We try to reason with them. We’re sure if they can just shift their perspective and see the bigger picture, as we do, they’ll stop their destructive behavior.

Of course we think this way. Our world runs on reason.

When we disagree with someone we seek to persuade them; we elect our politicians by discourse and rational debate; we educate by reason. Reason makes the world go around.

We are used to others responding to argument, debate and informed opinion.

We expect to be able to enter into a similar kind of reasoned discourse with the addict.

It won’t happen. By time we realize that it won’t, our loved one could be dead, incarcerated or on the streets.

Addiction makes mincemeat of reason. It chews it up and spits it out.

Think of addiction as your extremely right wing, deeply political Conservative, Christian Fundamentalist brother-in-law at the Thanksgiving table pretending to listen politely to your Liberal nieces impassioned plea for amnesty for all illegal immigrants. Nothing is penetrating.

If you abandon reason as a tool in dealing with the addict what, then, are you left with? How about emotion?

If you have someone dear to you who is addicted you’ve probably done your fair share of crying, threatening, pleading and demanding. Any of it work for more than a couple of days?

How about bribes, manipulation, sleight of hand? Think – hiding bottles, canceling credit cards, “outing” the addict to other family members. Any of it work?

What works, ultimately, is taking the focus off of the addict and putting it squarely where you have an unassailable right to put it – on yourself.

Here’s where you take the 12 Step Serenity Prayer to heart. You actually have zero control over what anyone else does or does not do - but you have absolute control over your own actions.

You can’t control whether someone else drinks or uses. You can control the fact that you refuse to participate in what is, essentially, an assisted suicide, in the life of your loved one. You can control whether or not you will continue to prolong their support, continue to facilitate and even fund their access to drugs, and continue to put up with their b.s. You can control whether or not you do things which hurt you and cause you anxiety or stress.

When dealing with the addict, it definitely takes two to tango. They need to be supported and enabled; you need to support and enable them. One of you has to step out of the game. They won’t - so you must.

Just say no.

When you’re true to your own values and quietly and firmly take a stand that you’re no longer going to continue with your past enabling behavior because it’s not good for you – you’re untouchable and beyond manipulation. You’re not threatening, cajoling, giving ultimatums, crying, manipulating. You’re just saying – sorry – but this is hurting me and I have to take care of myself. You may not choose to have a healthy, aware life – but I do.

One dozen long-stemmed deep yellow roses to be exact; Valentine’s day roses. Not having a large enough vase to accommodate all 12 together, I put 6 in a vase in the living room and 6 on a Chinese step cabinet which I use as a bedside table.

The 6 in the living room lasted a good 5-6 days, not bad for supermarket-bought flowers. The 6 in my bedroom were eerily fresh and unwilted at the end of the second week. Next to the bedside flowers was a photo of Thich Nhat Hanh.

If you don’t know what he looks like, he has the kind of face that is occasionally, and only, seen on long-time Buddhist practitioners. It is unwrinkled. There are no frown lines, no deep vertical clefts on either side of the mouth. He wears a perpetually serene and unsurprised expression. I keep this photo by my bedside because I like to see it when I wake up, before I get out of bed and take on the day.

I once spent a week in the presence of Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat held at his Deer Park Monastery. He gave daily three hour dharma talks and I was close enough to watch him and become familiar with the way he moved and talked. He seemed to choose his words and his movements carefully. In other words, they didn’t choose him.

There’s more.

The flowers were not for me. I had bought them for someone very dear to me, to provide a visual manifestation of how much he was loved. He wasn’t inclined to believe that he was loved because he was in a deep depression; so deep that as the days wore on he spent much of his time lying on my bed sleeping or looking out into space – at the flowers.

At the end of the first week I commented on the roses staying so fresh.

“It’s the photo,” he said.

At the end of the second week this person so dear to me left to get more help, medical and otherwise, than I could give him.

The day after I put him on a plane, the remaining yellow roses started wilting. They were gone in a day or two.

If I have to dabble in some kind of duality, it would be to divide the world into people who matter-of-factly accept that the flowers lasted just long enough to provide some kind of a visual reminder of hope and love in what was, for at least one person, a very cold, bleak world.

Others might point to a differential in the light, air temperature or the shape of the two vases as explanation.

This is my litmus test. Not Democrat/Republican; not Christian/Buddhist; not carnivore/vegan.

My litmus test is those who believe, or don’t believe, that true compassion is not constrained by time, or by distance, or the five senses. My litmus test is those who choose to see that the practice of peace and Bodhichita heart is manifest all around us on a moment by moment basis, and those who require empirical proof that it even exists.

If you’ve had a hard time keeping Resolutions in the past take a long, hard look at how you keep personal commitments to yourself throughout the rest of the year. When only you and your bathroom mirror know about it do you keep your promises in a responsible fashion or do you find yourself re-negotiating, back-pedaling and making excuses?

Many New Year’s Resolutions are born of disgust or exasperation after a year of failed attempts and procrastination. We make them in a punitive mindset of self-judgment. If you’ve been falling on and off of diets all year it may make sense to you to make a stern year-end commitment to empty your refrigerator and set the alarm for 5 AM to hit the gym.

But consider this hypothetical situation. You just loaned $20.00 to your brother-in-law who made a commitment to pay you back on Monday. Instead, he spent the whole week dodging you. How would you feel about loaning him an additional $100? If he hasn’t shown any ability to keep the smaller commitment would you throw good money after bad? Perhaps you’d like him to demonstrate his responsibility on the small matter before trusting him further on a larger amount of money.

So the first tip to making New Year’s Resolutions you can keep is:

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Set yourself up to win by committing, initially, to the minimum possible. You’re probably thinking that this flies in the face of conventional wisdom that New Year’s Resolutions should be BIG life changes. But is this realistic?

Let’s look at the weight loss scenario as it’s a big one for many people. You make a resolution to trudge an hour each day on a treadmill and drop all fats and sugars from your diet when you haven’t jogged more than a half hour a week until now. Exactly who are you trying to kid? Better to commit to 4 hours of exercise a week and salad lunches three times a week to ease yourself into your new lifestyle. You can always up the ante later. Choose a level of commitment that will stretch you but not overwhelm you.

2. Chunk it down. Chunking down is a process by which you take a large, difficult to manage project and break it down into more easily handled tasks. Don’t make one Resolution for the whole year. Make a resolution for the month of January. On February make a second one. Move incrementally. For the weight loss scenario, if you started off easy you could make a commitment that on February 1st you add in weight training and switch to only whole grain carbs.

3. Tap into your support system. Let everybody know what you’re trying to do and ask for their help. Tell your spouse you’ve made a commitment to spend 5 hours a week learning new software skills and that you’ll be doing this each evening from 8 PM to 9 PM. Ask him to hold you accountable and listen to him when he does. Tell your usual crowd you’re trying to quit smoking, or cut down on the beer or lose carbs. Ask for their help and give them permission to bust you if they find you in the stockroom with a boxful of Krispy Kremes or a pack of Marlboro.

4. Write it down. Studies of small business people show that those who wrote their goals down were 20% more likely to actually achieve them. After you’ve written down your Resolution put it everywhere. Write it on each day of your daily planner. Post it on your bathroom mirror. Put it in your sock drawer and in your wallet next to your money. This will help you avoid “going unconscious”. If you’ve committed to cutting way down on buying CD’s, it can be chastening to be reminded of this when you’re reaching for the plastic in Tower Records.

5. Celebrate yourself when you reach your milestones. Most of us are hard on ourselves when we don’t reach our high standards; we’re brought up not to sing our own praises. If you set out to achieve something that is difficult and important to you it only makes sense to pause and acknowledge your effort when you succeed.

Anyone else would show you a little more consideration than you show yourself. Your boss would take you out to lunch or give you a raise. Your students would send you thank you notes. Take yourself out to dinner or away on a weekend trip and appreciate your achievement. Tell everybody you succeeded and accept their compliments graciously without downplaying your accomplishment.

We won’t tolerate them unless they’re related to us by blood or interviewing us for a job. Sure, they can buy us dinner every once in a while. But we don’t want to date them, sleep with them, or marry them. We say we do. We bemoan the fact to anyone who’ll listen that there are no “good guys” out there; that all men are animals, slobs or inconsiderate jerks. We say we’d take ten years off our lives to find a decent, kind honorable man.

We’re lying.

Why? Because we don’t like to admit that we willingly take shit in the name of love. It’s embarrassing and demeaning. We wonder what it says about our self-esteem that we stick with a guy who treats us badly. What would our mothers think?

Actually, a woman’s stick-to-it-ness is a tribute to her humanity. We have a natural, nurturing side that makes us want to rescue things, stray dogs, Rumanian orphans, bad men. And we want to believe so badly in the myth of a “good woman” being all a man needs to straighten up and fly right that we’ll stand by him and defend him long after our friends are planning a ceremonial bonfire of his few lousy possessions.

What’s going on here? Do we have such a need to bring light out of darkness; make order out of chaos? Well, yes. But it’s a little more complicated than that. We are picky about exactly who we’ll save. Our coupon-clipping, sansabelt-panted geeky boyfriends in their filthy apartments will not inspire this kind of dogged loyalty. Though they be completely adrift in the world and incapable of running a vacuum cleaner – let alone their own lives – they will never be the object of our search and rescue. Why not? Because they will never be a threat to our day-to-day routine. Because they not only don’t walk on the wild side – they couldn’t find their way there with a Thomas guide. They’re not dangerous. And that’s what we want.

When we say danger that doesn’t mean that we want to be hurt. It means we crave that delicious rush of adrenaline that comes from knowing that we’re in way over our heads and we don’t know what’s coming next. We’re in a situation alive with possibilities.

You see, men could always get their rocks off hunting buffalo, gathering berries and killing each other. But women, with their domestic, organized existences, could only ever taste danger vicariously through their men. They didn’t run down the road-kill – they cooked it.

Now, a couple of thousand years late you’d think we’d know better. With very few exceptions almost all avenues of adventure are open to women. We can now make our own excitement. But our hormones are a step behind society.

Most of us still have horror stories of men who stayed out all night drinking. took money from our purses, lost their jobs and lived on our couch for five months during the football season and screwed our roommates when we slipped out to the store for a bag of sugar. And although we wail that we can’t take another man like that. Don’t believe us. We not only can – we probably will.

These same men made us laugh, were great dancers, had dark, tragic sides to them – something along the lines of unfulfilled genius which only needed our deft nurturing touch to make it flower. Some of them were wounded children to our mommy. Some of them were Mozart to our Cosima. Some were Hitler to our Eva Braun. Got the picture? The only question remaining is why the Nobel Prize didn’t go to the author of “Smart Women; Foolish Choices.”

The truth is goodness bores us. The truth is when we decide on the qualities of a mate, we make the shopping list with our head but we buy with a part of the anatomy that is a little closer to our center of gravity.

And then there are the romantic myths that we buy into, which don’t exactly help matters. The myth of the strong silent type, for instance. We know it’s crap. We know still waters don’t always run deep – sometimes they’re just still. And shallow.

But we buy, hook, line and sinker the idea that left to their own dark nature men will go down, down, down. Unless women step in to stop the rot. Also, being at heart nice people (if a little gullible), we often jump right in where angels would find themselves up to their necks in quicksand.

It’s a shame for guys who are really decent and don’t want to betray their own good natures just to get a date for Saturday night. You know who you are.

You’re not really good-looking but not unattractive either. You have a sweet smile or nice eyes. You’re never overweight. In fact, you probably work out and have a good body. You make a comfortable living in a responsible position. You have what your mother and father refer to approvingly as a future. You have close ties to your family. You have a nice car, perhaps your own house and one or two interesting hobbies. Maybe, sailing, photography or painting. You need these hobbies. You have time on your hands. You couldn’t get a girl if your life depended on it.

You become a problem to your friends. You’re usually the only single person in the group. They agonize about whether or not to include you. If they invite you they’ll have to borrow a chair and use an odd place setting. If they don’t ask you you may find out and be hurt. And the last thing in the world they want is to hurt you because you’re SOOOO NICE,.

You become a cause celebre to your friends. They will mate you or die in the attempt. There is extensive networking among the group. Favors are called in and strangers are consulted. They entertain more than they want or can afford in an attempt to set up a casual, non-threatening context or mating. They coax the unsuspecting female into the web like so many arachnids, spinning tales of your intelligence, business acumen and character. It is all in vain. The woman will ask you to pass the dip, make enough small talk to be sociable and slip out when you get up to go use the john.

Somebody has to break the silence and give you poor saps some advice so here goes.

Here’s the good news. It doesn’t matter what you look like. Sure, every man has some thing that bothers him. You may be losing your hair. You may have more chins than you know what to do with. It doesn’t matter. There’s at least one woman out there looking for you. Actors already know that getting a woman is kind of like being up for a really great part. You know you can do the job if they’ll just give you a shot. What you have to focus on is getting past the auditions, handling the pressure, accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative . And maybe lie a little. So here are a few ground rules (saving the most important till last) to help you get cast.

Rule Number One. Don’t read this. Sorry. But women are not attracted to men who are unsure enough of themselves as to actually read this kind of stuff. But let’s get out of this Catch 22 by assuming that you’re not actually looking for pointers. Let’s say you’re doing research for a book and move onto…

Rule Number Two. Don’t do as you’re told. Women are not drawn to men who take directions well. Let’s say you call her at work. She’s too busy to talk and says call me at home tonight. I get in around 8. Don’t even think about it. Better you should call from a bar around midnight a little drunk from longing than to catch her fumbling at the door with keys and groceries. Never be predictable.

Rule Number 3. Very similar to Rule Number 2. Have your own game plan. Don’t ask her what she’d like to do. Tell her you know the perfect little spot/hideaway/bar and take her there. Get a rough idea of her likes and dislikes and set something up yourself. Make it fit. Don’t take her to the opera if all she owns are jeans and tee shirts. She’ll be uncomfortable and she’ll hate you for it. But don’t go the usual dinner/movie route. Take her on a picnic. At night. With real china and silverware. Gift-wrap a bunch of lottery tickets in lieu of flowers. Introduce her to your hobbies and interests. Let her see you in context. Which brings us to

Rule Number 4. Get a life. If you don’t already have one, make one up. Talk about your family. Introduce her to them. It shows character and if they’re still talking to you how bad can you be? I promise you that she won’t mind if you stand her up because you really couldn’t miss Grammy’s 80th birthday. As long as she believes you. Be assured enough to introduce her to your male friends. But stay away from double-dating with other couples in the initial stages. She’ll be able to tell from the other woman’s reaction whether you are who you re setting yourself up to be.

Rule number 5. Look and listen. Make full eye contact. There is nothing more appealing and irresistible than being really looked at. Listen to her. Ask her advice/opinion about a personal situation/politics. Feed her comments back to her later to show she was heard. Don’t lecture or talk down to her. Even if she’s dumb. Especially if she’s dumb.

Rule Number 6. And the most important rule of all concerning the “d” word. Don’t be desperate. Nothing repels like desperation. Just because she sits by the phone waiting for your call, doesn’t mean she wants you sitting at the other end waiting to make it.

If you’ve had a dry spell in terms of women in your life – that’s ok. Maybe you have standards. But if you haven’t gotten laid since college you’re history if she finds out. A woman will usually trust another woman’s instincts. She may wonder what all the others picked up on that she missed. And if you’re looking for a lifemate instead of a little fun don’t be so quick to let it be known. Contrary to what most men believe – women are not necessarily attracted to a man who is hell-bent on settling down. You’d be surprised how many women fear commitment – especially from the wrong guy.

What else? Be funny . But don’t tell jokes.

Watch your clothes. I know, I know. I said it didn’t matter that you looked like. But be reasonable. Invest in a full-length mirror. Preferably one with wings so you can see yourself from both sides and behind. (You can have fun with it if you end up in bed with her so you’ll get your moneys worth) Figure out what you’ve worn the last four weekends just hanging around the house. NEVER wear those clothes in front of a woman who is not your mother.

Black is good. Leather is great for jackets but not for pants. Hats are very good. They show character and individuality. Watch the shoes. Polish them once a year even if you don’t think they need it.

Finally, be realistic. Don’t play out of your league. Relax and remember it’s a numbers game. As the old song goes. You’ve got to know when to hold, when to fold ‘em when to walk away and when to run. Most women can’t bring themselves to just say no. She says she’d love to go out with you but she’s busy for the next two weeks and why don’t you call her on the 24th. Tell her you’re busy that day and forever after. Hang up and flush her number. You’ll feel bad for a while but you’ll end it with dignity and, most importantly, you’ll control the ending yourself. That confidence will be a powerful aphrodisiac next time around.

Of course, a really devious man would use the good/guy bad guy bit to his advantage. He’d hide what a swell fella he was until well into the relationship. Bit by bit he’d let his true self emerge – becoming gradually “rehabilitated” by her gentle, calming influence. Be warned, though, this is a dangerous game. There’s an old saying that if someone saves your life you’re indebted to them forever.

Make sure, if you allow a woman to save you from your own bad self, that she’s a keeper. She’s liable to call in the debt. The good news is if you get tired of her you can pay it off in increments – it’s called alimony.

The key lies in the word “expectations. The media, our own rose-tinted childhood memories and our deep-seated wishes for Hallmark Christmas set us up. We all want a magical time of warmth and togetherness with our loving and supportive family. Unfortunately the reality is often much different. Thanksgiving sets the tone when the whole motley crew you are sometimes mortified to call family congregates. Uncle Al won’t sit next to Auntie Jean because of a grudge forged when God was a boy. You’re presented with 14 different dietary requirements that nobody thought to tell you about sooner.

Then Politics rears its ugly head and your Southern Baptist neo-con third cousin twice removed gets into the verbal equivalent of a food fight with your Green Party niece.
And, of course, nobody helps in the kitchen. You end the day exhausted and disgusted; wondering if you really could book a last minute trip to Maui for the entire month of December. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can have a relaxed, peaceful Holiday Season. Here are five easy tips to handling stress and chaos during the Holiday season.

1. Lose the expectations. And the meaning. Take a deep breath and feel them fall from your shoulders and slide to the floor like a heavy overcoat. Make a decision to accept your family and friends, warts and all, just the way they show up. Assume that some of them will over-drink, overeat and over-pontificate. Assume that some will be deeply grateful of your efforts. To others you will always be wallpaper. So be it. However they are is their business. You don’t have to participate in gossip or feuds. You don’t have to volunteer for hissy fits or pity parties. You can have your first Reality-based Holiday if you just choose to let go your idea of how it should be and accept the way it is. Reclaim your Holiday for yourself and know that whatever happens in your home it probably won’t look like a Perry Como Christmas Special but it will be just fine anyway.

2. Put yourself high on your list. Think of a wonderful gift you would really like, buy it and give it to yourself with gratitude and much affection. Don’t forget the gift card. Better yet, give yourself a gift each day. Monday it could be a trip to that yoga studio you’ve always wanted to try; Tuesday – a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks; Wednesday a half hour alone with a good book or trashy magazine; Thursday a day without cooking. A fun twist on this is to have a good friend or significant other choose your gifts for you. Whether you celebrate 8 days of Chanukah or 24 days of Advent have them write a gift they think you would appreciate on a piece of paper for each day. Be sure to thank them for their gift.

3. Give yourself some “drop-out” time every day. Practitioners in the Buddhist tradition of Thicht Naht Hanh practice a great mindfulness exercise that you can
easily adapt. At their retreat center a bell is rung at irregular but frequent intervals thought the day. When they hear it they stop whatever they are doing and allow their thoughts to settle. They take three long, gentle breaths. Then they go back to peeling potatoes or doing laundry. You can imagine how calming this can be in a hectic day of shopping or cooking. You don’t have to use a bell as your trigger, although bells will be plentiful at this time of year. You can decide to sit and breathe whenever you turn on your left turn indicator and you’re sitting waiting for the light to change. Or you can “drop out” whenever you find yourself on hold or waiting in line for a cashier. It takes less than a minute to breathe three times. But the cumulative effect of so many stress-free moments throughout a hectic day can help you keep your sanity.

4. Finally, give yourself a cut-off point at which you accept that you’ve done all you can do and just sit back and enjoy the Holidays. If you have kids this point may come after all Santa’s presents are wrapped and under the tree and you collapse into bed. When you get up the next day it’s just pure fun time with the family. If you’re single or the kids are grown you may decide to let go at 6 PM on Christmas Eve. Whatever you’ve done – that’s where it ends. Anything forgotten or undone stays that way. Happy Holidays!

This is a dangerous myth because people expect meditation to be like slipping into a hot tub. When they experience discomfort they think it’s not working or they’re not doing it right and they give up. In fact, it’s often not relaxing, at least not initially. In the beginning meditation is like exercise; if it doesn’t hurt you’re not doing it right. This puts off a lot of people right from the start.

They’ve taken the odd Yoga class where you lie on the floor, close your eyes and let your poor body rest. Everybody loves this. You’ve been moving for an hour, your limbs are stretched every which way and you relish the opportunity to let gravity take your muscles and let them drop.

Conventional sitting meditation may become like this over time but it probably won’t be right off the bat. When you sit down and face a wall or close your eyes and there’s nothing between you and the timer but your incessantly jabbering monkey mind it’s anything but relaxing. Horrifying and sobering are two more appropriate words that come to mind. Relaxing it ain’t.

2. You need time to meditate.

You don’t need time to set aside time to meditate. You can meditate for 5 minutes, 2 minutes, in your car, walking or chopping onions. It isn’t a specialized activity which you have to do in a room with specialized equipment. Cut out 15 minutes of TV time and there’s your meditation block.

3. Bad stuff comes up.

Actually this isn’t a myth. Bad feelings or experiences may surface when you sit quietly and meditate. But, as my mother always used to say, better an empty house than a bad tenant. The bad stuff doesn’t materialize because your mind is quiet. It’s there when your mind is busy, too. You just can’t hear it. So – hear it. Listen to it. Acknowledge it and let it go.

4. It’ll slow me down. I need my edge.

Meditation actually hones your edge. If your boss is hyper, your workday is manic and your default mode is just south of Chaos you need to give your autonomic nervous system a rest every once in a while. Meditation will help with this. When you return to work mode you’ll still ramp up to speed pretty quickly but chances are you’ll be a little more focused and centered.

5. Meditation is Boring

What’s boring is back to back re-runs of “Cops” every night. Why? Because they have nothing whatsoever to do with your life. They’re pure escapism. Anything that comes up in, or because of, meditation is about you. Which means it’ll be helpful, interesting and instructive. How better to spend your time than to learn something about yourself and immediately put it to use in your life?

One Myth that is true about meditation is that it’s habit-forming. Once you let it into your life you’ll have a hard time doing without it.

I had gone to a Zen Center to learn meditation. The idea of sitting down everyday for a time in peace and stillness appealed to me. How hard could it be? I could be contemplative at times. I could sit by myself quite happily watching the sun go down. Especially if I had someone with me to share it with.

We were led into a small room and told to take off our shoes and sit on meditation cushions. Our instructor told us we were to close our eyes and breathe slowly and purposefully in and out. We should try to clear out minds of any thoughts. If a rogue thought did enter our mind we should acknowledge it but not attach ourselves to it.

As our Buddhist teacher explained. We should think;

“Oh, there’s a thought scudding across the blue sky of my mind like a little cloud. I’ll watch it go by now.”

I could immediately relate. (“Oh here’s this jerk come to talk to me but he’s not my type. I’ll just nod and pretend to listen.)”

Our Buddhist teacher explained that we should breathe slowly in and out. We should count 1 on the first exhalation; 2 on the second exhalation etc. until we reached 10. If we were distracted by a thought we had to immediately go back to number 1 and start over.

I can absolutely do this!

One. So far so good.

Two.

“Hey, check me out. I’m meditating!”

One. Two.

“Thank God I made it past two. Otherwise I’d be a complete spazz.”

Doh!

One.

“I wonder if anyone else has gotten past two yet.”

One.

Etc. etc.

When I opened my eyes it was to a new and horrible reality. I think I actually said, “Do I do this ALL THE TIME!!” and the wise Buddhist nun smiled and nodded.

This was years ago but I’ve been keeping an eye on this since. Kind of like when you’re aware of your breathing because maybe you had a slight heart irregularity and then you can’t go to sleep because you’re so aware of your breathing. You wonder how come you never noticed it before. You hear your heart in everything. You are hyper-aware of your breathing. What if you stop!!

What if, by thinking so much about your breathing, you actually forget to do it? How do you get yourself started again?

I call this my intra-cranial conversation. Reminds me of a phrase our “intelligence” experts use when bumping us up to a Code Orange. They hear snippets of intelligence in the “chatter” of Al Queda operatives across countries. Now what they really need is access to the Al Queda intra-cranial chatter. That would tell ‘em something. But, of course, it’s not only off-limits to us but it’s also off-limits to them because it’s never talked about.

Which is why it’s The Last Taboo.

Every body does this. Presidents; homeless person. (Once you accept that all politicians do this you won’t be able to vote for anybody ever again. I mean never). It’s like seeing somebody you need to hold in a position of respect with their pants off. We know that children do this because they are unself-conscious enough to verbalize their intra-cranial chatter as they play. They talk to themselves and give tea-parties for imaginary friends.

We consider it charming.

Now there are many kinds of intra-cranial chatter. There’s the informational task-oriented ;

“Hmm, I wonder if I should put more lemon in the dressing.”

“Is this where I made a left last time I came here.”

Sort of a harmless sub-verbal acknowledgment of a thought process.

Then there is the judgmental. The most damaging.

“You moron, how could you say something so stupid”. “Exactly how big does my ass look in this”.

There is the editorializing which seems to have no function whatsoever.

“Hey, what a great sunset”.

“Look at that”. “They can’t be real, they’re too perky”.

“There oughta be a permit for spandex”.

A very bad voice-over to a truly boring docudrama.

There is the firing on all neurons stream of consciousness.

“I can’t believe I’m thinking this but..” .

I always thought the great attraction of Robin Williams was that he outed his own personal intra-cranial chatter. It felt familiar because that’s how we all actually think for crying out loud. We just never knew anybody else did.

And then there are endless sub-sets of second-guessing; l’esprit de l’escalier; constructed scenarios which showcase our superhero powers; Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It’s the great equalizer.

Remember that scene in the Woody Allen film where as a punishment the guy is locked in a pit with an insurance agent?

That’s your brain on Reality. There’s no escape. You can’t get away. All day every day. It’s draining to generate to; listen to and to argue with.

That’s why people find meditation so calming. The Buddhist nun claims she could tell that we were having a difficult time of it because of the energy in the room. Well sure, brainwaves are electrical, so thoughts must have some kind of electrical component and if she was still and hyper-sensitive why couldn’t she tell? It must have felt to her like she was standing to close to a transformer on the freeway.

I have often wondered if our intra-cranial chit chat is the equivalent of a white noise which masks external stimulation and cuts off the flow of material to the brain. Seeing as the brain isn’t really required for most of this nonsense. Maybe it’s like going on Energy Saver mode so that we have enough brainpower left to respond to the important stuff.

So, anyway, I was walking along the beach when the realization hit me that I could make my life easier in one fell swoop.

How, you ask?

Just shut up. Just stem the flow of garbage. It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to generate all this garbage but it must take an awful lot of energy to process it and listen to it . So don’t. Just stop it.

But here’s the truly frightening thing about it. You can’t shut up. No sir. Try it.

One. Two.

“Is this the end of the article. That was a load of hooey. I could’ve done better……

The dog’s head hung over one arm. There was a towel, in case of spills, underneath him.

“Bringing your baby to the beach?” I asked sympathetically.

“It’s his last day,” the man replied.

His name was Chico. The dog, not the guy. He was 17 years old. Coming down to the doggie beach, the scene of many past triumphs, no doubt, for the last time.

So, what do you say? Nothing. But I did anyway. Is he in pain? (No). When are you taking him in. (Tonight). You’re doing the right thing (Like I would know).

I stroked the dog’s leg and he raised up his head and looked at me. There was nobody home. My own little dog stood up on his hind legs anxiously sniffing Chico.

The guy said.

“I had a couple of good sessions with an animal communicator. She told me he was ready but was just waiting for me to accept it”.

Very smart woman, I thought. Whether or not she could talk to animals she could sure read people.

“It’ll be my turn some day,” I said.

He staggered, then, down to the ocean’s edge. I sat in my car and watched him. Thinking how his muscles would hurt the next day after the weight of his sweet burden. How his arms would ache. I watched him lay his old boy down in the sand.

Now would be a good time to say that every fiber of my being wanted to go to him. But this had nothing to do with being. Or fibers.

Once, at my Zen Center, my teacher had said that a true Bodhisattva never hesitates. He sees and acts – always with the appropriate response.

But L.A. is nothing but confluence. There are no discrete things. People, media, events, sometimes anger, weather (or lack thereof) and always cars, cars, cars running together – streaming – into a river of distraction that somehow makes up your day. Like it or not, it’s hard to act.

I didn’t have a story line going through my head about what I would say if I did walk over to the man or what he would say or whether he would even want me there.

I just had a clear picture of me being down there sitting with him at the water’s edge listening to the old dog’s labored breathing against the rustle of the surf.

An hour later I’m on the freeway snaking out over the docks. Would somebody please explain to me how all of the Mad Max container trucks know to hit the road at the same time? My little Toyota was boxed in. Like walking down 5^th Avenue and you can’t see the sky but you know it has to be there. There’s no oxygen. I can only cling to the belief that I will get off and ride on surface streets one day.

Behind me a black car is about 2 feet, I’m not exaggerating – 2 feet, behind my bumper. I’m in the fast lane and already over the speed limit. But apparently it’s not enough. She swerves to my right but finds no opening. She slams back behind me and rides me. I take my eyes off the rear view mirror. But there’s no escape. Her hatred is coming up through my tailpipe, into the steering wheel and straight through my hands where it makes a beeline for my gut.

I turn up my cd player to distract myself. I’ve taken to listening to what could very loosely be called self development cd’s in my car. Although, frankly, anything which develops the self seems to be kind of superfluous these days. But now I’m into Eckhart Tolle.

He’s talking about the difference between object consciousness and space consciousness. How we give such power to things. We have to have this. We need it now. We convince ourselves that we need to ask this question now! This is so important! We make things so immediate and it’s always about us. He’s a good speaker and he laughs often. It is, after all, a subject rich with humor.

The rest of my day was productive. I got a lot of things done. All of it mattering somewhat in the scheme of things.

Periodically, I thought of the guy on the beach. When I ate my lunch it was Chico’s last meal. Heading back to the Coast in the last afternoon; his last sunset.

So many last things for Chico.

I thought how the guy had come down to the beach by himself.

Maybe if I had parked my car and walked up to him he would have told me he wanted to be alone. Or maybe he would have been grateful for some silent companionship.

I didn’t develop a story line in my head. When night fell I let him and Chico slip away. It was, after all, only, a missed opportunity.

They are the first thing I see when I start my workday. Most prevalent and creative are the exhortations for organ enhancements. Ah, had I a penis I doubt that I would send money across the internet to a snake oil cybersalesman. But – some poor soul obviously does.

Next come the offers of cheap Canadian drugs followed closely by the demands to re-fi my non-existent house regardless of whether I actually have any means of income. (No credit. No job. No problem!). Then – the off-market softwares, the porn, and once, inexplicably, a dating service intended exclusively for Christian singles.

Last, but by no means least, are the e-mendicants – the victims of circumstance who just need a little helping hand to get back on their feet. Recently, I’ve been contacted confidentially by a select number of Nigerian bankers with large, uncollected bank accounts at their disposal. If I could only lend them my considerable clout and expertise we could apparently split the 25 million between us! But why would I need it? My e-mail address just won the Swedish lottery and a free laptop.

Once I left town for three days and received 256 messages when I booted up my laptop on my return. Not one of them was from anyone I knew. All of them reeked of desperation and immediacy.

When I tell people about my morning visitors they’re bemused as to why I put up with them. Get a spam-blocker, they say. I tried that already.

The first one I used would send me e-mails saying, essentially; “we think this e-mail is spam – what do you think?”

They would then very considerately attach a copy of the offensive e-mail so that I actually took twice as long to wade thru my mail. Once to click open the spam “blocker” e-mail; a second time to make sure they hadn’t made a mistake and weren’t blowing away an offer from Knopff to publish my book with a record-breaking advance. This system didn’t stay for long.

“Really”, I scolded my computer. “If you can’t tell what’s spam and what isn’t what am I paying you for?”

The second one I tried was one of those nifty inbox guardians which would shoot back to all my would be e-mailees requiring them to put letters into a box to prove that they had opposable thumbs in lieu of a motherboard.

I thought this was a great idea until I started getting the same kind of “Halt, who goes there” treatment from others. I would slave over a hot keyboard and shoot off a carefully crafted e-mail only to return to my inbox an hour or two later to feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Not so fast, young lady. I’m going to have to ask you to come along with me and provide some identification.”

Why did this always leave me with a lingering feeling of guilt?

So that one went by the wayside, too.

Now there’s nothing between me and the spammers but a keyboard and a brain. Both of which belong to me. I know that if I really put my mind to it I could find the ultimate spam solution. But I don’t do it.

Why, you ask yourself?

Well, here’s my guilty secret. I think I would miss them. They serve a purpose in my life and they’re good practice.

I know, I know. Theirs is truly a tale sung by an idiot. Full of sound and fury. And, of course, signifying nothing.

They target the sorrows and the man-made suffering of the world. They hone in on our desperation and insecurity. We’re sick and we can’t afford medicines. We’re poor and we dearly want a home of our own. We’re tired of working day after day with no emotional or financial appreciation. We want to buy cheaper than the other guy. We want more. Somebody else has more. We want to get there. Wherever “there” may be.

As a Buddhist, I’ve been taught that there is pain and then there is suffering. We age, our eyesight fails us, teeth rot, we fall out of love, our friends pass on, the IRS audits us, our kids get sick, the pipes break. That’s pain. The everyday crap of living. But it’s not suffering. It’s our response to this common or garden pain which causes us to suffer.

Most of us have expectations that bad things won’t happen to us. The guy next to us may die but we’ve got a good shot at beating that rap. And when our loved ones eventually do slip away from us, as they inevitably do, we experience sadness, fear and surprise.

Nevertheless we try to pick and choose what we allow into our lives so that we can sculpt our personal environment to our taste. The anxieties and the dissatisfactions are still out there only they’re in someone else’s world. And we simply won’t let them in. Right?

The Buddha also taught that we create our suffering by attaching to some things and rejecting others. We use our discriminatory mind to cherry pick what passes for reality. But only when we have complete acceptance and awareness of all things can we experience things as they really are and not as we would wish them to be.

I’m sure someone else could explain that better than I just did. But whether or not I can parse the Buddha’s words I understand what he was getting at.

I think, also, that’s why I spend the first few moments of each day methodically clicking through all those obnoxious e-mails. It occurs to me that spammers wouldn’t continue sending out their garbage if some people didn’t respond to them. And, no matter how low the response rate, this reminds me that there are people out there who feel so bad about themselves that they really would send money to a stranger in the hopes that he could make them feel a little better or make their lives less painful.

That’s samsara. The man-made world of suffering. The people who create it for themselves and the opportunists who exploit them.

At least the tele-evangelist with the bad rug pretended to care about your soul.

So, I let the misery of the world into my inbox each morning. I see it and accept it. I know I could succumb to it tomorrow. But for today I choose not to. I remind myself that a myriad of desires and expectations are still out there. But each flick of the mouse reinforces that I simply don’t have to pay attention to them. I can pay attention, instead, to what needs to be done in my life.

It is the mind that moves.

Whenever I want to give myself a kick in the rear about getting stuck in patterns of reaction I think about Bert Waninger. In fact, I think about him anyway every couple of years.

Bert was a quiet, gentlemanly guy with manners from another era. He was brought up in Austria and his parents taught him Old World ways and values which he brought with him to Los Angeles. Some played well; some didn’t.

He had a strongly-developed sense of justice which he usually served up with a side order of grievance and moral absolutism. We kidded him to his face about being a Pollyanna.

He had a hard time getting girls and I used to give him dating advice. Put yourself out there. They won’t come to you. Knowing in my heart that he came across as just too good. He was an ambassador from another time.

Time passed and I lost touch with him until I opened the newspaper one morning and saw his name on the front page of the Metro section. There had been a spate of “Follow-home” robberies that year and apparently some thugs had followed him to his house and demanded the keys to his car when he got out.

Bert refused and they shot him in the head and left him to bleed to death like roadkill in his own driveway.

The article went on to interview his neighbors who all commented on how shocked they were that he had taken a stand because he was such a quiet, gentle guy. He must have really loved that car, they said.

Some how it made things sadder when I read that the car he was desperately protecting was the same Mercedes he had had when I had known him several years earlier and it wasn’t new then.

But I think I knew why he refused. It wasn’t the car. He was always too careful to drive uninsured, anyway. It was the fact that what these punks were doing was wrong and immoral. You didn’t just walk up to someone and put a gun to their heads and demand their stuff. And he couldn’t get past that.

So, I thought, that’s why he died. Because the world wasn’t fair and wasn’t right. And he couldn’t accept that and get on with the business of living. Couldn’t move away from the sense of justice instilled in him so many years ago. So he died protecting six cylinders and a fancy hood ornament.

I think of Bert every once in a while. And when I think of him I always remind myself that the optimum mind is flexible.