I’m Jake Hounds, and this is One Thousand Words or Less
EPISODE 10- The Old Man and The Cloud
This year is a milestone birthday for me, and my family has already started with the old guy jokes. The other day we were watching TV and they showed Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was shot. I said, “Oh, I’ve been there,” and my daughter asked in high school. I said, You mean was I in high school when I visited? And she said, no when he was assassinated!
I don’t mind a bit of good natured ribbing about growing older, especially when I feel so optimistic about the future. I am moving past any illusion of youth, but in a Tom Cruise sort of way: I still do all my own stunts, and most of my footage is not CGI’ed.
One of my secrets for staying youthful is meditation. I’m not always consistent, but when I practice I am rewarded with a calm and balanced perspective. As I mature, I imagine myself as a kind of Obi-wan Kenobi figure, freely giving my gifts of wisdom.
However, if you ask my kids, they see me more as a guy who tells terrible jokes, bosses them around, and who is both balding and fat (I’m neither). They also hear the range of my complaints, from slightly disgruntled to all out rage.
Sometimes I can get both vocal and colorful, especially when it seems like the world is completely ignoring my wishes. I want to be calmer, to move past my biases, attitudes, and expectations, to live a more peaceful and integrated life, despite situations that bug me.
One guide in this process is the author Michael A Singer, and his amazing works The Surrender Experiment, and The Untethered Soul. In both of these books, Singer, suggests that all the suffering we experience is because the world does not align with how we want it to be. Like the driver in front of you going too slowly, or other mundane experiences that cause us, to lose our crackers.
Instead, he instructs, we should see those stressors as opportunities to surrender to the forces of the world and to let go of our specific wishes. In parenting, these moments happen frequently, and most parents approach those times with patience, care, resilience, and mindfulness. But put those experiences out in the world with strangers, and our reactions can be totally different.
Like unexpected noises in the neighborhood when I’m trying to record a podcast. I wish this was purely hypothetical, but every time I get set up to record, some truck is on the street, or someone is trimming a tree. Every. Single. Time.
It reminds me of my friend who lives in Maui. You’d think Hawaii by the beach would be blue waves and pineapples, but when we speak on the phone, one of his neighbors is always cutting their lawn. He says it happens every day, and it drives him nuts. I guess it’s lucky I can go crazy without the added expense of beach front living.
My list of irritants aren’t really anything out of the ordinary, I’m sure you get agitated by many of the same things. Bad or unsafe drivers, dogs owners who let their pets run free on hiking trails and public parks, or the dog sticking its head out the car window. I always want to punch those dogs in the face! There’s the rampant corruption among politicians and corporations, who place their needs above the common good.
There is ignorance, where people will hold to their versions of reality despite either being oblivious to truth, or unwilling to accept it. I also don’t like hypocrisy, especially in others.
As Singer describes, life provides ample opportunities to practices surrendering by letting go of these expectations of life, other people, and situations, and simply flow with the circumstance as it presents. He recommends literally letting go when these powerful thoughts and emotions overtake you, as in releasing your hands open as if to drop something.
Despite my spiritual intent, and the coy way I spin every occurrence either for or against me, and my temper which can express the full rainbow from simple muttering under my breathe, to stomping around, to hollering at a situation. I guess its no surprise that my kids, the people who observe and analyse my every movement, see me as some kind of grumpy old man.
Some days I see myself that way, old Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud. Singer recommends separating out those angry thoughts or grumpy feelings from the self experiencing them as a way to recognize them as fleeting.
To help me realize this distinction, I sought guidance from a higher power; from the great oracle of the 21st century: I asked Chat AI to create some zen koans so I could transcend grumpiness more and surrender to the moment by provoking my awareness as situations occur.
Now when I am stuck in traffic, I don’t need to identify with either my blinding rage or the morons triggering my deal, instead I can find a zen moment as in this koan:
“In the vast sky, a cloud drifts by, unperturbed. The old man yells, but who hears? In silence, the answer whispers.”
Or when I hear a dog bark outside my office and then another, and then some other dogs walk by, and they all bark at each other, I can consider these sage words:
“As the old man yells at the cloud, the cloud simply continues its journey, unaffected by the noise below. In this moment, where does the true power lie?”
I really do get mad about the injustices in the world, corruption, poverty, war. It’s a righteous indignation. Except nobody cares what I think.
“The old man’s anger rises like a storm, but the cloud remains serene, untouched by his tumult. Is it the cloud that mocks him, or his own mind?”
I’m not sure how well this approach will work, but I do feel a bit calmer actually telling you the story. - what the actual…!
This has been 1000 words or less, I’m Jake Hounds.
Thanks for listening.
One Thousand Words or Less is one hundred percent created by flawed natural human intelligence. Except for the Zen Koans in this episode which were created by Chat AI.
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