Between Us Girls

Stop Worrying and Start Living

So much of our time is spent regretting the past or planning for the future that we often fail to live in the present.  We know better.  We read the wisdom of spiritual masters.  We listen to pop psychology and motivational speakers.  Or do we?  Do we really listen to the message or do we simply hear it and forget it?

The trouble with life lessons of this magnitude is that they are harder to learn than we realize.  And if we've grown up in a society that trains us from early on to be future-oriented, always planning, always striving, always working towards something instead of being present in the moment, the lessons are that much more difficult.  Our habitual thought patterns create a way of being in the world and changing that takes concerted effort. 

"The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And the habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and it's ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings . . .

As the shadow follows the body,
as we think, so we become."

                                                - From the Dhammapada (Sayings of the Buddha)

Thinking about the past and the future, we become someone who resides there; someone who is absent in our own lives.  The good news is that life provides us with a regular supply of opportunities to learn how to stop worrying and

From Hot-Flashes to Hope: Hormones and Our Mid-Life Desire for Change

Waking at 3 a.m. with sweat-soaked pajamas, snapping at our husbands or co-workers, sleeping fitfully, cringing from headache pain, forgetting where we put our keys or where we were going in the first place, cringing from embarrassment as yet another shirt-soaking hot-flash overtakes us; women who are approaching mid-life know all-too-well the havoc that fluctuating hormone levels can wreak. 

From hot-flashes to heart palpitations, these delightful harbingers of "the change" can torment us for several months to several years before we actually stop having periods.  Perhaps that's why most women who are post-menopausal, rather than feeling old or sad, find themselves feeling more joyful and optimistic than ever.  Ahhhhh . . . sweet relief!

Our hormones have so much to say, but not just about how we feel physically.  These natural chemicals effect how we feel emotionally as well.  In fact, they might just have a lot more to say about who we are and what we want at any given point in our lives than we ever realized.

Michael Phelps: Crime and Punishment

When we put people way up high on a pedestal, the only thing we can know for certain is that they will eventually fall.  Here in America, we tend to have expectations for our public figures that we ourselves cannot even begin to live up to, essentially setting them up for certain failure.  We tend to forget that no one is perfect, not even a record setting, Olympic gold-medalist.  But oh, how we want them to be.

Michael Phelps, darling of the swimming pool, winner of eight gold medals, hero and role-model for children everywhere was photographed smoking pot at a party in South Carolina and, under South Carolina law that constitutes a misdemeanor charge carrying a fine of up to $200 and up to 30 days in jail.  Phelps has admitted to his crime and it is now up to the law enforcement officials to decide what will be his fate . . . or is it?  It seems that the court of public opinion is already in full swing.

We all have our ideas of how this situation should be handled, don't we?  What do you think?  Should we stone

What We Most Need to Remember about Loving-Kindness

Buddhism teaches that the first of the Four Noblest Qualities of Mind (also known as the Brahma Viharas)is loving-kindness.  It is said that making the commitment to love life unconditionally in all its forms is the way of the Dharma.  But cultivating this attitude of loving-kindness isn't so easy. 

Our days are full of reasons to not feel loving or to behave kindly.  It seems there are obstacles everywhere we look.  We feel anger toward the child who just callously knocked our little one over on the playground and contempt for the parents who didn't teach their child better manners.  We feel impatience with the elderly driver plodding along ahead of us at a snail's pace.  We feel hatred toward the pedophile being led away in hand-cuffs on the evening news. 

Feeling loving towards all people sometimes seems all but impossible but we are encouraged, not just by Buddhism but by most faiths and philosophies, to develop this noble quality of mind little by little.  We are told to start with prayers or meditations that focus on feelings of loving-kindness and that direct them, at first, towards those we already love - our children, spouses and best friends.  Little by little we are encouraged to let those feelings of love flow a little further outward.  We might begin to include more distant family members, neighbors, animals and others.  Eventually, we need to try to send loving, kind thoughts and prayers towards those people we like the least - the boss who is making our life a living hell, the neighborhood kid who broke into our car looking for cash, the politicians who have forgotten that they work for us, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. 

Those of us who are so-inclined, struggle through this process.  We pray or meditate and try our best to send love out into the world.   But there is someone whom we often forget to include on our prayer or meditation list and this person is usually the one who needs love the most and gets the least.  Frequently neglected, sometimes downright hated, the person we most need to send love to is