Triple Digits... Finally!

It took awhile, but we finally crossed the 100-post mark.  Thanks to everyone who has stopped by!

We're hoping that over time, if we build it, the peeps will come.  That is, if we do our jobs correctly and follow through on our own goals, dreams and ambitions.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to send them along.

Have a great day or night out there, wherever you are.   Make it count!

Best wishes,
The Dream Team

Sade -- Soldier of Love

Here's to Sade for releasing an album of sensuous rhythms and passionate lyrics that matter.  I'm playing this again and again to buck up against the nonsensical, oncoming headlines:

Dalai Lama Claims China Set to Wipe Out Buddhism

After reading about the unconscionable massacre which recently occured in Nigeria, I've been wondering whether we're getting anywhere as a species.  Progress comes in fits and starts, if you can call it progress at all when such abhorent acts of primitive brutality can still exist.  Maybe as individuals we move forward.  But collectively, I'm not so sure.

As the Dark Ages showed us, advances made in previous ages can easily be wiped out.  Periods of tolerance and rationality give way to interludes of hatred, ignorance and repression.  No gains can be taken for granted.  Education and ongoing discourse are paramount to keeping dignity, compassion, love, decency and goodness alive.

READ MORE ABOUT THE DALAI LAMA'S COMMENTS HERE

Thank You, Fellow Dreamers!

I can't tell you how inspiring it is to log in and see posts from Jewlsdeluxe and Kamots alongside my own.  Even though Jewls was being a bit snarky, her point on rowdy Buddhists is well taken, and definitely in the spirit of this blog.

My fondest hope is that this becomes an ongoing dialogue about dream pursuit.  It certainly is not meant to be a one-way conversation. 

And thanks, Kamots, for the tip about Jessica.  I well know about her, but was boycotting the whole deal since it seemed to me like a new fad had been launched, a crazy child's crusade to see who could be the youngest to do suchandsuch.  What's next, infants setting off in a tub to float around the globe?

Once again, however, I'm always happy to be corrected in my ignorance.  (Which happens more often than I would like.)

What a great group this is -- Dream Teamers indeed!

Chasing a dream all the way around the world

On October 18, 2009, 16-year-old Jessica Watson set sail from Sydney, Australia in her attempt to become the youngest person to ever sail unassisted nonstop around the world. She is presently almost directly south of Madagascar, heading for home across the Indian ocean on the last leg of her journey. I have followed her blog since shortly before she set out, and I recommend it as an encouraging, inspiring read. One of the most moving entries is that of December 30, 2009, when she faced her first test of challenging weather, and a dolphin showed up and stayed with her the entire time until the storm had passed. I highly recommend spending some time reading this young lady's blog about the pursuit of her dream; she is, literally, in the midst of the chase, and I would encourage you to follow her home.

When Monks Behave Badly

I had to look this up, since I couldn't remember all of the details, but I did remember reading about this some time ago. Anyway, here's a link to a Times Online story about Buddhist monks jailed for their involvement in a riot in Tibet. To note, the story says the rioters were apparently Tibetans angered at Chinese rule.

Can't say I blame them.

Apparently, if you Google Buddhist, Monk, Riot and Violence, you'll get quite a few hits. Here's another one

The lede from this 1998 Independent story by Richard Lloyd Parry follows:

IT SOUNDS like a scene from a Bruce Lee film, or perhaps one of the wackier Monty Python episodes: rival gangs of martial arts monks beating up one another, throwing one another down the stairs and bombarding one another with potted plants, stones, petrol bombs and fire extinguishers. But this was the scene yesterday in Seoul, the South Korean capital, after 12 hours' fighting between members of the country's biggest Buddhist sect.

Five Hundred Slaughtered in Nigerian Killing Fields

You may wonder why I would report such a thing on a blog about chasing your dreams. Well, the dark side of human nature has to be confronted in any discussion about our potential for doing good. We can't ignore the worst in us just because we aspire for the best.

I will link now to the Times Online story in which I first read the report. The details are chilling. It makes me feel that in some respects, human beings have made no progress at all.

The worst quote: "Survivors told The Times that entire families were killed, some to the chants of Allahu Akbar — God is Greatest."

We need to learn how to COEXIST!

READ THE HORRIFIC DETAILS HERE

As It Is in Heaven

This and the last post are unrelated, though the irony of the titles is not lost on me. I just wanted to point out a remarkable film you may enjoy that probably missed your radar.

If you have the chance or a Netflix queue (or a good friend who happens to send a copy your way), be sure and check out "As It Is in Heaven," a movie that will leave you thinking about it long after the final credits roll.



Though not a perfect film, it benefits from an inspiring theme that manages to override some excessive melodrama and klunky character development. It speaks about the lives we're living and how we might just be able to squeeze a little bit more out of what matters before we're gone.

The Oscars -- In Memorium

It's always the most moving part of the Oscar ceremonies for me, a reminder of how fast time flies whether you are or aren't having fun.

On a personal note, I can't believe I missed the news that Horton Foote and Bud Schulberg died last year. If you don't know who they are, that's Hollywood. Two of the greatest screenwriters who ever lived, and the vast majority of Americans don't have a clue. That's how it goes for those who aspire to write for the movies.

On a separate note, it's scary to think about how many young and talented entertainers were lost last year: Michael Jackson, Britney Murphy, Farah Fawcett, Dom DeLuise, Patrick Swayze...

We don't have a lot of time to mess around, people. So get busy doing the thing you were meant to do, the reason you were born into this life.

Rethinking the Educational Model

Suzi Amis Cameron, wife of legendary filmmaker James Cameron, has founded a school in the Los Angeles area which encourages children to launch their creativity by following their muse.

Here's the link to the story on the Los Angeles Times website (which could use a little creativity. The ads here are so cluttered and troubling I hate to send you there.)

FOLLOW YOUR MUSE HERE

The story is worth it. At least I hope so! The Los Angeles Time used to be a great newspaper. Sadly, 'tain't so anymore.

Enter YouTube!

How Bad Can I Be and Still Get into Heaven?

According to the Associated Press and the Guardian UK, the Vatican is being rocked by another series of sex scandals, both of them hitting a lot closer to home. One involves a boys choir in Germany in which the Pope's own brother is under scrutiny, and the other, revelations about a Papal "gentleman-in-waiting" who, while under investigation for corruption, unwittingly shot a double bogey by soliciting a St. Peter's choister to procure him male lovers.

SOURCE 1

SOURCE 2

I mention this not to pass judgment, but rather to contrast it with Buddhism in which you never -- or at least I never -- hear a thing about scandal of any kind. Unless you count the Dalai Lama's confessed preference for flying business class...

Though I could never again be Buddhist in the way I once thought I might, I have been drawn back into Buddha's thought of late, ostensibly because of a project I have been working on. The experience has been a shock to me, if not a revelation, for underscoring the importance of self-discipline and self-mastery over the acceptance of dogma of any kind.

So often, Christianity leaves us with the feeling that sinning is bad but feels great -- that what we need to do is morally bend toward the right thing, when what we really would prefer is the wrong thing... if we could only be sure to get away with it.

A lot of Americans diet that way too: eating celery leads to a better figure, but as soon as I'm down the weight I want, it's back to pizza, ice cream and beer!

Just imagine Jack LaLane pigging out on Ding Dongs and the Dalai Lama starting a fist-fight over who boards the next flight first. Doesn't sound likely to happen, does it? Why are these examples so different from the graft and sexual scandals that plague the modern church?

Perhaps it's that ol' Devil at work again, but maybe it's also something else. Maybe the way we see sin and goodness are all wrong... and a new orientation is called for.

A fitness fanatic will tell you that there is no state of denial involved in preferring a crisp salad to all-you-can-eat at the local dining trough. Or in choosing to sweat and grind through today's grueling workout rather than sit on the couch and watch another round of American Idle.

That's pretty similar, I'm guessing, to why a Buddhist prefers peace to violence or tolerance to hatred or moderation to indulgence. Through meditation and self-inquiry, Buddhists have learned that you really don't want the moral equivalent of a Krispy Kreme when you can choose a ripe apple instead; that what really tastes great is cold, clear water and not some corn-syrup laden "energy" drink.

Because Western religion has become largely passive to meet the demands of a busy modern culture, we can now get away with easy outs like dropping tithes in a basket and shaking hands on our way out of Sunday service to troll Facebook, Twitter or engage in Worlds of Warcraft.

Heck, lets go out huntin' and shootin' and killin' in the name of the Lord. It's all good. I've been reborn. I did my time. It happened once. I'm forgiven, don't you know. Look at me, I'm like Tiger! Screw 'em all and say your sorry. But win the golf game, that's what really matters. That's what the sponsors want to see...

It's crazy, out of whack and out of control. It's like lipo-suction for sinning; lemme eat up all the ribs and pies and hoover out the fat so I'll still fit in those skinny jeans. No pain, all gain -- that's the American way!

Apparently though it's not just the American way. It's the Western way. Or at least a dogmatic, top-heavy, all-pervasive Western way that needs to get turned on its ear.

Just like Body for Life and P90X teach an active, disciplined approach to fitness and diet, Buddhism prescribes meditation and contemplation to clear and clarify our moral outlooks. While it doesn't teach us what to see, it teaches us how to see... the equivalent of learning how to fish and not just buy a filet o' fish at the House of McLovin'.

We need to start treating morality like fitness if we plan on enjoying lives of substance and purpose and value and quality. It's not at all about how "bad" can we be and still get into heaven! Right behavior is its own reward.

Right here, right now. And probably in heaven as well.

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

For those who of you who think you have too many obstacles to overcome in achieving your dreams, try watching (or reading) the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. While heartbreaking, it is also profoundly inspiring... and deeply moving.

To have this much vibrancy -- some even call it arrogance -- in the face of imminent death is awesome to behold. He will fire you up to challenge your base assumptions about what can and can't be done.

R.I.P. Mr. Pausch. Your example will never be forgotten!

Are Americans Too Positive?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of positive thinking... but also about nuance and complexity, and how these two often tend to get lost in our "rush" to be happy. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I aspire to exuberance, which is why Tigger is my patron saint -- at least as far as the expression of joy is concerned. However, I would never argue that perpetual sunniness is desireable, or even tolerable. That would be like 365 days of the same balmly weather (which might be nice if you're a retiree, but I'm not in the golf-is-life lifestyle yet). Seasonal cycles and emotional variation seem more in harmony with nature and the human spirit. But where do we draw the line?

A recent online book review reminds me of this again. "The Tyranny of Positive Thinking" takes a look at Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.") Both seem to argue that Americans take the cheery idea too far, adopting attitudes that are not in line with objective data. We paste smiley faces over hard truths, ignoring information that disagrees with our self-motivational outlooks.

An extract:

Could it be that “thinking positively” is contributing to our blindness and inaction around energy issues, environmental degradation and economic devastation? I’ve hammered this point home in a number of posts, the most widely read being “Do You Have a Panglossian Disorder?.” Now, a trenchant social observer provides a clear outline of how that may well be so, elaborating on the ‘dangers of positive thinking.’

While I agree that American culture has become oversimplified and superficial, I also believe that there's always something to be depressed about if you put your mind to it. Oil is ending, the permafrost is melting, Africans are starving, the debt is rising, and every day I'm getting a little older. How could a person possibly be happy when confronted with the realities of existence?

In doing research for my latest project, I am reading books on Buddhist ethics, including the thoughts of the Dalai Lama. They provide a stark contrast to my own restless Orthodoxy and tiggerish/bipolar tendencies, helping to ground and center my being and bring it balance. I'm always amazed at how content Buddhists are on the page and in person. They do not go out of their way to evade facts, and yet the facts never seem to get them down.

I'll post more thoughts on the subject as the days unfold. It just so happens that this train of thought runs parallel to the philosophical basis for our planned trip to Tahati: the premise that physical paradise ought to have an impact on our perceptions of happiness. Will our moods reflect the environment? Or will we merely take our own joys and sorrows with us?

You can read more about the Tyranny of Happiness HERE.

And of course, feel free to comment if the mood strikes you...

Good Work Is the Key to Good Fortune

That damned Neil Peart.

I'm keeping to a Neuro-Linguistic strategy by modeling my behavior on the people I admire, but watching Neil's extensive video on drumming called "A Work in Progress" has given me pause.

Here's a sample for your consideration:



The question it leads me to ask myself is this: what aspect of my own life have I mastered the way he has?

A favorite Rush lyric of mine is: "Good work is the key to good fortune." Along that line, I have invested far too much of my life energy in mastering the art of screenwriting, with only middling resuts so far. All that work hasn't led to anything perceptible yet, causing me to wonder whether this investment in technique has been for naught.

But the thing about chasing dreams is... it's not just about the having. The getting matters as much or more. I think that's the real reason why people who win the lottery are never happy. The money they've acquired is found money -- they expended no real effort to obtain it. While it sounds like paradise ("What, are you crazy? Send a little of that cash my way!") experience has proven again and again that people become reckless or dissolute in the face of random good luck. Good work that leads to good fortune... that's another story.

Joseph Campbell once said that a lot of people climb the ladder of success only to discover that it's standing against the wrong wall. Because we assign material equivalents to the degree of success we achieve at our jobs and not mastery or joy in our art/skill, that dollar reductionism leads to radical disjunctures on the perceived values in our society. The dash for cash takes up all our time and water-cooler conversations, while our freetime is gobbled up by mind-numbing distractions and passive entertainment. And then we claim we have no time to learn to ski or to fly or to parachute jump. Or to learn French or to cook or to travel the world.

And then you shadow a guy like Neil who avidly cooks, rides around the world on his bicycle or motorcycle, rock climbs, composes lyrics, and oh -- happens to be the best drummer in the whole world. Imagine: he can say without too much argument that he is the best at what he does on the planet. How many people would love to say that... about anything?

Henry David Thoreau once promoted a career advice as follows: "Make your living by loving." I believe he would readily acknowledge that Neil Peart examplifies the true spirit of this motto.

It is irrelevant in the end whether you like Rush's music or not. The critical point here is that he mastered a skillset and turned it into a career which allows him the freedom to pursue his other interests. Combined, they add up to an active life of passionate dreamchasing. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what this website is all about.

Take a look around and you'll see what I mean. We glorify fame and the riches that come with it. But few of us focus our attention where it really matters: on the grunt work of skill mastery that allows us to create the good work that, if all else holds true, leads to the good fortune we all desire.

Why Am I Here?

Not the really big "Why am I here?" question, but rather why am I here on this blog? There are many possible answers: a place to be heard, a creative outlet, doing it for a friend, and a host of other reasons why people probably blog. Mine is none of these. Mine is simple and rather selfish, but here and now I commit, to whomever might read these posts, that above all I will be honest, starting with what motivates my participation here.

I have a dream. A few of them actually. But I'm NOT chasing them. I'm not chasing them and I don't really understand why. So while I am in fact contributing in some way to the social discourse on chasing dreams, I'm really here as a means to explore and understand my own shortcomings, ultimately searching for what I'm missing that's keeping me from the chase. As far as I know, at this point this blog is just a conversation between myself and Bryan, but even if that's all it ever is, that's enough for me. My hope is that others will join, will offer feedback or support or criticism or analysis, but if the only comments that ever appear are from Bryan alone, it's enough for me.

I'm not quite ready to profess exactly what my dreams are at this point, but I'll offer where my thinking has roamed about my failure to chase them. First, my dreams are not trivial to me. If they were shallow, selfish dreams, then I suppose I wouldn't care. But, to me at least---you will have to judge for yourself once I eventually write about them---these dreams are not shallow nor selfish, and involve things that go to the core of my values. So it would certainly seem I'm not complacent because my dreams have little or no value to me.

Maybe I'm just lazy. This was a particularly difficult thing to consider, but consider it I have and deeply. My own conclusion is that I do in fact have a lazy streak. For much of my life and in many things, I've succeeded not on effort but on ability, settling for results achieved not by persistent hard work but rather what I was naturally capable of. Please do not think I am bragging here, I am not. I humbly recognize those capabilities as gifts, they were bestowed upon me, I did not earn them. The point is that a certain level of natural ability has allowed me the luxury of laziness in many things where I still managed to be successful by most anyone's definition. When I realized this it was hard to accept. There were areas of my life where I wasn't truly giving it my best, where I was being a minimalist because I could. But here's the thing: not with anything important to me. The important things I have focused on, have given the effort to, and can truly look back and say with honesty that I gave them my best. So while I've been lazy with certain things because nothing minimal effort was required to achieve acceptable results, something that shames me and that I strive to change, for things that have been important to me, I have given incredible efforts and hard work, and was never satisfied with merely what was acceptable. I strove to achieve the best result possible. When it comes to my dreams, they are things of utmost importance, born from my very core, sacred and set apart. The pattern of laziness I see in my life does not then apply. The chasing of these dreams should be some of the things I'm willing to give more effort to than anything else in the world. This raises the question, of course, that perhaps my dreams are not as important to me as I believe them to be, but no introspection is even required to put that thought to immediate rest. There is perhaps nothing more important to me at this point, so I have to believe that, though ashamed of the lazy streak I appear to have in some cases, here it does not apply.

So, concluding that my dreams are not shallow or selfish, and are in fact of utmost importance to me, and that I've never been lazy in pursuing the things that have really mattered to me, I have to look elsewhere. One stark possibility is complacency. While my job may not be ideal, neither is it unbearable, and financially most people would consider me successful. I have worked hard to allow myself and my family to live comfortably, but perhaps that's precisely the problem: I'm too comfortable. I believe it's important that I earned my position in life rather than having had it given to me, but even having earned it, I've come to believe comfort is a dangerous enemy to a chaser of dreams. In researching this idea, I came across the following quotes:

Don't get too comfortable with who you are at any given time, you may miss the opportunity to become who you want to be. --Jon Bon Jovi

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. --John F. Kennedy

I respect these men, and I respect their insights. Both paint comfort as an enemy of desire and achievement, Bon Jovi on a personal level, Kennedy apparently on a social level.

The question I have thus arrived at is this: Is a comfortable life my modern day lotus flower? And if it is, how do I break free of such a shameful state? Just recognizing it doesn't appear sufficient. I need a plan of action, but despite all I know, all I believe, all I hold important, one has not materialized. I almost feel like a drug addict in need of an intervention. The addict reasons that he is not an addict by virtue of his belief that he can quit at any time, when in reality few addicts can break free on their own. Am I addicted, believing that I can start chasing my dream at any time, but am in reality beholden to the safety of comfort? Pondering these questions is where I find myself lately, wondering what, if anything, can break the hold...

From the "Money Isn't Everything" File

Here's a story from Money/CNN about a real Dreamchaser. Send it to someone who believes that money is the be all and end all of true happiness.

Please click on the link to read the full story.

LINK

An 80% pay cut - but it was worth it

(Money Magazine) -- Then: Sold advertising

Now: Teaches scuba to people with disabilities


Watching his legally blind daughter ski for the first time back in 1989, Jim Elliott was inspired. "She glowed with confidence," he recalls. It motivated the proud dad -- then an ad exec for the Tribune Co. -- to consider a career change.

An experienced diver, Elliott began thinking about founding a nonprofit that would use scuba to build self-esteem in disabled children.