If Life is Really as Short as They Say, Then Why is the Night so Long?

I came across this song while browsing http://garr.posterous.com/if-life-is-really-as-short-as-they-say-then-w
Awesome post, awesome song, I recommend you check it out.

So I decided to try to answer 2 out of three questions posed in this song.

What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?
How can a man like me remain in the light?

And I'm going to let you guys answer the last one.
If life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?

Can there really be an answer to such questions? Who knows such things, but life is all about failing forward and if the choice is

1. Not trying and failing or
2. Trying and maybe succeeding

 Then I say we give it a whirl.

 

Q. What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?

A. Re-frame it.

Once I was sitting next to a teacher, much like the one in this song, and he told me about his "wellness knee".

When he was a young man, he severely injured his knee in a car accident and had to get several operations just to be able to walk again. His knee was shattered and it took months of recovery just to be able to walk again. He did recover, but never fully. His knee was never at 100% again.

Now that he was a man of certain age, his bad knee was a barometer of sorts. He called it his wellness knee. If he was eating right, getting enough sleep, exercising, meditating, and generally speaking taking good care of himself, his knee would be fine. If however, he was slacking-off in one of these areas, his knee would start to hurt. His bad knee was an indicator of how well he was living. It was his wellness knee.

I thought that was a brilliant way to re-frame a negative and turn it into a positive.

Can this method be used to glue the pieces of a broken heart back together? I think so.

Whenever it happened to me, I wrote a song about it. My broken heart became a treasure trove of inspiration. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the artist who wrote this song started in a similar predicament.

There are 3 occasions that I remember having a non-romantic pain from a broken heart. Those may not be as intense and can serve as a training ground of sorts. The three times I remember was when Freddie Mercury died, the second when Frank Zappa died and third and very recent when Daddy (Cesar Millan’s pit bull) died.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I remember having a distinct case of a slightly bruised, cracking at the seams, damn-near broken heart. In these instances I always had a tendency to remove myself from the feelings and observe them at a distance. Later, I’ve learned that in Buddhism, this is known as Observer/Observed. A kind of out-of-body experience that with little bit of practice, anyone can use to take them selves out of a situation (even if you are in the middle of it) and take on a bird’s eye view.

It doesn’t matter if you are observing your feelings and noticing how the pain makes you feel alive; or if you are observing a business meeting and noticing the entire picture, the details, taking in everyone’s posture, the mood, etc.

Final word on reframing. Humans define themselves though suffering, it’s been said.
If you can take something bad and turn it into a wellness knee, then you know what to do with a broken heart.

 

Q. How can a man like me remain in the light?

A. Its not the darkness, it’s the opportunity.

I struggled with this one, as I imagine many of us do. You see, when I was a young man living in Bosnia, Serbian armies had invaded my country. I’ve lost my father in that war, many of my close friends had perished, and I became a refugee living in tenement camps until eventually I landed in the good ol’ US of A. For many years, I’ve carried resentment and pain towards Serbs.

Until one day I heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama speak about a young boy who was forced to flee his land narrowly escaping his prosecutors who did their best to track him down and kill him, for this young boy was the spiritual leader of a nation. That boy of course, was Dalai Lama himself.

At that time, Dalai Lama was forced to take on the burden of a displaced and destroyed nation, assume both spiritual and political leadership while in exile, all the while practicing love, compassion and understanding.

So how do you show compassion to your persecutors? This is what he said and I paraphrase.

I realized, he said, that Chinese were a challenge and an obstacle I needed to deal with, but I didn’t feel resentment, hatred nor need for revenge. Instead, I saw it as an opportunity to practice forgiveness.

An opportunity to practice forgiveness.

I kinda took on faith that it was the right thing to do and it turned out that it was. The act of forgiveness is ultimately self-serving because it takes the burden away from us. The burden that we would otherwise take with us in all future situations.

Your turn.

Q. If life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?

 

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Hi, my name is...

Hi, my name is Dino Dogan and I am Dogan Dogs Video Blogs (it rhymes if you say it with a British accent :-)

Top 4 reasons why I decided to start this blog

1. The ideas presented here have been roaming around my head for years and to make sense of it all (and preserve my sanity in the process :-) I decided to turn it into a thesis
2. In order to test these ideas and sharpen the various points, I need your help
3. There is no one out there presenting information on Human-Dog Equation in quite the same way (or even close to it). 
4. The dog problem we have in developed countries (I’m in USA) is not only unfortunate (more dogs each year wind up in shelters and euthanized) but it’s also emblematic of a larger problem, which is exactly what I attempt to address in Human-Dog Problem Tree.

Seven years of my professional career (Network Engineering) was spent in corporate training which I’ve used as a real-life lab to test many learning theories, delivery methods, teaching principals and knowledge-transfer peculiarities. These findings were later used when developing a critical look at the way adults learn, seek and receive information, communicate (both internally and externally) and apply learned info, specifically as it pertains to Human-Dog Relationship. 

My personal interests were just as important in developing the Human-Dog Problem Tree.
My background is in music (I’m a singer/songwriter) and fitness (specifically as it pertains to Martial Arts), I’m a biker (find me on http://2wheeltips.com) and perhaps most importantly, I’m a life-long student.

While the information used to develop the Human-Dog Problem Tree was culled from many disciplines, few deserve a special mention.

Dog training is the obvious one but it didn’t stop there. You will find traces of evolutionary biology, social neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, Buddhism, economy, fitness and nutrition in my Human-Dog Thesis.
I’ve pulled some information from all these disciplines to develop what I believe is a comprehensive look at all points affecting our relationship with dogs.

You can contact me at dogandogs@gmail.com

For those that have made it thus far, tell me little bit about yourself in the comments section.

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Everything you know about dog training is wrong. Here is why - PART TEN

Let’s do a quick review of the last three posts which focused on the 2^nd branch of Human-Dog Problem tree.

The Nature of Modern Existence… and Dogs - Human Biology
The Nature of Modern Existence… and Dogs – Human Pshicology
Transitional Nature of Today's Society

 

The following highlights can be extrapolated

There are two foundational principles affecting our relationship with dogs that are directly related to the conditions inherent in the nature of modern living:

1)      Our modern lives are misaligned with our Biology

a)     
For 90% of human existence (for 90+ thousand years that is), humans have spent their time hunting, scavenging and gathering

b)     
To deny the imprint this has left on our biology is to deny our nature.

 

2)      Our modern lives are misaligned with our Psychology.  

a)     
For 90+ thousand years, better part of our day was spent ensuring our survival.

b)     
Surviving gave direction and meaning to our existence.

c)     
Since “surviving” is no longer a challenge (in terms of food, shelter, procreation, etc), people struggle to find direction and meaning to their existence

d)     
The rest of the time we were free to pursue other interests (cave painting, tool development, etc.)

e)     
We are biologically and psychologically programmed to conserve energy. This was useful 90 thousand years ago. Now that modern living entails plentiful and highly nutritious food, cars that move us from place to place, and sedentary existence (office work and lack of migrations), our predispositions are working against us. We must adjust.

 

3)      We are –as a society- in a transitional phase. 

a)     
As a society we have made a clumsy move forward and away from our innate instincts, nature and biology

b)     
Our relationship with dogs has changed in few fundamental ways. They use to be partners in hunt/migrations, alarm against intruders, etc. Now days, they are child-substitutes and pets, which is a totally new concept to both dogs and humans.

The point that will be made in future articles will be this.

1)      We can use dogs as a connection to our Past

a)     
Our lives use to be much more active then now.

b)     
Your dog can be your fitness trainer and a motivator to engage in Paleolithic activities, even if it is just a simulation/approximation (migrating, walking, running, hunting, etc)

2)      We can use our dogs as a connection to the Future

a)     
In order to become better humans we need to go through a new and adjusted (for change in human and dog environment) edification process in order to deepen our understanding of dog’s needs.

b)     
The information we need, like most information we need in life, is not learned in school. We must become life-long learners

3)      We can use our dogs as a connection to Enlightenment

a)     
I am not talking about new age enlightenment. Instead, I am talking about ways that will help us live closer to our biological and psychological core.

4)      We can use our dogs as a connection to Meaning

a)     
Just as there are Service Dogs (bomb sniffing dogs for example) I am advocating that we become Service Humans to our dogs.

What happens when we put these four factors together?

You get a fit, healthy human, who is focused on true learning (as opposed to indoctrination type learning we engage-in in schools… more on that later), who is living closer to his or her biological and psychological core and is being useful and more aware of his dog’s needs; and quite possibly being more aware of everyone’s needs.  

I promise to approach these topics in a very useful and pragmatic way. See you then.

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