Rationalization of fear

Fear is a funny thing in this modern age.  We live without forests of wolves and witches building candy houses.  If you are to believe Steven Pinker, our age - despite what the newspapers would have you believe - is one of the safest and least violent of all times.  And here in Singapore (as in Hong Kong) we perhaps live in the safest bubble within that safety.

And yet we fear.  I've been following the BBC's program on depression and the "need" for depression on an evolutionary basis, and wonder if fear is yet another "necessary" emotion.  It crops up in situations from the sublime to the ridiculous.  My son, as one of the few viola players at school was asked to join the string ensemble.  His reaction was rather strange and definitely avoidant.  Finally I worked out he was just plain scared and intimidated by the whole idea.  I got the music for him, his viola teacher then nearly blew it by saying one of the pieces was too hard and that he didn't think he could cope.  We went through it at home slowly, piece by piece.  It's not that bad.  And the teacher running the program is lovely, with suggestions for open string playing when in doubt.  He insisted I attended the first rehearsal.  He sat there, still and quiet as a mouse - a sure sign he was out of his comfort zone.  But he tried, and he played and what he played when he played sounded good.  At the end he came out, pale but ready for more.

I confronted his fear and asked if he'd been afraid.  Yes he had.  We have this audio book my husband got from some management course which is called "Feel the fear and do it anyway"  I've not listened to it, but  I told my son about the title and he laughed.  Agreed it was a good idea to try even if you were scared.  I also told him about my days of orchestral playing and how sometimes you just have to fake it and hope that someone sitting next to you or in front of you is coping with the super-fast super-hard passages.  It was not a reason not to practice to get it right, but sometimes that's just what you had to do.

At a school meeting on Monday I saw another side of fear.  This time truly irrational.  The fear of parents for the safety of their children.  The school is still busy sorting out various building issues and there are a number of workers still on site.  Listening to the parents you'd think that at the very least a hoard of zombies or Frankenstein clones have been let loose and are stomping around the school barging into showers and bathrooms and (shock horror, awful how could they) lying on bits of cardboard to have their mid-day nap.  I think the reality is more nuanced and that single episodes of mistake have been blown out of proportion.  Again, the facts are far less interesting than the imagination.  The sad thing is that the daughters of the migrant workers doing the building are far more likely than our precious off-spring to be raped, murdered and sold into sex slavery.  Where is our compassion and humanity?

Here is an interesting little article about real and perceived fear - parents need to know that their kids are more at risk at home and with people they know than from strangers.  And that our caution and paranoia is hurting them by affecting their resilience.   So stop worrying about the first five and start taking control of the things you can control:

Based on surveys Barnes ( Christie Barnes,  author of The Paranoid Parents Guide) collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

一 ， 二 ， 三

Today I had my first calligraphy class.  I was most mortified on Friday night to discover that I was incapable of carrying on a conversation in Chinese and then it got worse on Saturday when I was looking through my daughter's new year speech for my husband's company and I could recognize but not identify most of the characters of the speech.  Humiliating.  Mortifying.  What did I do with 2 years of my life?  I keep on making a mental note to put my Chinese CD's back in the car to listen to, and freudeanly keep "forgetting".

Anyway, one of my Chinese speaking friends here convinced me to start calligraphy classes at the calligraphy centre, and today was my first class.  Each class we "master" 6 characters with the brush and ink.  Mine were 一， 二 ， 三， 工， 正 ， 王。Arguably you can't get any more simple than that.  And yet.  I covered page after page of character and finally went right back to doing more of 一， 二 ， 三，since the simple fact of doing a vertical stroke rather than a horizontal one was eluding me - 2 hours later.

I'm of course doing something completely different to Benny Lewis  who has undertaken to learn Mandarin in 3 months (I have suggested that his best bet would be to get in contact with Cecilie and her Happy Jellyfish language bureau - I'm sure his Chinese teachers have no idea what on earth to make of him and his - in their views - unconventional ways of learning).  It's fascinating watching his progress.  Of course there are all sorts of nay-sayers but I must say I'm firmly in his court and think he's going about things in absolutely the right way.  The only way to learn a language is to immerse in it and to constantly keep yourself outside of your comfort zone.  Not easy.  I must say he has motivated me to do one of two things - either go back to doing some chinese, or to re-launch my French studies in anticipation of our next Swiss holiday.

In the mean time, just in case I have a chance of getting bored here (or there or anywhere), I've enrolled myself for a M Ed degree.  I was toying with the idea of doing a Masters in guidance in Councelling, and the information evening for both was at the same time, and the syllabus for the M Ed just instinctively spoke to me so much more strongly.  I've been reading "Finding your own North Star" by  Martha Becks, which had been lent to me by a friend who knew I was looking for "what next".  It's quite interesting her approach of following intuition and gut in things rather that just doing what is expected of you and what you think you "should".  I've had so many "shoulds"in my life for so long, that it's about time to let go of them all.

Cross roads

And so we come to the end of yet another school vacation.  Coming so close on the heels of the 3 weeks Christmas break I can't say that it was much needed or even appreciated.  Somehow I'm beginning to wish that Asia would chose between Christmas and Chinese New year and not saddle us with both.  Particularly not within 2 weeks of each other.

Anyway, we need now to choose activities for the next school semester and this is leading to a bit of soul searching and thinking and re-prioritising and questioning of assumptions.  As I had thought, two instruments each is proving to be a lot.  Not only on them, but even more so on me who has to supervise and coax and coach and encourage the practicing.  Initially it went well in the first blush of new love.  And also I was most gratified to see some pretty quick progress in both the trumpet and clarinet.  Like with language, it seems in musical instruments, even as diverse as string to wind there was a cross-over effect.  Particularly my son has been showing considerable maturity in practicing and learning.  But it does require me to give the first little nudge of "come, let's go and do some viola / trumpet"  and then I was away for 2 weeks, we've had holidays and guests and more holidays and he'd been away with dad for a few days and this afternoon I put my foot down and insisted on some trumpet practice - what a disaster.  Dad's version of practice obviously had consisted only of him playing a few scales once a week - not a way to progress.  So when I looked into the homework pieces it all fell apart in tears and swearing (yes, he is of that age where his repertoire of less than choice language is making an appearance).  It also took about 2 hours to get through 10 minutes of effective practice.  Obviously not the way to go.  Of course I know it's just getting back into things after slacking off on the daily practice.  But it's also so r tiring and disheartening and I'm getting to the point of "when will they just do it spontaneously - if ever".  But when I ask if they want to stop lessons / playing they won't hear of it.

With my daughter it's the same.  No she doesn't want to give up the instruments, she just doesn't want to practice.  yes she knows she doesn't make progress without practice but still she doesn't want to practice. Cello is a bit of an issue at the moment.  She's really missing the Suzuki method.  While her teacher is good, she's also rather humorless and lacks a sense of fun.  After finishing off book 3, she's decided that my daughter has had more than enough of the "classical" repertoire which Suzuki excels in and needs to add more scales, arpeggios, Dotzauer, sight-reading, modern pieces.  All of which I don't disagree with in principle, but in practice mean that playing has become a lot less fun for her - not to mention practicing.

They're both missing the group class element and the community spirit of Suzuki a lot.  They've been co-opted into the school's junior string ensemble, which is doing some pretty nice pieces, just at the right level for beginning ensemble players, but it's not quite the same.  And I guess I'm missing the mutual support from other Suzuki parents as well.  I've taken to re-reading the Suzuki books for parents to try and recapture the essence of what it was all about.

Now we're at the point where my daughter wants to play touch rugby in the school team, which means a clash with her cello lesson. We can re-schedule, but I'm at the point where I've suggested to her she gives lessons a break for a term (she was ambivalent about it, what goes on in those little heads of theirs?) and I've also suggested she may want to think about trying out some other teachers if it's not working with the current one.  I'm not sure whether I'm doing the right thing or not.  A month or two ago, her teacher was telling me she was "very talented" - when in fact I know it was because she'd become very motivated for a couple of weeks of practicing to a self-made schedule.  Last week she told me my daughter was joking around too much in the lesson - which I know is a sign of lack of motivation.

I don't really like all this commitment, and my daughter veers between wanting to do "everything" and wanting to do "nothing"  I think she's changed her options on the school activity sign up 3 times in the last day.  They're also both playing league football - an issue for my daughter as there is no under 10 group at her level, and she's the only girl again.  Apparently she was roundly sworn at each time she captured the ball from the opposition today.  Which partly upset her and also, on reflection actually made her feel a little superior that she'd annoyed the opposition twice, once for getting the ball and twice for being a girl who got the ball.  One of the boys went complaining to coach after she elbowed him - at which he did the amateur dramatics falling down and rolling around the pitch (silly thing to do in SG where the astro turf gets pretty hot) - the coach ruled in her favor and told him if he wanted to play football he'd have to toughen up.

They've both joined me doing Crossfit Kids - they did the kids camp this holiday and are really enjoying the challenge.  So now they want to sign up for term time.  I like the concept of non-specialisation and non-competition exercise of an all round nature.   We're encouraging my son to join the track and field though - he's fast and it would be really nice for him to have something that he excels in for a change.

Back to the music.  After 5 / 3 years respectively of sticking to it, all the practice, all the lessons, all the time, am I being crazy in thinking of giving it a break?  Will stopping lessons for a bit mean that they won't play?  Could I motivate them to do some practice if there isn't a teacher behind it all telling them what to practice and how to progress?  I know that it's all about small incremental gains, will we throw that all away now?

Is this perhaps just indicative of a different kind of slump?  That we've moved past the "Hunter / Gatherer" phase of moving country and are getting into the mundane day to day phase.  That it's not all new and edgy but rather repetitive and boring now?  Of course I know that I set the tone of the family, so it's really up to me to decide and move forward accordingly.  But who to ask?  I'm feeling a bit alone at the moment in this.  when I discuss with my husband he says "music is your department, sport is mine" and while we exchange views on the matter, the coaxing and coaching in our respective "departments" and the final veto is up to each of us in consultation with the kids.  But we are the parents, so somehow we do need some kind of wisdom in the matter...

How to fill your days with nothing ...

One of the things I'm asked most often about the retreat is how you can do "nothing" all day and whether or not it drove me - a rather driven person at the best of times - crazy.  Bear in mind, when you register, you surrender all electronic equipment, all books, all paper, all pens.  And of course your voice.  Surrendering books (in my case a fully loaded kindle) was the hardest for me.  I use books to escape, to travel to sooth myself to put myself to sleep.

There was a fairly rigid daily program which started with the gong at 4am and ended with lights out (literally no electricity) at 9.30pm.  Naturally, on debriefing there were people complaining about too little sleep, too rigid a program, too little freedom etc. etc. Personally I'd known what I was signing myself up for (the website is pretty explicit) and had also read that rather brilliant chapter on "will power" in "Never Let Go"  so I'm pretty well prepared psychologically because I know if you want to exercise will power in one area of your life - in this instance to seriously meditate, you have to eliminate as much choice as possible in all other areas of your life - as in what and when to eat / sleep / shower / walk / sit / listen / do yoga etc.   And still, the mind and the body is a pretty wilful, stubborn and dwars (now what would the English be for that - at cross purposes?) thing.

Honestly, that first chapter of that book is one of the best things I've read for a long time.  I'm using it in so many areas of my life.  Including parenting.  I just take choice out of the equation for stuff that has to be done.  I can't tell you how much my son's handwriting has improved in the last few months.  Why?  Because most days during the week, we sit down with "Writing with Ease" and he copies a few sentences from the work book, I read a paragraph to him, he answers questions in full sentences and writes a sentence on the main idea of the paragraph.  There is no discussion, no maybe, perhaps, if, but, later.  Yesterday he came home beaming.  "Mum, mum, the teacher is going to say something to you about something you bought and we've done and it's great."  I probed and probed.  Finally it came out, I'd bought the book "Writing with Ease" we'd done it and his handwriting had improved so much that the teacher refused to believe a piece of writing without a name on it was his.  Nothing succeeds like success they say.

Back to meditation.  I am not a great meditator.  I am a baby.  I am a neonate.  The best I can say is that at moments, whole 10 minutes at a time, I managed to really really try to empty my mind and only concentrate on my breath and nothing else.   It was really useful that they were teaching Anapanasati, which is a methodology of attaining concentration, and you could see more or less where you were on the continuum and what you needed to get yourself further.  I recon I spent most of the time hovering around the beginning of the First Tetrad - contemplation of the body.


So in all those hours and half hours and three quarter hours that we were spending in sitting or walking meditation what happened?  Well, I'd start with a determination to concentrate only on breathing, but of course the monkey mind would start up it's movies and off we'd go.  I'd say I spent the most of the first 3 or 4 days doing some mental housekeeping, filing, observation, reminiscing, pondering, examining.  Fresh from the sights, sounds and sensations of BKK and the demand on arrival that we abstain from any thoughts words or deeds concerning sex, unsurprisingly the first things to be mentally put out in the sun were all the relationships I'd ever had.  The serious, the casual, the fun and the heart-breaking.  Time and distance is an incredible healer, as I truly could go through everything pretty dispassionately with very little emotional involvement.  It was more a kind of sorting and ordering and making sense of how it all fitted in my life and made my life and me who I am.

Next up was childhood and teen years, and early working days and our early expat lives.  Family and families, studying time, leaving South Africa, leaving, leaving leaving and moving moving moving.  A lot of shit has flowed through the sewer in the last few years, and I was surprised at how, with the aid of many dharma talks, a lot of verbal guidance from the monks and nuns it was able to enter and leave my mind and be examined with the same interest I would look at the busy ants with, or see a leaf that was falling, had fallen, was being swept up.  There were but two occasions when I truly felt myself choking up momentarily.  I left the memory, focused on the breath, the impermanence, the attachment and it was OK.  Really OK.  It didn't matter quite so much anymore.   For those of you who are regular readers of my blog you will know what those moments were - everything around my son trying and failing to learn Chinese, and the incident and incidences surrounding the suicide attempts of someone close to me.   The rest - all the other experiences and ups and downs were mere chaff of life.

I did occasionally beat myself up - as in "darn you're supposed to be meditating and seeing images and bright lights and feeling this flood of joy and blah blah."  And I'd earnestly start with the long breath and the short breath and the following of the breath, and the guarding of the breath at the gate, only for the gate guard to be not so much battered down, but fooled by the ghosts of Christmas's pasts slipping by in the shadows and quietly pleading for a little attention and loving kindness.

At the end of the day, I think I made peace with myself, with my past, my history, my present and emerged much calmer and with more equanimity than I started out.  I am encouraged by the stories of the English monk of his long 6 year journey before he got anywhere near to where one is truly meditating, and took the boasts of fellow meditators who were "shooting love bullets" in my stride.  Luckily the boasting evening was our last evening and not somewhere in the middle where we'd all have found the necessity to compete in being "good" meditators.

The mind of course craves stimulation.  So the highlights of my days were the Dharma talks - basically readings or teachings on meditation and how to meditate and Buddhism, the Yoga - nearly 2 hours of wonderful yoga taught by a marvellous nun, the Chanting - (which took me back to my catholic school days).  

The insights into the monastic life from the monks and the nuns was fascinating.  How do they stop thinking about sex and desire for example?  They meditate on death and decay.  And sometimes they go and watch corpses and bodies rotting.  Really.  Apparently you get to think about orifices in a whole new way after that.  I'm sure - I'll leave that to them and just take the shortened 5 precepts (vows) which include no adultery, rather than the more complete 8 precepts which include chastity in thought, word and deed.  One day a monk was called away towards the end of a meditation session and when he got back later he told us about an open burning cremation he'd attended.  And then we chanted about how death would come and none of us could escape it's great armies.  Public burning of the dead is probably not a bad thing. He explained seeing this as a young child for the first time and what an impression it had made on him.

A lot of time and talk and thought is put into death and impermanence in Buddhism.  Not a bad thing in my opinion.  We shy away from it a lot in normal life.  We ignore it and deny it and avoid it.

Monks and nuns are also marvellously blunt creatures.  About the 2nd day, one of the nuns declared apropos of nothing to the group "So you've abused in the past.  I tell you now to stop continuing to abuse yourselves.  Every time you think about it, talk about it, discuss it, you are abusing yourself again and again and again"  and then she went on with the rest of her talk on something quite unrelated.   At another point we were discussing the image of the Buddhist cycle of life (sorry I need to find my cord to download my other pictures and I'm just not in the mood to search through the cord box right now) and we were told "you get angry, you go straight to hell"  - the Buddhist concept of hell being a state of mind or being or existence during life rather than a physical place to go after death.  Which of course makes absolute sense. Much more sense than a hell in the ever-after.  Much more effective as well as a general and absolute threat to people in general and kids in particular.    And then of course this whole Asian thing of people not getting angry in order not to lose face hahaha (that's them laughing instead) suddenly makes absolute sense. Losing face, my eye - more like if they get angry they're in hell, and no-one wants to be in hell obviously!  Go tell that to the generals.  At other times we were told we were greedy and gluttonous - bah - two whole meals a day and we could help ourselves unlimited to the food during those meals.  Normally to meditate well one would get 6 spoons of brown rice a day - if that.  High days, holidays, birthdays and feast days were spent in fasting.

It's now 9.30pm and I'm going to bed.  I quite liked the early to bed early to rise habit.  Despite everyone's moans I think a lot of people got more sleep on the retreat (albeit on cement slabs with wooden pillows) than they usually get in the normal course of life.  I sure did.

meditation on mosquitos

I've been a little slack on the blogging side of things. After 10 days out of the ether and completely winding down and relaxing, I'm finding it a little hard to drive myself and force myself to do all sorts of things. Slowing down is not a bad things. A couple of you have asked to report back on the retreat, so I'll do so in bits and pieces.

One of the most memorable thing about the retreat was Karmic bugs. I'm serious. Having lived with a son for 8 years, 3 of which he was absolutely obsessed by bugs, I'm ok with bugs. Bugs don't bother me. Sure, I find a mosquito buzzing around my head annoying like anyone else, but I'm not given to screaming at the sight of a spider, or running away from a roach or any other silly behavior.

Ants hard at work

When we arrived at the retreat, Suan Mokkh, at the time we were still allowed to talk, we were taken around our dormitory, and the leader of the ladies brought out a few bags of bugs - centipedes, scorpions etal, so we'd  know what we were facing if we had to face them.  We were advised of the humane way of catching and releasing said bugs in the spirit of mutual humanity.  Already you could see which were the "antsy" girls around bugs.

During the retreat, I remember being bitten by a mosquito at the beginning of a walking meditation and decided to meditate and reflect on the bite and how long  it took to subside.  By the end of the 45 minute period, there was nothing left.  No pain, no itch, no bump.  That gave things a huge amount of perspective - I still shoo'd mosquitos away, but if and when they occasionally bit me, it wasn't an issue.  I had plenty of time to reflect on life's other little "bites" and how we let our mind itch and scratch at them, with the result that one little incident is allowed to swell up and fester and infect our whole being.  How much more pain we inflict on ourselves than is necessary.

But back to the bugs.  By the end of the retreat, me, who was not bothered by bugs, had literally the whole time not been bothered by bugs.  On the last evening, participants had the opportunity to give the center feedback on the retreat, the program and suggestions for improvement.  There were some mighty strong feelings about the insects!  Demands for screens and the open air meditation halls to be netted.  People being visited by numerous creepy crawlies where-ever they  went.  Rooms invaded by bugs and slugs and frogs and geckos.  I was amazed.  I'd not been party to any of this. Perhaps my room was in a fortunate position?  Not so, the two paranoid ladies sleeping in rooms on either side of me had been "infested" by wild life.  One of the men I met up with at the airport on the way to BKK said the same - he'd had no problems with bugs, but some of the men who had "bug issues" had lots of bugs!

I have an idea that there is an important lesson to be learnt in this experience that I can carry forward to other things that do bug me more than bugs.  Stepping back, observing my reaction to things and letting go and watching the feelings subside without adding additional emotions to the fire could go a long way to a more peaceful existence.

No room for complacency ...

As a mother I somehow always feel I'm running slightly behind.  So last night, it was merely 6.30 pm and I was already getting the children ready for some reading and bed-time.  Pajamas were on and I was shooing them to brush their teeth when my son wailed out in protest "But mum, we haven't had any supper yet and I'm STARVING!"

Oops!  All I can say is that it must come from the fact that for 10 days during the retreat our last meal of the day was at mid-day and then nothing until 8.30 the next morning....

So, back to the kitchen, cooked dinner and fed them and we were back to the usual rushing to get them down by 8pm.  Luckily they'd both played hours of football in the morning so fell asleep shortly after their heads hit the pillows and we'd chased out all the flying ants that were swarming into their rooms.

Here's an interesting TED talk on something quite unrelated - the creation of a para-orchestra.

message to the future

My children opened a bank account here in SG to deposit the pocket money they receive from us when we remember to give it to them.
As a gift the bank gave them these cheapo fold it yourself money boxes.  I was most intrigued to see the message being given to the youth.  How inspirational.  How aspirational.  How fitting in with the way things have to and should and ought to be...

"Saving today for our home tomorrow" right there on the top where the money slot is.  Just to remind you what it's all about and the most important thing of all - keep the property barons happy.

"Contribute to Singapore's success"
"Strive to do your best"
"Save and protect our environment"
"Constantly improve yourself."