The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928)

“On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.”  So begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  The rest of the book tells the story of the travelers who died that day.  It also tells of a priest who attempts to demonstrate that all of these people deserved to die and therefore even this seemingly pointless accident was part of God’s plan.

Of course, despite his best efforts, the priest fails to fully understand the complicated lives of the travelers.  None of them can be pigeon-holed into “good” or “evil” categories.  They all have struggles, accomplishments and failures.  They are all human, and that, at its heart, is the moral of the book.

This is a short book: 107 pages.  It’s almost a novella.  And it hardly has a plot in the normally understood sense of the word.  But in that short space, the reader comes to know many characters very well.  It’s such a short read and the payoff in insight is so big, that it’s definitely worth a read.

Mindfulness Exercises: Just Three Breaths

This week’s exercise was to take just three mindful breaths whenever you can throughout the day.

The main point of this exercise is to incorporate mindfulness throughout the day, even when you feel like you don’t have time to sit down and do a mindfulness session.  That’s great.  But I actually found it useful in another way this week.

We had a bit of a rough week.  Adeline had an ear infection and she had a fever of about 102 over night one night.  That wasn’t pleasant.  Add to that the fact that we were on vacation: long flights, hotel room, lots of eating out in restaurants with a baby running around, my father-in-law.  It was a stressful week.  I found myself practicing three mindful breaths pretty frequently.  And it really helped to calm me down.

It’s not just that three breaths relaxes the body, although that certainly helps.  We often unconsciously hold our breath, or take really shallow breaths, and our body tenses up.  Being mindful of your breath automatically makes you take deeper, slower breaths that help relax the body.

But more importantly, it relaxes the mind.  When we’re stressed, we’re not living in this moment.  When Adeline was up all night, I started to get really angry.  My thoughts started going into overdrive: thinking about how tired I would be the next day, worrying that this would turn into a habit that we’d have to break when we got home, remembering all the work we had put into her sleep already, etc.  Those thoughts caused attendant emotions like frustration, anxiety and resentment.  It started to cycle and get worse and worse.  I found that taking three mindful breaths (or more, if needed) helped me stay in the present and stop those thoughts from taking over.  It helped me to remind myself that she was sick, my poor baby, and I just needed to be there for her at that moment.  I would deal with the rest later.  Which is really all we can ever do.

This week’s exercise is: "Entering New Spaces: bring awareness to transitions between spaces, for example, when you walk through a door."

Arrowsmith (1926)

This is the story of Martin Arrowsmith, who seems ordinary enough but is, in fact, that rare breed of man who thinks for himself and pursues his goals without regard for the people who want him to give up.

You could say the same about Sinclair Lewis, the author of Arrowsmith.  Nothing is holy: he tears apart countless traditions and habits that we take for granted.  With just a sentence or two he shows us the hypocrisy, inanity or even the evil in our many institutions and ways of life.

In Arrowsmith, Lewis is focused on the medical profession and science as a profession during the early 1900’s.  But much of the book feels applicable even now.  We see the flaws in a medical school that churns out doctors trained to treat illnesses without thinking about underlying causes and keyed to avoid prevention because it will take away business.  We see, as in his other books, the backwardness and suffocation of a small town for a free thinker.  We see how a scientist is compromised by working for a company that's only out to make money.  And we see that science can’t be run by committee and isn’t at the whim of “the good of society.”  Lewis shows us that science may be the most individualistic pursuit there is, and men who are willing to give it everything they have are the true heroes.

Mindfulness Exercises: Secret Acts of Virtue

The exercise "Secret Acts of Virtue" asks us to do something nice for someone else, but to do it anonymously. 

At first I really struggled with this exercise - I just couldn't think of anything to do!  Then I started to feel really badly about myself.  "Am I a terrible person?" I wondered.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was having two problems. 

My first problem was that I was thinking of the exercise as involving elaborate acts and I just couldn't think of good things to do.  But then I realized that I do nice things all the time, it was just a matter of doing them with mindful intentionality.  So some examples of things that I did were: clean up David's desk, pick up trash on the sidewalk, push in the shopping carts at the store, park far enough away from the person behind me that they would have no trouble getting out.  These things aren't life-changers, but they just might make someone's day a little bit better.  And that's a good thing.

The second problem I was having goes more to the heart of the exercise.  Although I didn't realize it at first, I was struggling with the anonymity aspect of the exercise.  Sure, I do lots of nice things for people, but it's usually either in a way that they know about it right away, or I want to tell them about it.  A couple weeks ago I totally cleaned out and reorganized David's sock drawer (it was chaos in there).  He probably would have noticed anyway, but I made a point to tell him about it when he got home.  I wanted him to know that I had done something nice for him and I wanted him to thank me for doing it. 

I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking praise for the good we've done.  But it's also beneficial to sometimes not seek that praise.  Most acts of virtue are also acts of selfishness: we do them because they help others but also because they make us feel good about ourselves.  And that's ok.  But let that sense of feeling good about yourself fulfill your need for satisfaction, rather than seeking even more praise.  Just let the good be good enough. 

The next exercise is: "Just Three Breaths: as many times a day as you can, give the mind a rest by just taking three mindful breaths."

Mindfulness Exercises: Loving Eyes

My exercise for the past (two) weeks was to look upon the world with loving eyes.  This means to see things with loving eyes instead of critical eyes, to open the part of your soul that loves even when you’re just looking around the kitchen or even when you’re looking at someone or something that has upset you.

Just like with Loving Touch, this exercise requires that you turn your mind to love.  It’s impossible to look with loving eyes when your mind is angry or anxious or just annoyed.  But it’s so worth it to get to that place of seeing with loving eyes.

Sometimes it’s easy: we had snow last week and it was beautiful.  The trees all still have leaves on them, so the snow settled on the leaves, making the branches heavy and magical.  I would have enjoyed it even without the exercise, but with the exercise I saw it in a whole new way.   Every tree was a new and beautiful world waiting to be discovered.  Each leaf covered in snow was a unique and special being worthy of my attention.

 Other times it’s not so easy: we were driving home from a trip to the store and Adeline was fussy.  I hate it when she gets fussy in the car – it’s the one time that I just can’t respond to her, even if I want to.  All I can do is talk to her and get home as quickly (and safely) as I can.  So there we were, Adeline was fussy and I was getting anxious.  Then I decided to try looking with loving eyes.  This was only a few days after the snow, but it was all gone.  The sun was bright, slanting through the leaves on the trees hanging over the road.  As I looked with loving eyes, the trees seemed to glow and even shimmer.  As Jan describes it, the whole world seemed to radiate love back to me.  What a wonderful experience.

This week’s exercise is: “Secret acts of virtue: every day, engage in a secret act of virtue.”