This Is What I Mean

Remember that one of my goals for the year was to “give people the benefit of the doubt“? I didn’t elaborate much, but this sums up what I mean pretty well. It’s David Foster Wallace, from a commencement speech he gave in 2005 (found via BoingBoing):

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

Thirty-three

Oh yes, it’s my birthday today! Because I’m 33 on January 3, 2013, the birthday goals/New Year’s resolutions are in threes this time around:

I. Be kind

  1. Give people the benefit of the doubt
  2. Extend compassion to myself, too
  3. Volunteer

II. Be calm

  1. Identify the fear
  2. Stay in the moment
  3. Go outside every day (not even to hike, just to see that there’s more out there)

III. Be strong

  1. Break bad habits
  2. Do three more yoga poses that I can’t do now (especially boat pose for longer than 20 seconds, headstands, and arm balances)
  3. Start saving to finish the basement and get a new car

These seem doable this year (or at least easy to remember). I think 33 is going to be good, if I can get over my eye wrinkles.