Today's Moment of Zen

Bleh.

This is one of those days that I feel I am an automaton just going through the motions, accomplishing tasks because they need to be done, not because I have any particular desire to do them or see the results. Had a little too much wine with the girls last night and I have a headache that is making me want to do nothing except take a nap.

I wonder what happened to that passion I used to have for life? For making change and speaking out against injustice and affecting the world in a positive way?

I'm being melodramatic, I still have a lot of passion for life... most of the time. Its just that I find myself more often than not in circumstances that seem to be explicitly designed to suck the life out of me. There's ALWAYS someplace I'd rather be, other things I'd rather be doing, and most importantly, people I'd rather be with.

Maybe I'd better go ahead and take that nap.

Few and Far Between

There are moments in life that are so wonderful, so exquisite, so beautiful that all we can do is savor them as they come, and not worry about when they will be over, or how long it will be before we see something so good again. The trick is to make a memory; take a deep breath, remember the smells, sounds and flavors of the moment and file it away.

Memory is our defense against the long stretches of time between the loveliness.

Today I am happy.

How to Fail Your Way to Success

By Martha Beck

I spent at least half my childhood drawing. By the time I got to college and signed up for my first drawing class, I was pretty comfortable with a pencil. My teacher was a brilliant draftsman named Will Reimann.

To impress him, I fired up all my best tricks: lots of varied lines, fade-outs, soft gradients. One day while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a mechanical drafting pen.

"Use that from now on," said Mr. Reimann. And he smiled the smile of a man who has hatched an evil plot.

Oh, how I hated that damn pen! It drew a stark black line of unvarying thickness, making all my faboo pencil techniques impossible. You'd think my teacher would've been helpful, or at least forgiving. But no. He'd glance at my awkward ink drawings, groan "Oh, God," and walk away holding his head in his hands, like a migraine sufferer. My art grade plummeted. I writhed with frustration.

A few weeks later, as I sat in another class taking notes with the Loathsome Pen of Doom, something happened. Without my intention, my hand started dancing with that horrible pen. Together, they began making odd marks: hatches, overlapping circles, patches of stippling.

The next drawing I completed won a juried art show. "How did you figure out a drafting pen could do this?" one of the judges asked me.

"I failed," I told them. "Over and over again."

Since then I've had many occasions to celebrate failure, in myself and in others. From my life-coaching seat, I've noticed that the primary difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people fail more.

If you see failure as a monster stalking you, or one that has already ruined your life, take another look. That monster can become a benevolent teacher, opening your mind to successes you cannot now imagine.

The optional agony of defeat

My dog-groomer friend Laura breeds and shows prizewinning poodles. One afternoon she arrived at the off-leash dog park looking thoroughly dejected.

"What's wrong?" I asked her as our pets gamboled about.

"Ewok," said Laura, nodding mournfully toward her well-coiffed dog. "He didn't even place at the show yesterday. Didn't ... even ... place! And he just hates to lose!" Her voice was so bitter I winced. "He should have been best in show," she said. "Look at him -- he's perfect!"

I looked at Ewok. He looked fine -- but perfect? Who knew? To me, saying a poodle with long legs is better than one with short legs seems absurd. A poodle's a poodle, for heaven's sake.

I think Ewok would've agreed. He certainly didn't seem to be the one who hated losing. He'd discovered a broken Frisbee, and appeared to be experiencing the sort of rapture Saint Teresa felt when visited by God.

Laura's desolation stemmed not from what actually happened at the dog show but from her ideas about success and failure. Lacking such concepts, Ewok was simply enjoying life. Going to dog shows and winning, going to dog shows and losing, going to the park and scavenging -- from Ewok's perspective it was all good.

Meanwhile, Laura's thoughts about losing had tainted all these experiences. Thankfully, she'd managed to avoid a pitfall even worse than failure: success.

"Success is as dangerous as failure," said Lao-tzu, and any life coach knows this is true. I can't count the number of times people have told me, "I hate the job I'm doing, but I'm good at it. To do what I want, I'd have to start at zero and I might fail."

Dwelling on failure can make us miserable, but dwelling on success can turn us into galley slaves, bound to our wretched benches solely by the thought, I hate this, but at least I'm good at it.

This is especially ironic because researchers report that satisfaction thrives on challenge. Think about it: A computer game you can always win is boring; one you can win sometimes, and with considerable effort, is fun.

With time-killing games, where the stakes are very low, pretty much everyone's willing to risk failure. But when it comes to things we think really matter, like creating a career or raising children, we hunker down, tighten up, and absolutely refuse to fail. Anyway, that's the theory. The reality is, we are going to fail. Then we make things worse by refusing to accept this.

Tammy came to me distraught because her 17-year-old son, Jason -- her perfect son, whom she'd raised with perfect love, perfectly following every known rule of perfect motherhood -- had been arrested for public intoxication.

"I've failed," Tammy sobbed. "I've failed Jason; I've failed myself!"

"Yup," I said. "You got that right."

Tammy stared at me as though I'd slapped her. Clearly, that was not my line. I shrugged. "You've failed a million times, and you've succeeded a million times. Welcome to parenthood. Do you know any mothers who never fail their kids?"

"Sure," Tammy said, nodding. "A lot of my friends at the country club are perfect mothers." She wept even harder. "And they say horrible things about the bad mothers. Now they'll judge me, because Jason ... " She dissolved in sobs.

"Tell me," I said, "do you actually like any of those women?"

The sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a long moment of silence, and then Tammy seemed to transform before my eyes. She sat up straighter.

"You know, I don't," she said. "I don't really like any of them."

"I believe you," I said. "I don't know your friends, but if I had to live with someone like the person you were a minute ago, I'd start drinking, too."

"I do live with her," said Tammy wryly. "And I'd love a drink."

"Hear, hear," I said. "So go home and apologize to Jason for imitating mothers you don't even like. Try being real with him -- teenagers love that. Every moment you're real with him, you're succeeding as a mother. Every moment you lose yourself by trying to be perfect, you're failing. And the moment you accept that you're failing, you're succeeding again."

Tammy squinted at me. "You're telling me to accept failure as a mother?"

"Whenever you fail," I said. "Got any other options?"

"Well, no ... but accept failure? As a mother? I can't."

"Sure you can," I said. "Try this: Think about the fact that you failed to control Jason. Notice how you're all scrunched up, thinking, Oh, no!?"

Tammy nodded.

"Okay, now unscrunch, and instead of saying, 'Oh, no!' say, 'Oh, well ...'"

I beamed at Tammy. She waited for me to go on. I didn't.

Tammy laughed. "I can't believe this," she said. "I came here thinking you could tell me how to fix my son, and the best advice you've got is, 'Oh, well'?"

"Damn. You're right," I said. "I've totally failed you." I took a deep breath, and relaxed. "Oh, well ..."

Tammy looked at me for another long minute. Then she said, "Just your saying that makes me trust you."

This is the magic of accepting that you've done your very best but failed. Own your failure openly, publicly, with genuine regret but absolutely no shame, and you'll reap a harvest of forgiveness, trust, respect, and connection -- the things you thought you'd get by succeeding. Ironic, isn't it?

Blasting through attachments

I owe my ability to accept maternal failure to my son Adam. Though I bred young, never smoked or drank, ate right, and all that, Adam showed up with an extra chromosome, mentally retarded. Oops. From the word go, I'd failed to make him a successful student, athlete, rocket scientist. In my mind, nothing could compensate for such massive failures.

This was when I discovered that the bigger the perceived problem, the better it delivers failure's great gift: freedom from attachment to ideas about success. A lucky person escapes her enemies. But a really lucky person (as the poet Rumi puts it) "slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens the door to the other world."

This can happen in tiny ways and huge ones. The day my pencil-proficient mind accepted failure and allowed my hand to start dancing with that mechanical pen, a door opened on a new way of drawing.

Accepting that I'd failed to create a "normal" life for my child blasted away much bigger assumptions, bone-deep beliefs like "Successful mothers have smart children" and "My kids should never fail."

This hurt like a sonovabitch, but when the rubble cleared, I found myself in a world where all judgments of success and failure are arbitrary and insignificant, as ridiculous (no offense) as the American Kennel Club's definition of the "perfect" poodle. Without judgments, it's obvious that joy is available in every moment --and never in anything else.

I can see that Tammy gets this. Jason's rebellion becomes a gift as failure does for Tammy what I've seen it do for so many others: soften, mellow, calm, enrich, embolden. The poet Antonio Machado expressed it this way:

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamt -- marvelous error! --

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

I can't say I look forward to the failures that await me. But they'll be along in no time, so I feel lucky to know what to do when each one arrives. It will work for you, too. Unscrunch. Exhale. Let go of "Oh, no!" and embrace "Oh, well ... ." Then, whatever door opens, walk through it.

Failing upward

By my sophomore year in college, mechanical pens were my favorite drawing instruments. Trial and error (and error, and error) had made me so comfortable with them that they felt like extensions of my hands. Being a masochist and a fool, I signed up for another class from Mr. Reimann. One morning while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a watercolor brush.

"Use that from now on," said my teacher. "You'll hate it. You put a mark down on the paper, and half an hour later, it decides what it's going to look like."

I picked up the brush. "You're not going to help me with this, are you?"

"Well, let's put it this way," said Mr. Reimann. "The sooner you make your first 5,000 mistakes, the sooner you'll get on to the next 5,000." And he walked away smiling his evil-plot smile, having arranged yet another dance with failure, inspirer of all uninspired artists, master teacher of all master teachers.

By Martha Beck from "O, The Oprah Magazine," December 2007.

Loss of a Loved One

Mickey passed away December 22, 2007. He was the best, most even-tempered dog anyone could hope for and he will be missed terribly. He was my best friend, the only one in the house that ate my cooking regularly and could always be counted on to drop whatever he was doing to pay attention to me at a moment's notice. I loved him and he loved me.

In retrospect, I realize that he was probably feeling sick as long as six months ago. He started having a lot of accidents in the house, but I thought he was just acting out because I went back to work in an office after being home for a while. Now I am mad at myself for being upset with him, since he was not trying in anyway to misbehave, but he had a lot wrong with him. I keep thinking of little things he was doing to alert me to his discomfort and I, in my 'intellectual superiority', thought he was just being naughty. He was whining late at night, not because he wanted me to do something for him, but because he was in terrible pain. I feel absolutely horrible about this now, and how irritated I was with him.

Tuesday, December 18th he was acting very lethargic and sleeping a lot... which I did not think was anything different, the truth of the matter is that Micks was quite a bit overweight and really spoiled... however, later on that night his whining reached new heights. I was up most the night with him, he could not get comfortable and kept crying and roaming around. He wanted to go outside and stay there, it was close to 15 degrees outside but he was shivering with a high fever and couldn't stand it. He was so thirsty but couldn't keep anything down. He hadn't eaten in two days, which is extremely unusual behavior for him. He was terribly weak and sickly and couldn't really walk around. Also his face was very drawn and his sad dog eyes told a story, as did his stationary tail.

So my husband said he could take him to the vet in the morning, if we just worked on getting through the night. Early the next morning he began with the bloody diarrhea and I totally lost my composure. I was horribly, horribly distraught and Steve took him to his appointment an hour early.

They took x-rays and put an IV in his little paw and worked on getting his fever down and rehydrating him since he hadn't kept even water down for a couple days. The x-rays showed a mass in his abdomen in the spleen/liver/pancreas area. This vet said that it was a tumor in his spleen, a simple splenectomy will fix him right up. However, they quoted us a $3500 price for this "simple" surgery.

I started calling around town to see if there was anywhere that could do it for less - and there were, quite a few, but my sister-in-law Kristy, who is a vet tech in Wyoming, said that the operation should only cost about $500-$800. She was ready to do it if I could get him up to her - except that the surgeon at her hospital had already gone on Christmas vacation. Then we had the idea that smaller towns should be able to do it for cheap... and I called Ark Valley Animal Hospital in La Junta, Colorado, where I have a lot of friends and family and could at least have a place to stay. I took Mickey home from the Denver hospital and spent another difficult night of him in pain.

The three hour drive to LJ was heart-wrenching to say the least. He was so thirsty but I could only give him a dribble of water at a time because he could not keep it down. He sat in the passenger side and looked at me sadly with his big brown eyes. He was in so much pain, my poor little puppy. He could only doze off for a couple minutes at a time until he whimpered with pain, and I was completely exhausted myself since I had only been sleeping as much as him.

We arrived in LJ about 2pm on Friday and I took him directly to the hospital. They saw him immediately and I turned in his paperwork and x-rays (that I had on disc), thinking that we would be scheduling his surgery for 10:30am on Saturday.

Dr. Taullie immediately noticed that the other hospital did not follow up on his glucose levels, that were completely off the charts. She said, "well, he's in ketoacidosis," which is essentially the acutely horrific back-side of diabetes type 1. From Wikipedia:

In diabetic patients, ketoacidosis is usually accompanied by insulin deficiency, hyperglycemia, and dehydration. Since insulin is required to absorb glucose from the blood, its deficiency results in an energy crisis, fatty acid metabolism, and production of ketone bodies. Hyperglycemia results in glucose overloading the nephron and spilling into the urine. Dehydration results following the osmotic movement of water into urine, exacerbating the acidosis.

No, we didn't know he was diabetic. Poor, poor, puppy was SO sick.

She worked on rehydrating him and getting him stable to perform surgery and administered insulin. She took him home with her for the night, as the hospital isn't a 24 hour facility. I was feeling rather optimistic at this point.

She called me in the morning and said that his insulin levels are normal now but he still had a sleepness night, and is obviously in pain in the abdomen. She still wanted to operate on him, but in an exploratory manner instead of a simple splenectomy.

"Okay," Says I.

I hurried down to the hospital and sat with him on my lap while they did a little more blood work and prepped him for surgery. I am so glad I got that chance to just hold him and talk to him and breathe in his little doggie smell.

I hung out at the hospital for about an hour before she came out and told me what she had found. His largest problem was a growth in his pancreas, but he also had a lot of things wrong with his intestines, most notably that they had gotten twisted and the lower large intestine was purple and inflamed (hence the bloody diarrhea) and they showed numerous lesions, which are usually evidence of past trauma. Now we had gotten Micks from the pound; when they found him he was roaming free, so we know nothing about his life before that. Poor little guy was likely getting beat up - which is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG since he had the most easy-going personality on Earth.

Incidentally, there was nothing wrong with his spleen.

He was still on the table at this point and she asked if I would like her to try to get a slide out of the growth in the pancreas to take a cursory look and see if the cells appear cancerous. "Of course," I say. I know it wouldn't be the same as having a pathologist look at it, but I know she's gotta know the difference between healthy and cancerous cells.

About an hour later she comes back in and says that the cells don't appear to be cancerous. Which gave me a burst of hope for one split second. Then she went on to say that the growth is taking up so much of his pancreas, that to cut it out would leave a very weak and dysfunctional organ, and wouldn't be the best idea since he's already diabetic; the pancreas is working so poorly already. She said some other things but her message was clear: she could patch him up now but he will always be sick. Terribly, terribly sick. I asked a few questions about what would be involved in taking care of a diabetic dog with a sick pancreas and digestive troubles. Essentially I learned that it would take away everything that Mickey enjoys about life.

I made the horrible, horrible decision to euthanize him.

I drove back to Denver in a tear-stained haze; in fact, I don't really remember it much, and that that I do remember seems to be under water... When I got back home I took several sleeping pills and slept for 36 hours.

Today's Moment of Zen