are too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft, and finding “just right” is hard—I have thought a lot about how we find “just right.” It is not only by continually seeking but also by how we see, acknowledge, and think about what we already have. “Just right” is essentially a gratitude practice.
Thankfully, I have loved my work and my very full life. And I am grateful for the years filled with an overabundance of “just right.” That said I could have spent more time engaging the simple joy of “playing” – more.
And now? How am I doing with the country balanced on its ear, and seemingly out of control?
It’s a challenge.
But I’m managing to be a little less responsible, and a lot more grateful! And a lot more playful!
In closing, I am including a video of Tibetan monks living their “just right” day. The video is from The Improvised Life: Respite from The Fearful Zeitgeist. A beautiful reminder that we are never too old to play.
Here’s a moment’s respite from the dire state of the world and the palpable feeling of fear and life being out-of-control that seems to permeate everything these days. It features human beings at their best: Playing (and LEAPING), just for the silly joy of it. (Leave it to the Tibetans to devise a hilarious game out of somersaulting over barrels draped with rugs.) Keep an eye on the really big, game, roly-poly guy in the background.
It had us laughing out loud and in doing that, we realized that laughing keeps us right smack IN the moment… nothing else going on…just laughing…
A petit, instant vacation in the midst of the shit hitting the fan.