Sometime I hoard things like a squirrel.  In fact, if I were a squirrel, I would have the most nuts.

I save plastic bags.

I save hangers.

I save razor blades until the one on my razor shreds my face.

I save water filters for the coffee maker until the coffee tastes like battery acid.

I save nice bottles of wine for special occasions for so long that I forget what the occasions might be.

I save clothes that I will never wear.

And shit that I will never use.

I want to save less. And spend more.

I want a generous heart.

Not long ago, we stood talking to a stranger in a parking lot.  Ann and he had been discussing tea.  He had a teapot in his truck, an electric one, the kind that you can only get in the U.K.  Ann admired it.  He gave it to her.  “Take it,” he said.  “Enjoy it.”

It wouldn’t have occurred to me to give away my teapot, especially if it had been one that had been hard to come by. It never would have even crossed my mind.  Maybe I’d have given up the web address.  But I’d be thinking: “Good luck, all the best finding a teapot this good, sweetheart.”

One day last summer, we stood on the street in a far away town with our heavy bags stacked around us. There was a drizzle just steady enough to annoy. We needed to catch the next train in half an hour. There was not a cab in sight.

Feeling a bit panicked, Ann crossed the road to the diner. She asked the woman behind the counter to use the phone to call a cab.

“Where do you need to go?” the waitress asked.

“The station,” Ann replied.

“There are no cabs,” the woman said. “Take my car.”

And handed Ann the keys.

Who does that? Who gives without thought, without worry, without regard? Who trusts that deeply in the goodness of humanity? Whose heart is that open?

Not mine. Not for others.  Not even for myself.

Somewhere I internalized: save it; don’t spend it; don’t give it; don’t loan it; don’t lose it; you never know when you might need it; save it; save it for a rainy day. And OMG there is one bad-assed monsoon just waiting for me.

But when is this rainy day?  Now is all we have.

Fear constrains.

But what if we trusted in the absolute abundance of the universe? What if we nurtured ourselves with this love? What if we gave to others as if there were no lack? What if we could know that when we emptied our hearts, they would always be filled to overflowing? Always.

When I was young, my mother taught: never pass a beggar by.  In later years, I would perform all sorts of mental gymnastics about the need to avoid enabling bad behavior and the importance of “targeting” my giving to agencies that “take care of such things.”  Only to be chastened by my teen one day who crossed a city street to drop the few coins from his pocket into the outstretched hands of a blind man.

A spiritual mentor of mine would say: give to everyone.  That way you don’t miss the ones who truly need it.

The mystic, the warrior, burns with such love, such zeal that there is nothing left.  The flame burns so brightly – like a shooting star across the night sky.  Better to light the darkness in one splendid, glorious display of luminescence than to grope in the shadows with a match.

It is in the giving that we receive.

Spend it. Spend it all on the field.

Spend it without measure.

Play full out.

Hold nothing back.

Walk in faith and not in fear.

Faith that all will be well. Faith that all is well.

Nuts grow on trees.  There are enough to go around. 

I was in jail for the weekend.

At least it felt that way to start.

I write all this stuff in my weekly blog about living deeply and fully, about being grounded, about being clear and listening with the ear of our hearts.

And then I realize I need to call bullshit on myself because I fail to actually live out what I try to teach.

I dragged myself this past weekend – kicking and screaming – to the Weston Priory. The Priory is a beautiful Benedictine monastery high on a Vermont hillside, with roots that can be traced back to the third century.  A dozen monks live there as brothers in community. They work and pray and sustain themselves. And as Benedict prescribed, offer hospitality to all who come to their door.

I went there to seek quiet, solitude, silence. Rest.

I went there to hear anew my own still small voice.

I went there so that I could touch again for myself what is essential, what is invisible to the eye.

It wasn’t easy to go.  Like so many of us, I travel at a speed that is dizzying.  But in the last several weeks, the velocity began to feel ludicrously supersonic, even by my own warped standards.

When I landed at Weston, it felt as if I had been caught by the arresting cable on the deck of a carrier: grabbed by my own tail, the jet plane of my life came to a screeching halt.

I hadn’t a clue what to do next.  The brother who greeted me pointed me toward my room.  He gave me the meal schedule and the brothers’ times of prayer. “Enjoy your stay,” he said.

I looked at my Blackberry. No signal.  I pulled out my iPad. No wireless. I became anxious. I began to pace. I ate an entire box of cookies. I felt sick.  I began to hold my Blackberry in various corners of my tiny room. To no avail.

I was alone. By myself. Off the grid. In the woods.

Maybe I would be murdered.  Maybe they wouldn’t find my body. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

And then I saw the sign.  It said: “Imagine Peace.”

Imagine a place rooted on the land, a place guided by the seasons, a place steeped in the ancient rhythms of monastic prayer and suffused with the music of its heart. Imagine a place that greets the dawn with light and songs of praise; and, as darkness falls, stands with open hands of gratitude and thanks. Imagine a people who live with radical love, true equality, social justice and a open heart.

Imagine a stillness so profound that it cannot help but seep into your bones.

Yes, imagine that: imagine peace.

Bit by bit, my body settled. And then my mind.  And my heart.  And my soul. I slept and read and walked and ran and prayed and listened to the wind in the trees and the rain on the chapel roof.  I shared my meals in silence with the monks and walked their paths and celebrated with them the hours of their days.

I was able to feel the ground again. My ground.

On Sunday afternoon, I fumbled for the keys to the ignition of my jet.  I looked with wariness at the Blackberry as I headed south toward home.

My friend Anne asked: how can we make decisions in our lives when we’re going 90 miles per hour?  The answer is: we can’t.

I recall a teacher telling me about his military training in special operations.  He and his comrades were dropped on an island. Their missions: avoid being captured by the enemy. He shared with me the sheer terror he felt as he ran up the beech, gunfire screaming overhead. His teammates disappeared into the woods.  Paralyzed with fear, my friend couldn’t imagine where to go. All he could do was stop. And dig a hole.  He crawled in and covered himself over. The enemy came tearing through the woods. And ran right past him. All of his colleagues fell captive. He was the sole survivor.

The notion of retreat, of seeking out the desert places, of finding solitude, is a lost art. But it is essential to our humanity.

Because, sometimes in our lives, all we can do is stop.  Sometimes it is the only sensible thing to do.

Sometimes what we need is peace.

Yes, peace. Imagine that.

I think I’m in love.

It seems like it could be a long term relationship.

She’s not exactly a “looker.”  A little “boxy.”  But that’s ok.

I really like her voice.  It’s not very sexy.  But it’s confident, soothing, self-assured.

Her name is Georgia.  At least that’s what I call her.

She’s my GPS.

I had to drive to JFK recently – at night.  It’s not a fun drive under the best of circumstances.  But I had given Georgia the address of the airport hotel.  Without a glitch, I arrived right at the front door.

Last weekend, I missed an exit on the interstate.  Couldn’t figure out where I was.  I pulled Georgia out of the glove box (she rather seems at home there) and gave her a local address.  Sure enough, I was right back on course.

That’s what I love about Georgia.  You tell her exactly where you want to go.  And you’re there.

I’ve been giving Georgia a lot of thought lately (as you can tell). You see, I’m fairly certain that each of us is equipped with an extraordinarily sophisticated internal GPS, a guidance system that will get us to where we want to go.  All we need to do is plug in the address, and, voila, our route is mapped out, our arrival assured.

This works for goals, dreams, aspirations, projects, careers, relationships and things.  Can you think of any meaningful achievement in your life that didn’t, at one time, “exist” only as a thought, only as a vision in your mind’s eye? Our thoughts manifest themselves. We achieve what we envision.

When we become clear on what we want, on where we want to go, on who we want to be – and we set our course – our arrival is a fait accompli.

The key is to become clear.  The key is to know – with certainty – exactly where it is that we want to end up.

If I don’t give Georgia an address, she sits there silently on my dash.  If I give her the “wrong” street number, she takes me exactly to that location, wrong or not.  If I give her a general vicinity, “general” is all I get.

She leads me – or not – to the very place I “envision.” And when I don’t “envision” anything, I end up exactly: nowhere.

In the vernacular of the computer: garbage in, garbage out.

Now here’s a way cool thing about Georgia.  I can miss the exit, blow by the turn off, take a left when I should have taken a right, gone north when I should have been going south, and it doesn’t matter. In her sultry voice, Georgia simply says, “recalculating.” And in the flash of an eye, she gives me new instructions, a fresh perspective, a way to get back on course.

So long as she has the address.

When I struggle with where I am going with my own hopes and dreams and aspirations and feel frustrated about not making progress, I realize that oftentimes it is because I am not being clear with myself about where I want to go.

The law of attraction says we attract that which we think about. If what we think about is fuzzy, fuzz is exactly what we’ll end up with.

Clarity is key.  Be clear on where you want to go. Dial in the address.

Sweet Georgia.  Be true to her.  And she’ll be true to you.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened.

— Luke 11:9-10

Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time.  Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

No quote has troubled me more over the years than this one from Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars. It’s clear message is that the passage of time eclipses the deepest yearnings of our hearts.

I think Saint-Exupery is wrong.  I think we always yearn.  I think our dreams always burn within us.  The problem is that we don’t act.

My mentor, Galen Rowell, once wrote, “One of the most shocking realizations of adult life is that most of us are not fulfilling the closest held dreams of our youth.  Instead of pursuing dreams that were once integral parts of our personalities, we end up in one way or another fulfilling someone else’s idea about who and what we should be, usually at the expense of our creative urges.”

It is this realization that discourages, that breeds bitterness. It is this realization that dulls the spirit, that frustrates the soul.

But this realization that we are off course need not harden; it can be harnessed; it can propel us to fulfill what we know to be our heart’s deepest desire. With Wisdom, we can use it to drive us forward.

Time is a thief.  But it need not steal those hopes and aspirations that form the core of who we were always meant to be.  Our dreams define us. It is our essential Purpose to achieve them.

One of the most common themes I hear after talks I give on holding fast to dreams is this: I’m too old; it’s too late.

That’s bullshit.

Too old, too late is a story told to mask fear, to hide insecurity, to explain resistance, to excuse inaction.

History is replete with geniuses and giants in business, industry, art, entertainment and athletics who were not “young” when they started out, whose talents and passions were ignited and came to fruition over the long arc of their lives. Here are but a few examples: Beverly Sills who eked out a singing career until age 40 when she became an operatic star; Colonel Sanders who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s; Charles Darwin who toiled with his research and didn’t publish his first book on evolution until age 50; David Oreck who didn’t get started in his now world-famous business until he was 40; Grandma Moses who painted in her 70s; Julia Child who did not appear on television until she was 50; Rodney Dangerfield who only finally made it as a comic in his 40s; Bahadur Sherchan who holds the record as the oldest man to climb Mt. Everest at age 77; and Sister Madonna Budner who still competes in Ironman triathlons at age 81.

There will always be other priorities, other responsibilities, other things that “require” our attention.  We are endlessly capable of explaining to ourselves why now is not the “right” time  to listen to the still small voice that calls to us in the night, that echoes in the recesses of our hearts.

But what we we tell ourselves at the end of our lives?

How old will you be if you don’t start now?

Our resolves may flag. Our spirits may falter.  But the clay of our lives does not harden. It is always ours to form.

Always.

Dreams deferred are dreams denied. Do what you’ve always dreamed of doing.

Do it now.

In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

— Lao-tzu

He wore a multi-colored codpiece.  And nothing else.

He looked to be in his mid-sixties, slim, fit and tan.  His long strides down the beach were matched by those of his companion, her long dark air blowing in the warm Caribbean breeze.

She, of course, had no need for a codpiece. She was stark naked.

The two were engaged in animated conversation, smiling, laughing. The codpiece drew attention to itself mostly because it was shaped as the beak of a toucan.

It was our first visit to Orient Beach on the beautiful island of St. Martin. What surprised us most after the startling sighting of the toucan, was how peace-filled a place it was, how welcoming the people were, how smooth the energy felt.

There was no pretense.

I thought of Orient Beach a few weeks ago.  We attended the annual Barristers’ Ball. It was a beautiful black tie affair. With a Venetian Mask theme! Think of that:  a bunch of lawyers dressed up in formal wear. Wearing masks! It was simply fascinating to watch those who play roles for a living wearing disguises!

But don’t we all?

We have the mask we wear at work.  The one we wear with our colleagues and acquaintances.  The one we wear in our role as parents. The one we wear when we are angry. The one we wear when we want to be brave.  The one we wear when we are afraid.

It is the fear, isn’t it, that drives this?

Fear that who we really are is not good enough, fit enough, slim enough, fast enough, smart enough, in-control enough, driven enough, creative enough. Fear that who we really are won’t get us admired, hired, liked or loved.

So we play roles.  The roles of who we want to be. The roles we think will get us what we want. Which is to be accepted for who really are.

What irony.

But we have we worn these costumes so long that the challenge to shed them seems insurmountable.

Where are our authentic selves?  Where do we find them; how do we rediscover them? And how do we express them in the world?

What does it take to get Real?

It takes a degree of weariness I think: we need to tire of the energy necessary to prop up our false selves. We need to feel the fatigue of inauthenticity.

It takes trust: trust that our hearts will guide us; trust that our hearts know the way; trust that our hearts always speak the truth.

It takes courage: the courage to believe that our true selves are the ones that resonate most sincerely in the world; the courage to know that who we really are is what is most powerful, encouraging and inspiring to others.

It takes love: enough love of ourselves to believe in the gift of our souls to the world.

And it takes time.  It takes a lot of time to try on all the multi-colored masks and costumes to finally discover that none of them really fit.

That our naked selves are what really matter.

When the blog posts this week, you’ll find me on St. Martin.  I’ll leave the rest of the story to your imagination.