On Wishlists

“Beware of thirstiness lest your wishes become desires and desire binds you.” – the Dhammapada (Desire)

“The more I have the more I think I’m almost where I need to be. If only I could get a little more.” - the Avett Brothers (Ill with want)

For most of the year, aside from the occasional bike or dog related product, I am fortunate enough to want for very little. In short, I want what I have and have what I want.

Then the ever expanding “Holiday season” comes upon us. It starts with the request for a wish list, which usually takes awhile for me to produce because it’s hard for me to think of things I want when I actually have everything that I want…until I’m forced to spend some time thinking about it…

It starts out modest…a pair of gloves, a set of tire covers for the camper, perhaps some headphones…

There’s the daily tweaking and expansion of the list (damn you Amazon Wish Lists for making it so easy!) until finally we end up with some high ticket items…

…high ticket, somewhat easy to rationalize items, like $150 running pants (ok, tights) that promise to improve performance, prevent injury, and aid recovery...

…which morphs until things like Kindles (damn you Amazon again, for your incessant marketing) and Wii games (for the high ticket item I didn’t need from a previous year)…

…and constant thoughts about what else should be in the list and what priority it should be…

…and the noticing of all of the things around the house that are no longer shiny and new…

…and then there is no way that you are going to get everything on your list because you got so greedy, but it’s on your list, so after the holidays, no matter how generous your family has been, there are still some things that you now “need” and so you spend money that could have been saved for the inevitable furnace repair or vet visit…

…but thankfully pretty early in the process I’ve caught myself and toned it down a bit…

…and have tried to focus on the practical and reasonably priced things…

…and maybe next year, my list can look like this:

1. Inner peace

2. Good health

3. Gratitude

4. A 56 Inch Internet Ready 3D HD LCD TV

On maintaining your criteria

“Do not make light of your failings, saying, ‘what are they to me?’ A jug fills drop by drop, so the fool becomes brimful of folly. Do not belittle your virtues, saying ‘they are nothing.’ A jug fills drop by drop, so the wise man becomes brimful of virtue.” – The Dhammapada

In agility, there are obstacles basically made from wooden planks that have yellow sections on both the point of entry and the point of exit. These yellow zones are known as contacts. The entry contact is called the up contact. The exit contact is the down contact. Depending on the venue you are competing in, the dog usually is required to touch the up contact and always is required to touch the down contact.
Touching the down contact has historically been a challenge for Team Maebe. We actually spent the better part of a year working on just that behavior, which she now understands, but has deteriorated during competition over time.
How did that happen? I was sloppy with my criteria.
Here is what she was supposed to do:
Run to the bottom of the obstacle with rear paws on the end of the contact and her front paws on the ground in front of the contact and stay there until released.
Here is what I allowed her to do over a long period of time:
In the excitement of competition, in going for what I wanted today vs what I wanted for good, the releases became shorter and shorter until there were none.
The consequence: Eventually that turned into missing the down contact all together.
So what did I do?
1. Acknowledged what I had done to cause the problem.
2. Made a commitment to accept nothing less than my criteria, which means:

a. If the rules of the particular run allow you to repeat the obstacle, I redo it until she gets it right.
b. If the rules of the particular run do not allow you to repeat, then I end the run.

3. Followed through on that commitment
The result:
Maebe missed her next contact. I made her run it again. She realized I was holding her to her criteria. She did not miss any contacts the rest of the trial.
The lesson:
Hold true to your criteria. If you make compromises regarding what is important to you long term in order to make a short term gain, you won’t achieve what you really want.

On going forward before the fear sets in

“Go beyond this way or that…without fear, go.” – Dhammapada

Last weekend we hit the trails on our mountain bikes. The trails we chose were on the site of a former tree farm. The ground was uneven, rooty, rocky. We like this trail because of its challenge. There are lots of tight twisty turns, steep hills, log and rock piles you need to traverse, and of course, “the crater”, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Mountain biking a technical trail is one of those things that the more you think about, the less likely you are to do, and the older you are, the less you are to do it, I think, for fear of getting hurt.

Children don’t generally have this problem. They go through their early part of life fearless, and for the most part, having more fun than the majority of adults.

Somewhere along the way, we learn to be afraid of things. While in some cases, that keeps us safe, more often than not, it actually holds us back.

This takes me to the crater, a feature of the trail that well, looks like somewhere a meteor hit- a bowl about the size of small house. If you are not expecting it, then you are just going along the trail when all of a sudden you find yourself at the precipice. It just appears. If you stop, you will spend a great deal of time looking at the drop. Wondering if people really do this. Picturing all of the ways it might go wrong.

When we came upon the crater on this last ride, there were the usual couple of riders peering over the edge. I know that I did that the first few times. I knew that this made it worse. So instead, I just pointed my bike straight, went over the edge, and came up the other side safe and sound.

We all have things in life that scare us to do and the more we think about them, the less we are likely to do them. When you reach that point, there is only one course of action to take:  without fear, go.

Here’s highlights from the trail by the way, taken from the internets:

On bees and bottles

“Desire is a hollow. And people say, ‘Look! He was free. But now he gives up his freedom.’” – the Dhammapada: Desire
Whilst enjoying lunch yesterday in an urban park with my wife and my good friend, a honey bee landed on my upturned bottle cap from my root beer. Our conversation kind of paused for a moment as we watched the bee drink a few drops of root beer that had collected on the surface of the bottle cap. It kind of looked like this:

*Note that this is not the actual bottle, but one I found on the internet. I was drinking root beer, but you get the point.
When the conversation resumed, some of my attention still remained on the bee. I watched as it flew into my nearly empty bottle, drank a bit, and then tried, unsuccessfully to exit the bottle.
Seeing the opportunity to help, I tipped the bottle so the bee could fly out, which it did, only to return to the bottom of the bottle minutes later. It made me think about people who go through cycles of consumption, remorse, abstention, and on back to consumption once the sting of whatever led to the remorse has faded. I think this cycle continues because the desire never goes away and what’s even worse, we’re not even aware that this is the case. Anyhow, I’m off to get some beer for the weekend…

On Joyful Competition

“Let go of winning and losing and find joy.” - Dhammapada

For Dharmaspoon Guy and family, this year has been particularly intense in terms of both the dog and human competitions. We have competed in about a dozen agility trials, 4 triathlons, 3 running races, and have at least another 4 agility trials and 2 or 3 running races to go.

Sometimes we have made it cleanly through agility courses and have earned placements and titles. Other times, it just wasn’t happen. Races resulted in personal bests and age group placements at times, and at other times, not.

Does it feel good to win? Of course it does! Is that why we compete? No*.

So why do we subject ourselves to getting up at ungodly hours on weekends when we can sleep in so that we can compete?

It boils down to three reasons:

1. We find joy in the activity

2. We find joy in testing ourselves to see where we are

3. We find joy in the preparation in between events

Everything else is just a bonus.

Often in competitions, we run into people who are in it just for the winning. In the world of dog sport, this is particularly pronounced. You can tell who they are, not by how well they do, although often they do excel, but by the lack of joy they seem to have. Over the weekend, I watched some of the top agility handlers in the nation yell at their dogs, yank them off the course for the slightest error, even if it was due to handling. What was interesting to me was that in a number of cases, these handlers were beat by people who, while not as well known, do their homework, and were competing for the right reasons: to have fun with their dog first, and to do the best they could do.

I think one of the best ways to have joy is to focus on what went right; your little victories. Nothing is all good or all bad. What you focus on, what you remember, and what you learn is what is important.

So, get out there, do your chosen activity, enter a competition, let go of winning and losing, and find joy.

*Well, sometimes we compete for cool prizes, like one of the toy VW Microbuses, shown here, which is up for grabs in this weekend’s Run Woodstock:

On Why I still have friends and you can too

“See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?” – the Dhammapada

I was having a conversation the other day with someone about how they “defriended” one of their Facebook friends because of a series of increasingly intense posts the friend had made regarding current affairs that this someone found to be very offensive.

We have probably all experienced something similar – you meet someone, engage in an activity you both enjoy, and as you get to know them, they don’t meet some criteria on your internal “checklist” of the beliefs you think your friends should have.

This can cause a great amount of distress as you worry about being friends with “one of them.” You cling to that sense of separateness, otherness, and consciously or not, you drift away until you are no longer friends. Or, you try to change your friend’s mind. You try to convert them to your point of view. If only they could see the folly of their thinking. You have the FACTS. If only that person would listen.

Among my friends, some of whom share some beliefs I could not disagree with more, and who I would never dream of trying to “change”, I am lucky enough to say that we have all of these things in common:

We love our country

We desire safety and peace

We want what’s best for our friends and family

We love our dogs/families/friends

We share one or more common activities

We are led by principals

We want to do good in the world

When we focus on what we have in common, we can realize that we are lucky to have the friends we have, and appreciate them, and while we may not believe everything they believe, we do not have to define them or ourselves by our differences.

On Bicycle Safety and Letting Things Go

“Look how he abused me and beat me. How he threw me down and robbed me (and wrecked my bike). Live with such thoughts and you live in hate or abandon such thoughts and live in love.” – the Dhammapada

On July 31, 2009 as I attempted to cross an intersection at which I had the right of way, a dairy truck turned the corner in my direction. I had just enough time to get off my bike before it was crushed under the weight of the truck. I escaped with a minor scratch.

This is the truck that hit my bike. I still see it a couple of times each week:

An hour after the accident, I had my crushed bike and some dairy back at home:

This was my first “real” mountain bike. I had become quite attached to it. I had even made plans to upgrade it’s components in the following months.

It took many months before I finally was able to let the bike go:

It was a lesson in accepting the impermanence of all things.

I got a replacement bike pretty quickly:

 

For many months I seldom rode it.  I had loved biking. It was one of my joys in life. And at the time, I felt like it had been ruined for me.

I was angry at the driver. Angry at the loss of my bike. Angry about having something I enjoyed being “taken” away from me.

I let anger and fear keep me off my bike until one day, I had enough.  I spent an entire morning reading about bicycle safety and the state and local laws at they apply to bicycles.  I thought about the driver and how freaked out he was and how he confided in me that he thought he had killed me when he saw the bike under the truck. I let myself have compassion for him and just decided to let it go.

These two actions brought about a great relief. I wasn’t feeling like a victim any more. I also learned about what actions I could take to ride as safely as possible and what my rights were if something should go wrong again.

I ride with confidence now, and more safely too. For those of you who are interested in riding safely and confidently, this was the best resource that I found:

I am once again a happy, confident, and safe as can be biker:

And don’t worry, this picture was taken in an empty parking lot at low speed.