On choices made

Some years ago, my mother returned from a business trip bearing three small, polished grey stones. Each was carved with a single word in a rustic script, and they had the feeling of small talismans, touchstones for powerful ideas.

She invited me to choose one for myself, to keep near my desk. I remember looking at them and feeling as if the decision signified something more than a simple rock on my tabletop--feeling that it was one of those moments that would come to define something important about my life.

At the time, I was surprised by my decision to leave 'Knowledge' for someone else. In thinking about it, I realized that I had always been chasing and cultivating knowledge, and that I already possessed good skills for finding it. I know a lot, about a lot of things--and I'm always learning more. So knowledge comes fairly naturally for me.

I chose 'Wisdom'. For me, 'wisdom' is a concept that ties into whole areas of my heart, mind, and experience. It's about using knowledge, well, wisely... and acting in harmony with the world. I'm reminded of a line from First Knight: "May God grant us the wisdom to discover the right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure." Wisdom carries a flavor of introspection and reflection, and we often describe it as hard-won. Wise old sages bear the wisdom of experience with shoulders hunched by strain.

I think I've always longed for wisdom, and I think it's started to come in the last few years. I remember, after getting very sick with mononucleosis, gallstones, and then acute pancreatitis, thinking that my sense of priorities had changed somewhat. I also remember thinking, to my surprise, that the suffering was worthwhile because it gave me more compassion, and also because it gave me access to a richer fund of experience for teaching my art. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to want, more than anything, to die, just so the pain will stop? Pancreatitis taught me that, and I remember lying in my bed thinking that if I survived the experience, it was going to be a hell of a story for teaching suicide intervention.

Actually I was thinking that it was a damn good thing that I was way too sick to move, since I wanted to live. But sometimes you have to go through the hard times to discover what you want. There's that process-of-discovery thing again.

So, wisdom. I would hesitate to call myself wise. There's too much I don't know, too much I misunderstand, and too much within my heart that chafes against itself. I'm not calm enough, inside, to really call myself wise. But it seems like I'm making progress. I've been surprised that, lately, people have been calling on me to help them figure out their lives--and seemingly not because they want my knowledge. I listen, and talk... and they feel it helps them. Is that what wisdom means? The ability to help people even when you can't understand how it happened?

Or maybe wisdom is about understanding the limits of your own knowledge. About recognizing the difference between what you know and what you merely respect. Or maybe wisdom is about finding the deep compassion within yourself to understand that all people, everywhere, are going through their own hard times, and that helping them through it is good for its own sake. Wisdom. I think about it a lot, and I wonder whether I'll ever think I've arrived.

There was a third stone. I didn't choose it, and my mother kept it for herself. She brought it to the office where we both work, and it normally resides above the kitchen sink where we all see it several times a day. I think she gave it to us all, in trust, to share.

Alone at the office on a warm Saturday during the heart of Potsdam's Summer Festival, I've been carrying the stone around and thinking about its meaning. It strikes me as ironic that I chose Wisdom over Knowledge all those years ago, leaving Joy as a distant third... because, while I've found a fair bit of knowledge and some wisdom, I often feel that joy is missing.

Maybe it's having a depressive personality, or the memory of years of exclusion and teasing in school. Perhaps it's the knowledge that, even among my peers, my interests tend toward the unusual and obscure. I don't know. But I do know that joy is something that comes uneasily at best for me, and that it's skittish as a wild hare, easily frightened off.

I find it hard to smile, sometimes. I remember the times in school when Picture Day rolled around. We'd all dress nicely for the photographers, and I would fix my hair so that it looked dignified and proper, just like my dad had shown me. Like the young gentleman I aspired to be. I'd get up to the photographer's bench and the first thing that always happened was that they took a comb to my hair, reshaping it in some different way. Sometimes they made clucking noises as if to reproach me for my failings as a hair stylist. Finally, we would be ready, and they'd ask me to smile. I did.

"No, smile for real."

My real smile was never good enough for them. I guess it didn't show off enough of my preternaturally-straight teeth (which are now stained by coffee, experience, and Wisdom). Sometimes they would grab my face and rearrange it into what they thought a good child's smile looked like.

And ever since then, I've always had what my family called a "Special for Pictures" smile, which was really no smile at all. I've been trying to invite my smile back from wherever it's been hiding, but it is shy and awkward, and the process has been somewhat frustrating.

Sometimes I wonder whether joy comes from the part of my brain that died when I was born months premature and then failed to breathe for a while. They told my parents that I would be severely retarded, and that they should expect to raise a child who might, someday, be able to hold a job doing menial labor. Theoretically, at least, I'm about as brain-damaged as you can be and still function.

Well, I still did pretty well on Knowledge, and maybe on Wisdom. But Joy? I wonder, sometimes, whether Joy lived in the part of my brain that wasn't fully built yet, and I just haven't ever built it for myself.

So I've been trying to work on joy. I drink a cup of coffee from this bright yellow mug most of the days I'm at the office. It was a gift from one of our best volunteers, and it never fails to make me smile. It's such a lovely color.

I've been trying to teach myself that it's okay for me to feel lonely, and that I don't "deserve it" in some way. That I can like people and want to be with them, not solely because they know things I want to learn, but because their presence brings me joy. That it's okay to cry about the fact that my knee injury is still keeping me out of the mountains, not because it means I won't finish my Winter 46 for a while, but because I know that the injury bars my access to one of the purest sources of Joy I ever found.

In my studies of tai chi chuan, I've been paying attention to the idea that all things change--that, as Heraclitus put it, change is the only universal constant. We try to flow through our movements, feeling the flow of weight and energy through our movements. It works--you become more sensitive to the movements of other people, and it's helpful for intuition as much as self-defense. But I've also begun to notice the changing flows within my own emotions, which is rarely comfortable these days. I guess knowing is half the battle. Except that knowledge is that first stone, and wisdom the second.

I am working to claim the third stone for myself. Which stones do you carry?

What do you carry? (backpack edition)

Jaz and I were talking tonight about an article she read recently--it invited people to post pictures of several personal items and their contents: bookshelves, wallets, refrigerators, and computer desktops. The article's contention was that you could learn a lot about someone from the things they carry around and the way they organize them.

I got to thinking about this, especially in light of some Taoist practices I've been reading about in Raymond Barnett's excellent Relax, You're Already Home. Barnett talks about a Taoist practice (although it's hardly unique to that discipline) of maintaining a personal altar of items whose presence helps you somehow. In Taoism, you might explain it as items for which the Tao (or chi) flows strongly; Catholics might have a statue of saint, to put them in touch for intercession. Lots of traditions have this idea of deliberately surrounding ourselves with objects that tweak our energy in particular ways, and they also focus on the importance of integrating those "altars" into daily practice.

Here's my thought: aren't bookshelves, fridges, bags, and computers basically the altars of our daily lives? We spend most of our time near them; they nourish, entertain, and teach us. So I wonder about the concept of personal effects as extensions of the spirit.

I shared a story about how, back at Swarthmore, everyone had bookshelves filled with interesting things. The culture seemed to be that the bookshelf was, in some ways, an avatar of the self: we used books to say what we felt was important. I guess we used our bookshelves like precursors of today's Facebook profiles.

I think it's important to point out that, for me at least, the bookshelf really wasn't about "advertising", whether for a mate or anything else. It was an articulation of faith, a personalized creed about what mattered in the world. It was an altar.

So, in thinking about this, I'm interested to see what I'm carrying around with me right now. I'll start with my backpack, since that's my current daily bag.

• Backpack: Lenovo computer backpack. Utterly un-sexy, but pretty functional. Black and dark green. Sometimes I swap it out for my brown leather messenger bag, a standard laptop case, or an internal-frame hiking pack.
• Plastic water bottle. This is, dare I say it, a "repurposed" Gatorade bottle that hasn't held Gatorade for years. A few years ago, when I started lightening my hiking loads, I switched from Nalgene bottles to Gatorade ones--they're about a third of the weight, and they're basically free. I've had several of them bite the dust over the years, so I just get another one, try to make myself drink the Gatorade, and then use the bottle until it dies. So it goes.
• Sunglasses, polarized, wrap-around. Always within arms' reach. Over the last few years, my eyes have gotten really sensitive to sunlight, so I usually have sunglasses, a hat, or both.
• Keys, on a carabiner, looped through a stitched loop on the shoulder strap.
• A pair of homemade poi, made from a pair of skiing socks that I didn't like and, I think, my original pair of Smartwool socks from so many years ago. I got into playing poi last year after I hurt my back, because I found that it was a low-impact exercise that could often make my back muscles quit their spasms. Poi are fun! Now I practice with them in the park before tai chi class.
• A looseleaf notebook (the froo-froo kind that you can fold and mess around with). I bought it for grad school, but I never take notes using it anymore. I use it for... well... anything that requires either paper or protected flat storage. So it has notes for a bunch of trainings I'm working up, some assignments from grad school, some conference proceedings, a sheaf of recipes from Amelia and Jarrod's wedding, along with their menu... 
• A printed reference for the 148-posture Yang-style Long Form, which I'm learning in tai chi class. I pull it out when I have a few moments free for reflection, and I visualize myself flowing through the form. I hope it helps.
• Several books, usually individually wrapped in plastic shopping bags. I have an OCD habit about taking care of my books: I want them to stay pristine and museum-quality. For me, it's a respect thing. I'm trying to let myself write in the margins of my grad school textbooks (it's hard!), but mostly I think books should be treated like honored guests. So that's why they get their individual protective bags, in case of rain or other damage. Today's selection of backpack books includes Chip and Dan Heath's fantastic Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, the slightly-outdated version of Morrison, Ross, & Kemp's Designing Effective Instruction, and Pamela Phillips Oland's The Art of Writing Great Lyrics.
• My Canon SD1000 pocket digital camera, in a cheap case that I think came from Walmart years ago. This camera has been all over the place with me, and it's bombproof. It shoots happily at -35 F when I'm standing on top of mountains, and it's small and light. The case also carries a disused USB card reader that an ex-girlfriend gave me and a sheet of paper from my grandpa Byron (a librarian) describing a book he thought I'd like. (I did). I keep the paper because I like being reminded of him; I have no idea why I keep the card reader.
• My new Kodak Zi8 video camera, which I bought for grad school since I'm going to be developing video training. Along with this, a cheap case and a Joby Gorillapod tripod. These are all new, so they don't have stories yet.
• A Kestrel 4500 Pocket Weather Tracker, which is a totally badass anemometer/data logger/thermometer/barometer/altimeter/psychrometer/compass/etc. I reviewed it for 4alloutdoors.org, which is an outdoors site run by my friend Leesa. We review gear, write about doing stuff outdoors, and have a good time. I've used it on mountains, at gigs, in airports, and lots of other places.You can even see me talking about it, if you like!
• Travel charger for my CrackBerry.
• Extension cord. You wouldn't believe how often an extension cord comes in handy.
• An iPod Touch that I got as a credit card reward from my bank. It has lots of Scottish, Irish, Spanish, jazz, and folk music on it, as well as a fair bit of classical. It also holds most of the recordings I've been doing of the songs I'm writing. Its USB cable rides with it, as does a pair of pretty blue headphones. They're kept safe inside a soft sunglasses case from Mountain Equipment Coop--but I didn't buy it. I found the case, abandoned, on the summit of Giant Peak this January, which was the last time I was able to climb a mountain (until last week!) thanks to my busted knee. 
• An assortment of quotidian gel pens in different colors.
• A mechanical pencil that's been to gigs in California, New Hampshire, and lots of places in between. I vastly prefer mechanical pencils over wooden ones, perhaps because I value precision of line.
• A pair of Lamy fountain pens, both fitted with screw-piston converters to use my favorite bottled inks. One is a Vista Demonstrator model, which means that it's made of clear plastic so you can see its insides and envision how it works. Fountain pens are fascinating objects of scientific innovation, actually! The ink feeds are impressive. The Vista has a fine standard nib on it, and I use it for most business writing. The other is a black Lamy Joy, which is their italic calligraphy fountain pen. I fitted it with a 1.0 mm square-cut nib, and I use it for addressing letters, writing call logs (sometimes), and feeling whimsical. I got into fountain pens because regular disposable pens really hurt my hands (from the requisite pressure), but as time went by, I became uncomfortable with the amount of plastic waste that comes from disposable pens. So I use (relatively inexpensive) fountain pens and bottled ink. The ink colors are glorious, and the pens last for years. 

So what does my pack say about me? The piece that interests me, and that tells you a lot about me, is that I have a story for just about everything. If I've interacted with something, chances are good that I will always carry my memory of where it came from, who was with me, and what its "interesting" attributes are. I live in a world where everything around me--from the computer screen that belonged to my grandfather before he died to the copy of the Essential Outdoor Gear Manual that I ordered from Amazon after borrowing from the SLU ODY library three renewals in a row--carries a provenance, a personal history, and a set of rich associations.

How does that knowledge play against other things you've noticed about me? What else did you learn from hearing about my personal backpack altar? Does any of this resonate for you? Maybe you can tell me why I'm drawn to the word "resonate" lately, and seem to use it in lots of different contexts.

What do you carry?