On Acts of Kindness

Okay, I admit it: I haven't "exactly" been tracking my acts of kindness. Now, don't get me wrong, I've been doing them, I just haven't been writing them down every day (like I'm supposed to be doing). But I'm pretty sure I get at least three AOKs in during the course of each day.

There's one AOK that I do every day: Each and every time I go into the park across the street from my house — and I'm usually in there two times a day — I pick up some trash. Sometimes I pick up a lot (like the other day, when I cleaned up a full barrell of garbage that someone knocked over on purpose); sometimes I pick up an empty soday can, or a plastic bag, or some broken glass.

It's a never-ending battle, and sometimes it seems uphill. Every day I pick something up, and every day there's something new that wasn't there the day before. It's frustrating, but I know my efforts are worth something. It reminds me of a passage I read recently in the Tao Te Ching:

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

If the teacher is not respected

and the student not cared for,

confusion will arise, however clever one is.

This is the great secret.

In the end, I simply try to leave the park a little bit better than it was when I walked in. My daughter sees me doing this, and I know I'm setting a positive example.

Sometimes I pick up newspapers off one of the park benches, even though I know they served as a blanket for some homeless person who spent the night sleeping there. Even in my cleaning I feel a pinch of compassion.

This week, I picked up a small notebook for writing down my daily AOKs. And in the back, I've started a list of things to be grateful for. "A bed to sleep in every night" made the list today.

Cleaning Up My Diet

This past week, I sat down with Jill Braverman, an acquaintance of mine who is also a holistic health counselor. As part of my initiative to clean up my diet during my UBBT, I talked with Jill about diet and nutrition and my eating habits. Jill introduced me to the concept of "primary and secondary foods." According to Jill, primary foods include love, hugs, meditation, self-expression, tears, nature, downtime, close friends, and play. These things all feed our souls and our hunger for living.

Primary foods are things that feed us, but they don't come on a plate. Secondary foods, on the other hand, are the things we actually put into our mouths to chew and swallow.

According to this theory, the more primary food we receive, the less we'll depend on secondary food. The opposite is also true: the more we fill ourselves with secondary food, the less we are able to receive the primary foods of life. This certainly puts a new spin on the way I "eat!"

Falling Into a Rhythm

My Stats To Date:
Push ups: 3,000
Crunches: 3,000
Miles: 27.5
Kata Reps: 65

Falling into a rhythm now — I'm really enjoying my morning routine in the park: Every morning at about 7:00am, there's a group of 60-70 year old Chinese women doing chi-kung exercises by the ballfield. There's usually 7 or 8 of them moving and talking togehter, and when I come along, they stop to fawn over my daughter while I do my crunches on the bleachers. I don't speak a word of Chiense, and they don't speak any English, but still communication is easy. (One morning last week, they even presented me with a package of teething buiscits for Ava — how sweet!)

There are other now-familiar faces in the early-morning, too:

I often spy a man and woman doing Yang-style tai chi (long form) together on the tennis courts. Their tai chi is beautiful and graceful (although their tennis is unforgivingly awful!) ; An older gentleman does kung fu by the tot-lot; still another man stands on the park green in silent, standing meditation. It's an interesing gathering of martial artists! Who knew?

There are others whom I see every morning, too: People on their way to work; a handful of dog walkers; A Russian man walking and doing calisthenics; kids enrolled in summer school pass by and wave or pet my dog while I do my push-ups.

I'm reading "Touching Peace" by Thich Nhat Hanh and enjoying it. Also reading "The Book of Tea" by Kakuzo Okakura. Reminds me of the ceremonies I attended with Master Kaji Aso at the House of Flower Wind before he passed away.