Magical Drops

Tomorrow I turn 43. To prepare for the big day and my birthday week, I caught up on homework, wrote, cleaned my house and washed and folded the laundry amidst another busy weekend with my kids’ activities: a track meet, softball, hockey, basketball, Girl Scouts. I watered the backyard plants, made sure we had groceries for the week and planned meals. I went to temple and practiced ringing the kansho. Walked the dogs and got my daily steps in, cleansing my to do list like I was preparing for a sacred holiday. A new year of life.

It’s the little things that I’ve decided make the biggest difference in my happiness. My birthday wishes are: write, exercise, go to the bookstore, plant new flowers in my garden, and take a hot bath. Nothing flashy. Just peace and quiet and time and space to do the little things that bring me joy. 

I realize that maybe I finally understand the assignment: it’s not the destination that matters, but rather the journey.

Every step, moment, the possibilities that unfold, decisions made and not made, opportunities and roadblocks, each day like a fast-moving stream that either carries me to new destinations or leaves me tangled up in the weeds, sometimes both.

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said it best, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” This is how I think we should approach each new day, birthdays or regular days, with a curiosity and a willingness to jump in and become somebody new, open to experiencing everything that life has to offer—the good and the bad.

I saw many memes floating around about January being the longest year of people’s lives. It did feel long. In California, there were catastrophic wildfires. The nation had another presidential inauguration, and each day is like that river Heraclitus talked about—never the same, sometimes scary, ultimately life-changing, difficult to predict and relentless. It’s a lot of change, and we don’t all do well with change. I don’t know what to make of the future. I just know that I’m stressed and I recently paid $9.99 for eggs and somehow need to raise 3 humans to have the skills to navigate an increasingly difficult world that I can’t quite conceptualize.

Now February is almost over in a blink. Later this week my baby—who was due on my birthday but kindly decided to be overdue— will turn a decade old. He was 13 months when my husband died, and it feels wild to have started this chapter as an only parent in my early 30s with babies and toddlers, to now navigating the teen and pre-teen years. Not the same river. Not the same people.

Recently I was sharing with people that in the beginning of my teaching career, if someone wanted to disseminate a message, they had to make photocopies, put them in the mailboxes that we all checked once a day, and that was that. Now, we get emails and text messages constantly. Non-stop. It could be my part-time job just to answer messages. There are not enough hours in the day. We’re all spread thin with more than ever on our plates, and the needs are exponentially growing and becoming increasingly urgent. It is a behemoth that can not be contained, and inevitably things slip through the cracks. We are drained doing the important work of educating the future, wading through the visible signs of societal breakdown as it slowly submerges us into a new world.

It’s stressful.

People all over, no matter who they are, are more stressed than ever. This is compounded by the fact that not everyone is taking care of that stress. Sometimes that person is me. 

I gave a dharma talk two Sundays ago at the Orange County Buddhist Church entitled “Take Back Your Power.” I talked about stress. How stressed we are. You are. I am. I mentioned how I want to work on how I show up in the world. As a teacher, my students do not benefit from me showing up stressed and worn down. My children don’t benefit from a mom like that either. That kind of teacher and that kind of mom becomes reactive, crabby, withdrawn, overstimulated, resentful. 

We live in a world with more distractions, more demands, more crises. The circumstances aren’t going to get any better. The only thing we have control over is how we respond to it all. Thus, when the world feels overwhelming and like a lost cause, I am left looking inward as to what I can tweak to do better. To respond better. To show up better.

My brain used to be like the once-a-day teacher mailbox situation. Contained. Not teetering on the edge of insanity. Reasonably occupied. Sometimes even bored. Now, my brain is like a computer with five million tabs open, 50 alarms ringing at once, a frozen mouse and a crashing browser, toggling between more tasks on my to-do list than is humanly possible to finish and often feeling like I fell short…again. And again. A hopeless loop of despair.

We were reading the Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. in class this month—timely with it being Black History Month— and a student pointed out a line that resonated with them, and it resonated with me too. Maybe it will resonate with you.

“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

I think about this in terms of politics, of course. I’ve seen the recent boycotts being planned and advertised. My first reaction is that these attempts are surely futile, but then I remember MLK’s words. The action itself isn’t going to necessarily move mountains. The act itself creates tension. My tension x your tension x their tension is what cracks open the status quo. We’re just trying to open doors here, one at a time. Chip away at the problem before the day of reckoning comes.

But I also think about MLK’s words in terms of the internal battles we face. The roadblocks we encounter in our minds, the ruts we can’t get out of. How it not only affects us, but also everyone who we encounter, and even people who we will never meet. To instigate the tension in our minds, to yeet ourselves out of the quicksand of that bottomless pit, movement only comes from action. Direct action, not passivity. We must *do* something. But what we do doesn’t have to be an Oscar-worthy performance. It could just be going on a walk. Meditating. Signing up to take a class. Teaching a class. Watering your plants. Feeding a stray cat. Just put some kind of positive energy out into the universe.

When everything feels bleak and hopeless, I think it’s important to know that there are ways you can contribute to the “tension in the mind” that help others engage in that creative analysis too. AKA reflection. It doesn’t have to be something organized and huge. It could be the way you don’t react to a rude person, instead reflecting kindness back at them in the midst of their fury, which might cause them to pause and think about it later on. It could be not reacting to road rage. Treating a colleague with empathy as they melt down at your meeting, firmly and kindly maintaining your own boundaries without feeding the fire. Finding ways to help others, even in the smallest ways. 

Chipping in. Where can you chip in? Maybe it’s going to a protest. Participating in a boycott. Perhaps it’s raising kind children. Teaching kindness to children. Fostering animals. Running for office. PTA parent. Watching your nephew’s soccer game. Cooking meals for your elderly neighbor. Following all of the recycling rules. Volunteering. One thing is certain, you will feel less stressed if you are engaged in something, become a part of something. Something bigger than yourself. That’s the moment when you realize it was never about you and also totally about you. You are part of a vast tapestry of past, present, and future.

Mel Robbins has a podcast I love, and her recent episode “How to Control Your Mind & Redirect Your Energy to Self Transformation“ was a good one. She argued that your brain needs something to do— she refers to the brain as a supercomputer— or else it will aim itself at you. You want to aim it at something that energizes you, not start nit-picking on everything you hate about yourself.

I’m not pretty enough.

I have too many grey hairs. 

I’ve got too many wrinkles.

I’m not where I want to be. 

I’m too fat. 

I’m too tired. 

I’m not working fast enough.

I’m not good enough. 

Mel Robbins said in the episode that our brains release dopamine as we work toward goals. Having projects increases our happiness and helps maintain better mental health. Goals give your mind something to focus on, which actually builds resilience. She points out that our brains are designed to WORK. I’m not talking working harder at your day job, but it could be if those projects bring you meaning and joy. This is about creative work. It could be as simple as meal planning for a dinner with loved ones. There are so many ways you can express yourself with creative work. Making time for your hobbies. I feel like I’m suffocating if I don’t get time to write.

I wonder if this overwhelming world filled with bad news and red flags and crises and fear and hate and expensive eggs just makes us shut off our brains. Deactivation to avoid fear and pain. And in this stagnant state, we feel even more hopeless. Everything negative becomes even more negative. The awful parts of our jobs are magnified. Fraught relationships worsen. We don’t show up as our best selves. We shoot our supercomputers at ourselves, and we swirl in a pit of our own desperation that renders us immobile, so we just consume instead of create. Consuming is instant gratification. It doesn’t lead to happiness. In this version of ourselves, we can’t handle stress. We retreat and hide from it. We shut down. I always like to tell my children and students that my favorite law of physics is “an object in motion stays in motion.” We don’t overcome obstacles by allowing ourselves to become fossilized. You have to put one foot in front of the other, even if you’re making micro-movement toward something.

The world needs you to show up as the best version of yourself. It needs you to chip in. You have something unique to contribute and there are a zillion unique ways to chip in where you are, when you can, as you can.

There is a Buddhist sutra about a little bird. It’s a timely story in more ways than one so I’m going to tell it to you.

Once there was a great forest where many animals lived. One day, the forest caught fire. All of the animals tried to put out the fire, until they realized the situation was dire and their leader, a great lion, told them to run for safety. The animals fled and watched as their beloved forest, their home, burned down. 

The animals noticed a little bird that kept trying to fight the fire. The bird would fly to a nearby pond, dip into the water, then fly over the fire, flapping its wings so drops of water would fall onto the fire. It went back and forth doing this. 

The other animals thought the bird was crazy. “How do you expect to put out a fire that way?” they asked the little bird. 

The little bird eventually stopped for a rest and responded, “The question for me is not, can I put out the fire. The question for me is, what can I do? This is all that I can do. I am only doing what I can do.” Then the bird returned to its work trying to put out the fires. 

I think I spent too many years looking for signs of the big things I could contribute into this world, this materialistic world we inhabit where flashy success is worshipped and glamorized, and when it didn’t happen— or I didn’t think my contributions were meaningful enough in comparison to what others have— I concluded that I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t enough. Or it made me feel hopeless. I didn’t realize that all I had to do was dip my wings into the water and spread drops of kindness onto the fire. Just drops, not the ocean.

At the core of everything, it’s kindness in small but steady drops. Kindness to ourselves, first and foremost. That’s the oxygen mask we have to wear before we think about anyone else. We have to manage our own stress. We also need to manage our stress for our loved ones. For those of you in jobs dealing with other people, like me as a teacher, we have to manage our stress for the people who need us to show up patient, kind, and supportive. We even need to manage our stress for strangers, because we live in an interconnected world that depends on each one of us chipping in— flapping our wings— sprinkling whatever positivity we can give to a world that depends on us to show up. 

It reminds me of the Mr. Rogers quote I’ve seen many times during crises throughout my life. I grew up watching Mr. Rogers on PBS. It feels like we need more Mr. Rogers in this world to guide us through tough times with a soothing demeanor, a cozy cardigan, and gentle words of wisdom. He said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

As I enter another year of life, my goal is to focus on the drops. Each step of the journey. Chipping in where it is sustainable, in ways that fuel my passion, finding that magical life energy, and then sharing it with others. 

Margaret Weis said, “A single drop, though it falls into an ocean, will yet cause a ripple.”

Here is to another year, more drops, infinite ripples.