A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough (17 page)

I have ridden horses since childhood, and rode professional dressage for many years as a young adult. I never questioned my authority as a rider until much later in life, when I learned about the harmful consequences of conventional horsemanship on both horse and rider. Like most power-based relationships, the dynamic could leave both parties unmet at best, violated at worst. Awakening to this caused a radical shift in how I approached my horse. I had to shift away from an authority informed by and validated through external rules and concepts of riding, to a more elemental, instinctual knowing. This intuitive listening began to inform my relationships with everything and everyone in my life. For a while, the transition unsettled my own trust in myself. As I shifted more deeply into this subtle, inner authority, I began to question even my own intentions.

One day, in the midst of this change, I was working with my riding coach Louise, whose guidance had helped reveal many of these insights. We were doing ground exercises with my black gelding Nat, and I was encountering some real difficulty in his behavior. I threw my arms in the air in exasperation. “What is the point of all this?” I said, frustrated. “What right have I to ask anything of him? What right have I to make him do something that he clearly has no interest in?” I was actually speaking to a much deeper question in myself regarding all relationships and the complexities that inevitably seem to arise in the clash of conflicting needs. “Here he is, a sovereign individual, and I’m imposing my will on him. Wouldn’t we both be better off with me at home minding my own business and he in his paddock grazing? That way neither one of us has to bother the other, and no one suffers.” I started to walk out of the arena, feeling defeated.

Louise, sensing my deeper confusion, stopped me. “Maybe no one suffers,” she said, “but no one benefits, either.” I looked at her, confused. “All of life is relationship; we can’t escape it. And you offer Nat something he cannot have without you.” The possibility that arises with every relationship, she continued, is the potential for both parties to benefit by the authentic company of the other. “In the case of Nat for example, should he choose to accept your invitation to move in the way you are asking, he will benefit from experiencing his body move differently and in a more balanced way.” I knew what she meant. I had often witnessed the joy and relaxation a horse experiences when he learns how to balance himself better. It was as if some kind of light turned on.

“But how do I know my authority with him is right? Maybe I’m asking him to do the wrong thing,” I asked.

Louise asked me to look at Nat and feel my heart towards him. “Do you trust your intention towards this animal,” she asked. I nodded. “Then you can trust your authority.”

Authentic relationship—and as we have seen, all of our best choices emerge from such relationships—requires that all parties feel prepared to bring their wholeness, their trust in themselves, and their inner wisdom to the conversation if it is to be fruitful and honorable. Without clear boundaries, there is no safety, no sanctuary in which the tender shoots of anything living inside us can possibly take root and flourish. Without even the smallest fence, precious people, relationships, and dreams quietly germinating in and around us are vulnerable to being consumed, wounded, or stolen by whomever happens to pass by.

To grow what we need requires a sanctuary of time and attention, a patch of ground secured by some clear, recognizable boundary that can shield us from the endless demands, choices, and responsibilities eroding our day, so we can listen, uncover what is ultimately important, remember what is quietly sacred. Setting boundaries around what is most valuable, precious, and necessary for us to thrive actually creates a space of great freedom and abundance. Without these self-imposed restrictions on ourselves and others, we may never be truly free to plant, grow, or harvest what we yearn to harvest from the garden of our lives.

Our Daily Bread

J
esus, in his Sermon on the Mount, prays,
Give us this day our daily bread
. He is in part reminding his Hebrew listeners that when their ancestors escaped from Egypt and wandered in the desert, God fed them with
manna
. The definitive quality of manna was that it would not keep overnight. If anyone took more than they needed for that day, or tried to hoard some secret stash, by morning it would breed worms and become foul.

Why would God feed them so little when they were clearly in such need? For the Hebrews in exile, afraid, hungry, on the run, fearful for their lives, this was not so much about food as about an opportunity to trust, to sink deep in the soul where fear can strangle and drive our choices and learn instead to allow, soften, open into some ridiculous possibility that even in the desert of dry, dusty wandering, lost without hope, there would be at least this one day, for them, enough.

How else can we ever learn such an incomprehensible way of living, day by day, to feel the tender seed of some visceral knowing—not as a matter of intellectual belief but as an unshakable certainty in body and soul—that we will somehow have enough of whatever we need for today? Just as the Hebrews were forced to relinquish all their cleverness, plans, and strategies, we, too, must live every single day leaning more on
the unfailing kindness and grace of forces so very much larger than ourselves.

Many of the world’s spiritual traditions lift up this one absolutely true thing: All we can ask, all we can receive, all we can ever, ever have is what we are given to plant, love, and harvest for only this one day. In the Koran, it is written, “Those whom you serve besides God cannot give you your daily bread. Therefore seek your daily bread from God, and worship Him. Give thanks to Him.”

When the Buddha died, his students and followers gathered to consider the precepts by which they would live and practice. One of their first principles declared that monks could not keep food overnight. If you travel to many parts of Asia today, you will invariably see Buddhist monks, 2,500 years later, arise each morning, take their worldly possessions—their robe and begging bowl—and set out to wander the village and beg for their daily bread.

Mariasusai Dhavamony, in
Hindu-Christian Dialogue
, writes, “In the Hindu context, possession implies provision for the future. If we put our faith in God’s providence we should rest assured that he will give us every day our daily bread, meaning everything that we require.”

This is simple, unavoidable physics. It is a precept taught in religious, spiritual, and secular communities. For example we find this same practice of
enough for today
in Alcoholics Anonymous, which counsels that the most essential cornerstone of successful recovery from alcoholism and addiction is to be recovering, healing, growing, always and only one day at a time. To claim to be able to remain clean and sober for a lifetime is a promise that invites horrible failure and shame. To undertake
a practice to remain clean and sober just for today—this becomes more manageable, more merciful, more essentially human in scale, more possible to achieve.

If we approach our lives, our calling, our vocation, and our relationships for just this day, every day, we can shape our lives into a more merciful, gentle, and
possible
human scale. This period of time, this small part of a life, if lived mindfully and well, can seed the garden of a whole new harvest, a whole new life.

Listening with Parents

H
ow often do we wish our children came with a guidebook and directions? Instead they arrive in our lives totally dependent, brand new, and unfamiliar. As parents doing our best to try and raise our children in an increasingly fast, complex, and overwhelming world, how can we not feel challenged and torn by wildly conflicting desires, pressures, and expectations from our family, friends, and culture?

First, we are guided by our hope that the opportunities and choices available to them will provide a rich and nourishing life experience. We also feel pressure to make sure they succeed in every area of their life, not wanting to push them too hard but at the same time wanting to be sure they take advantage of chances to improve themselves, excel, or succeed. Finally, we are haunted by a lingering, corrosive fear that we have not thought of everything, have not made every single right choice along the way, and that we will somehow damage them forever, ruining their chances for a happy and successful life and condemning them to a life of failure and disappointment.

How, when we are feeling so much stress and pressure to do, say, and choose every absolutely, precisely right thing for ourselves, can we ever hope to be able to do the same for our
children as well, every single time? It is absurd, impossible, and yet it is a common burden we readily assume all too frequently.

But if we widen our lens a bit, we will see that children throughout history the world over have survived, and even thrived, in spite of times of feast and famine, war and plague, drought and flood, with and without parents at all. What if we were to somehow trust, find some faith in the astonishing resilience of our children’s spirit? Certainly our motivations are deeply rooted in love, and our thirst for their protection is grounded in a wish-dream that we can guide their life in such a way that the world around them can be made perfectly safe and that all goes according to plan.

But haven’t we already seen, again and again, that this is not the way our own lives have ever evolved? We have been relentlessly buffeted by joys and sorrows, successes and failures, loss, death, and grace. And it has been our responses to these forces—far larger than ourselves and far beyond our control or influence—that has helped shape, build, and grow us into the people we have become today.

Every parent must plan, create, and tend to countless things every day in raising their children. But when we begin worrying the instant we suspect any deviation from “age-appropriate” developmental attributes, desperately seek out only the most perfect day care, the right preschool, ensure that they stay academically ahead of their class and be involved in countless activities—team sport of the season, music, dance lessons, tutoring—and that they be popular in the right social group, how can they ever begin to feel any sense of deep, inner wholeness and sufficiency within themselves? How can they feel good
enough just as they are, who they are, if they are always being tutored, pushed, and improved?

Every loving parent wishes only the best for their children. We do what we can to ensure that they are successful in their learning, development, skillfulness, confidence, and happiness. We all want our children to be healthy. We try and make sure they eat well, do their homework, and have enough unstructured time left over for free time and play—and then we try and make sure they get plenty of sleep.

But the stress of our own overactivity has infected even our children’s ability to rest. Pediatricians have long noted that many chronic problems experienced by children—difficulties concentrating, mental errors in school, obesity, anger, and depression—can be directly linked to sleep deprivation. The American Educational Research Association found, after careful study and observation of school-aged children, that “whenever homework crowds out social experience, outdoor recreation and creative activities—whenever it usurps time that should be devoted to sleep—it is not meeting the basic needs of a child or adolescent.”

Play, on the other hand, is where a different kind of learning can take place. Unstructured play awakens and expands children’s capacity to express ever wider and richer realms of intelligence. While at play, children develop wonder, curiosity, imagination, trust, inquiry, flexibility, willingness to risk, humor, and affection. We understandably want to protect our children from suffering. But when we over-intervene, indulge, coddle, and micromanage our children, it is harder for them to learn how to think through their own reactions and come up with their own solutions for their own problems. When we fill their
days with myriad activities so there is no time for free play, we implicitly suggest they are incapable of entertaining or educating themselves. We also deny them the chance to learn about the wisdom and security of their own good company. And when we try so hard to prevent them from making mistakes, they can easily conclude that we don’t trust that they are sturdy enough to handle life’s ordinary challenges and disappointments. So they, in turn, begin not to trust themselves.

What if our job as parents is not to hinder but rather to encourage opportunities where our children, awash in the inevitability of disappointments, learn to manage increasingly complex personal and interpersonal challenges? Of course it is excruciatingly painful to see our children stumble, make errors, or end up in conflict. But perhaps one gift we have to offer them is learning to help ourselves cope with their pain, so that they can, too. Learning to navigate social situations, developing self-discipline, and acquiring tolerance for frustration requires as much attention from us and as much willingness to convey our unshakable trust in their ability to make their own stops and starts and mistakes.

What does it take to raise a loving human being? It takes love, time, attention, nurturing an intrinsic sense of contentment in our children—and perhaps a willingness at some point to wonder what, in the life of an increasingly busy family, for the healthy development of a happy, confident, generous child, is enough.

Right Actions Do Not Mean Right Results

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
therefore, we must be saved by hope
.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense
in any immediate context of history;
therefore, we must be saved by faith
.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
therefore, we are saved by love
.