Hi. I’m Hal. Welcome to “Living in a Body.” Click PLAY above to hear the intended PODCAST version of this episode with original music. (16 min. listen) Find the full transcription below. Enjoy! Hal
Your Birthday
It's my birthday next Wednesday, March the 5th. I'm turning 59 years old. Yeah… I know. I was always in my 30s… or in my 20s. I was always the younger guy, but now I'm the older guy — 59 years old.
I was talking with my sponsor and I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself. We call it self-pity. I was saying, “You know, I don't have anyone to invite to my party. Two years ago, I had a really nice gathering of friends, but I’m sicker now and I’ve lost touch with so many people and all my friends have abandoned me and… uhhh… boo hoo. Maybe I’ll just have my family and my girlfriend on the Zoom call.” Which will be wonderful! But there was a tinge of self pity in my voice.
And my sponsor said, “Hal, do you know when other people's birthdays are?” And I said, “Well, not really.” And he said, “Why don't you spend some time paying attention to other people's birthday? You know, send a greeting to other people on their birthday.”
And that shook me up a little. It shook me up a little bit and it opened my eyes a little bit. Yeah! That's what I wanna do. I wanna pay attention to your birthday. When's your birthday? I want to send a card to you on your birthday.
I sent a letter in the form of a homemade card to my niece the other day and I can't tell you how satisfying it was. I created a little watercolor, I rubber cemented it to a nice brown folded card. I wrote a full page letter in there. All together, it took about 30 minutes. Then I folded up a $20 bill to put inside. I sealed the envelope, wrote the address on it, wrote the return address, put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox. And this action was the best action probably of my week. I thought, “This can be the purpose of my life. This can be the new purpose of my life, sending cards to people, wishing them all the best on their birthday — sharing a little bit of myself, asking them about themselves.”
It's really an eye opener. You know, It’s not all about my birthday, my birthday. “What are we going to do for my birthday?” (lol) No, it's your birthday that I'm interested in. Please send me your address. Send me your birthday. I'm compiling a database and this is the new purpose of my life. (Click the link below to give me your mailing address and your birthday so I can send you a card. Thanks!)
I had a moment this morning of questioning. “What is the purpose of my life?” I spend so much time meditating and I was looking forward to seeing Emma (my long distance girlfriend from England) at 11:30, but I hadn't heard from her. So I wondered, “What if I don't get to see her at 11:30? Then what do I do?… And what is the purpose of my life? I got no projects I'm working on. I can't go clean the house. I can't go for a bike ride.” You know, I'm not writing a song. I'm not practicing an instrument.
What I'm doing is practicing awakening. I'm practicing stillness. That's been my purpose — is practicing stillness. And it can get a little bit old after a while. Believe it or not, it can almost get boring. The amount of stillness I got to practice! I mean, come on, I want to have a little fun! Emma reminded me that is what the purpose is. I can't remember how she said it, but it's to awaken, to awaken from the dream of the self. That's my purpose…to awaken and to write cards, write letters, celebrating other people's birthday.
And when I think of it that way, it's quite satisfying. I mean, I can't tell you the amount of satisfaction I got from the complete process of sealing the envelope, writing the address, putting the stamp on there. I got a whole stack of stamps in my drawer right next to my bed. It was so satisfying. Now, all I need is some addresses and some birthdays. So please send me yours.
On a similar subject. You know, I go to this meditation, this online meditation group called Meditate-Together, and after the 20 minutes of silence, there's a topic for sharing. And every once in a while, the topic comes up, “What role does compassion play in your meditation practice?”
And what I've noticed is that it's often very silent. It's often very quiet. From what I can see, people aren't sure how to approach that question, the question of compassion. This might just be the judgmental part of me, but I'm thinking “all these meditators…” no, I’ll just talk about myself. I'm a self centered meditator. (lol)
You know, I'm mainly meditating to save my own life. I'm meditating so I get to be awakened, so I get to be enlightened, so I can have less suffering. I'm meditating so I can survive this devastating illness. It's all about me. It's not about other people.
Compassion is about other people. And generally, the people that chime in with their answer of what role compassion plays in their meditation. Generally, they refer to self-compassion. They say, “Well, for me, it's mainly about self-compassion.” And self-compassion is great and all. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you. (lol) I'm happy for you that you've got self compassion. We all need that. I mean, loving myself. I don't mean to joke about it…
Loving myself is something I do fairly well. I mean, I often say very loving things to myself. I kiss my knees. I caress my face. I hold my hand on my heart and say, “I love you. Hal, I'm proud of you. You're doing a great job. I'm sorry it's so hard.” Self-compassion is a good thing.
But what about real compassion? I mean… normal compassion. In the encyclopedia, they say compassion is… “sympathetic pity.” I didn't like that one so much.
Compassion definition… I like this one, “sympathetic consciousness of others distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Consciousness of others distress. Sympathetic consciousness of others distress together with a desire to alleviate it. And we all have distress, everyone of us. But I don't think about others distress that much to be truthful. I mainly think about my own distress.
But you know, my 12-step program is all about helping others. It's all about being of service. Gratitude, sobriety and service. Where can I serve? Whose birthday is it? Whose birthday is it today? And how can I make their day by sending them a birthday greeting in the mail? It's not all about my birthday anymore.
Anyway, around this meditate together question of, “what role does compassion play in your meditation practice?” I got to be honest…
I mean, I hope that my meditation practice, all my spiritual practices… I'm hoping they're making me a more loving person, a more available person, a more caring person, a more present person.
You know, in my little corner of the world, I'm practicing stillness. I'm practicing quiet. I’m practicing presence, so that I can do no harm and so that I can grow and learn to be compassionate. But as I said before, compassion, b eing compassionate has not played a major role in my thinking.
As opposed to my friend Annette, who volunteers at the food kitchen practically every day, stirring rice and cutting vegetables. That woman is compassionate. She cares about others deeply. She's a Quaker. Quakers are really good at compassion, I think. And I'm sort of a new Quaker. So I'm just learning about it. (lol) I've got an excuse. I'm just learning about compassion.
You know, I had a Unitarian over here today, Marion, and she's very compassionate too. She reminded me… I asked her what role compassion plays in her life and she talked about being kind and generous to people of all different backgrounds that she comes across during her day. She feels that as she's gotten older, she's become more compassionate. Yeah, I think I've become more compassionate too, but I don't get very much chance to see people in my day to day life. But I definitely have my chances to practice compassion.
Tell me, what role does compassion play in your life? I’d love to hear.
Anyway. There's one more thing I want to say. I'm watching this series. I went months and years without Netflix, without Hulu, without Apple TV. Years. And I didn't miss it. But recently, I discovered a series and I'm hooked.
So I finished “Nobody Wants This.” It was only 10 episodes and I finished it in 10 days. And then my daughter turned me on to this new one called “Severance.” It's a wild one. It's kind of mind boggling. And a little bit, um…what's the word… kind of… not spooky… but twisted…and a little bit… what's the word I'm looking for?… A little bit… dark, and… uh, I can't think of the word I'm looking for. I'll find it later.
Anyways, “Severance.” One episode a day. I'm not gonna explain the whole story to you, but basically, it’s the workers of the Lumen company. They go into work and while they're in work, their life brain is removed, and they know nothing but their work life. And then they come back out of work, and they're back into their normal selves, but they don't remember anything that happened at work. It's a fascinating story. I'm really having a lot of fun watching it. I think I'm on episode six now.
Anyway… earlier today, when I was questioning the purpose of my life, I thought, “Well, I got that episode of Severance to look forward to later this afternoon.” That didn't feel so good thinking about a TV show being one of the main things I was looking forward to. I thought, “Oh boy, that's the new purpose of my life that I get to watch an episode of Severance.” But I gotta say, it's a really fun escape for 50 minutes for this growing more compassionate all day meditator.
Then during one of my meditations, I heard Thich Nhat Hanh say, “Breathe in and smile, breathe out and smile at everything, including the difficulties.” Then it reminded me that that's my work today, to breathe in and smile. My work is to smile in my little corner of the universe and maybe that smile will spread out to the whole world. And here I get to write say these words to you. Maybe you'll smile and maybe you'll send me your birthday and your address so I can send you a card.
Of course, if I get 1000 addresses, it'll be a while before you get yours, but YOUR birthday. The episode is called YOUR birthday, not MY birthday. When's YOUR birthday? I want to pay attention to YOUR birthday. I want to be there for you on YOUR birthday. Interestingly, the thought of celebrating YOU makes me so happy. I'm done thinking about my own birthday party. It's you I want to celebrate. You, yeah you! I can't wait for your birthday. (lol) Sounds funny.
Okay, I think that's all I got to say, everyone. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening.
Hey, guess what? Remember that body of yours, it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful and it's not going to be here forever. You're not going to be young forever. And if you're old, you're not going to be old forever. You're just going to get older. (lol) You're just going to get older. You're going to be older than old.
So take advantage of it today. Whatever you got! If you're in the bed, move your toes. Enjoy the movement of your toes. Twist your ankles. Enjoy the twisting of your ankles. Kiss your knees. Enjoy the kissing of your knees.
Thank you. I can't wait to celebrate your birthday.
All right. See you next time.
Bye, bye. H
Share this post