Why everyone should poop in the woods...at least once

I firmly believe everyone should have the experience - at least once in their life - of pooping in the wilderness. Of digging a hole at least six inches deep, dropping trou, and watching their own poop land in the hole. Then filling it with soil, packing it down, and returning the surrounding earth to its original state.

I believe this not just because pooping in holes has become second nature since I started backpacking, but because I experienced real compost in my friend Lydia's yard yesterday. From start to mulch. When you see one too many potted plants or cut flower arrangements in your life, you forget where it all really comes from. Not just the postcard pictures of a farm with a guy in overalls posed casually leaning on a fence that you see from the side of the road. Not the beautiful bins of colorful, washed produce (definitely not GMO and definitely organic) at the farmers' market.

No, I'm talking about what dirt really is. How our bodies - the stuff of our skin and bones - are ultimately the same stuff as dirt. How the plants growing prettily or wildly in the ground are also the same stuff as dirt. How if you have the chance to take a shovel and pull up some plants, move them to the compost heap, then come back a few months later, you might see something that looks nothing like the original plant but a lot like dirt.

We make dirt wrong. We use it to describe the things we don't want on us ("Don't touch that! It's DIRTY!"), don't want to hear ("Don't say that DIRTY word!"), and what we work hard to get rid of ("Wash your hands...they're DIRTY!").

But DIRT is US.

Would you touch compost with your bare hands?

It was a moment of revelation - of Oneness, if you will - when my friend Lydia lifted the tarp covering the fresh heap of compost made of kitchen scraps. It was hard for me to watch all the creepy crawly worms and bugs making their way through coffee grounds, pumpkin skins, paper scraps, egg shells, and leaves.

I didn't want to have to see it. I'll admit that.

But there they were, making DIRT...the vital ingredient that fuels all life, the stuff that IS life in its final form and the source of all living things. The end...and the beginning...simultaneously.

It had been so long since I'd seen, smelled, and participated in decomposition that it woke me up. But of course that isn't exactly true. I'm surrounded by life - and DIRT - at all times, I just ignore the "dirty" parts and focus on enjoying the flowers and the fruits. I let other people handle the dirt - "do the dirty work". Or I separate myself from the "dark" or "dirty" aspects of me. I try to edit them out of my experience, as if it's better that way.

worms

As I stood there, staring at the bustling city of worms crawling in and out, up and down, through the muck, I remembered. I remembered all the ways I have tried to push away the "dirty" parts of my past, to make everything look clean all the time, to live as if the flowers - the things of Beauty I've decided I want to see - don't have deep roots that crawl through that same rich soil, black and moist with powerful fuel for life. I remembered how I've distanced myself from the earth, whenever I insisted on standing tall, head held high, looking towards the horizon of some greater dream, trying to deny the "dirt" that supported me under my feet at all times.

Staring at the pile of compost as it became compost, I witnessed an aspect of Oneness we aren't often presented. If it's true that everything is energy, that every single phenomenon is in the same field of infinite potential, then it surely applies to compost too.

It also applies to pooping in the woods.

Which is why, if you ever have the chance, you should do it. But please don't leave toilet paper in the backcountry. I'm begging you.

Or go look at a pile of compost. Study and observe how life feeds on life.

And be with everything that comes up for you - all the feelings of aversion, disgust, and wanting to turn away to experience "something better" than this.

How is the stuff you consider "dirt" in your life actually the compost pile, rich with nutrients and material for your growth and thriving?

How would you feel differently about your "poopy" circumstances if you saw them simply as compost in the making, as both the byproduct of your process and the source of all that is to come?

By all means, train your eyes to see the flowers, and use your taste to savor the sweet fruits of life. But also remember, they - and we - all need the dirt to grow.

Solving the Puzzle of the Universe

A few days ago I solved the puzzle of the universe. It came in a box. There were 500 pieces and a neat image of the final product - what the solution was supposed to look like.

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I had a partner while I was doing it. We didn't discuss how we were going to tackle the problem, we just started working on it, each in our own way. There were no words. Things just began when they began, and ended when they ended.

I noticed that I wanted to follow some instructions that were somewhere in the back of my head about "how to" solve a puzzle like this.

"Start with the edges and corners," was one set of instructions.

"Find the colored pieces first," was another.

I tried both of those, but the puzzle was just so big, so complicated, with so many parts, that I quickly got frustrated with each of those approaches. I made a tiny bit of progress, but immediately got stuck following those two paths.

So I just looked at the pile of pieces, sifted them around a little so I could feel them. I began to notice certain things stood out to me - a pattern of white squares. Letters and words. Colored lines and arrows.

Then I turned to look at the final image. I started to notice that the pattern of white squares was specific. The numbers in the squares corresponded to exact positions on the circle that defined the boundary of the universe. Above those squares were the months of the year, spelled out in large, colored letters.

I would start by finding each of the twelve months of the year. As I proceeded this way, I experienced the excitement of completing one word at a time.

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“Aha!” I would exclaim as I saw the letters of "OCTOBER" come together from three different puzzle pieces. I wasn't paying attention to the shapes of the pieces, only the emergence of the word itself.

I attacked the puzzle in this way, building one identifiable word at a time, choosing not to worry about how these twelve words would form a complete circle, or how the center of the circle - which was a detailed map of the constellations - would come together.

I just focused on those words, one "Aha!" at a time.

After about six of these, I looked up to notice my partner working on the puzzle silently, without disturbing me at all, in his own way. I noticed that he wasn't looking up nearly as much as I was. I noticed that he had lined up the pieces in front of him, and was looking more at the pieces themselves than referring to the picture of the final product we were supposed to be building.

I didn't want to take my mind off my own puzzle solving, and what he was doing was not interfering with what I was doing, so I just kept going.

I built the ring first - the pattern of white squares and numbers, representing the calendar days, and the twelve months of the year distributed evenly around the circle.

The rest of the pattern of constellations and their names were still too overwhelming for me to tackle, so I just kept working on the ring, matching what I was creating with what was printed on the box, noticing one tiny detail at a time adjacent to the ring I had put together.

By the time I had about three quarters of the ring assembled, I looked up, to find that my partner had constructed all four corners of the puzzle, which were mostly solid black, with no words at all. He had done this by looking at the shapes of the pieces, and fitting them together based on matching their edges. This was a completely different approach than mine, as I didn't even notice the actual shape of each puzzle piece - I only saw the images formed after they fit together.

A New Model of Team Work

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Miraculously, these two completely different approaches were resulting in a beautiful "team effort" that was getting the puzzle solved! My mind would not wrap around this subject because I was so engrossed in my particular approach, but I remember feeling such relief that we were not arguing or debating about what the best way to solve the puzzle - "as a team" - would be.

We were not weighing the pros and cons of each approach, trying to get each to adopt the best practices of the other. That was always my biggest nightmare about working "on a team" - that I would have to work in some way that was not optimal for me, in order to accommodate someone who was slower, weaker, or less competent than me.

I never considered the possibility that we could each retain our own styles of working, and accomplish things in our own way, while also contributing to a larger group effort. How liberating!

This was easy, peaceful, fun teamwork, that required no negotiation whatsoever. There was just a huge puzzle to be solved, and each of us was sincerely interested in approaching the solution in our own way, at the same time, together. It wasn't a competition. There couldn't be one. There were two many pieces, it was too complex, and no one could have predicted how the solution would finally come together.

It was an example showing that setting each person free to work in their own best way could also be in the best interest of the group effort. Imagine that!

Trying to understand, explain, justify, control, or influence another person's way of working would not have been productive for either us as people or for reaching a faster solution to the puzzle.

Asking the other for help was also futile, since we were arriving at our own answers in such distinctly different ways - it was as if we were decoding the puzzle into our own particular language, which could not be translated in the moment.

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Ultimately the puzzle of the universe took about five hours of work to solve. Not bad for a day's work (with a dinner break!). We kept it out for our own mutual admiration for the next four days.

Taking the Pieces Apart

Today I decided it was time to take a picture, tell the story, and take the puzzle apart again.

I noticed that there was a tinge of that feeling of regret when we adults have to take things apart. Children - ones who are younger than school age - don't seem to see the sadness of knocking over towers of blocks, messing up a stack of cards, or taking apart a train set. They love the destruction as much as the creation, if not more. They laugh and smile as things fall apart, just as when they get built.

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Children are great teachers in the nature of impermanence and non-attachment. When is it, in the course of our "maturation" and "growing up" that we become so attached to the building, and so afraid, so avoidant, of the taking apart? Or the letting things fall apart? When does the story become a tragedy in our minds?

I tried to take the point of view of a child when I took the puzzle apart today. I tried to enjoy the process of crumbling the sheets of cardboard back into their factory-cut pieces, rubbing them between my fingers to encourage them to separate and fall. I took on the task with as much zeal as a child might swing their arm against a tall stack of legos, and watch with glee as they tumble down to the floor.

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The pile of pieces fit neatly back in the box. The pieces - all 500 of them - awaited their next chance at being put into place, reconstructed into the same picture of the universe.

I took a moment to appreciate their alternate form - as just a pile of pieces in a box.

I took a moment to notice that there is as much beauty in chaos, as much opportunity to experience joy in the "falling to pieces" as there is in the building.

We just have to be willing to see it.

Photo credit: Baby with legos by Pink Sherbet Photography, used under a Creative Commons License

All other photos by the author

Tiger Mother Amy Chua Speaks...To Me!

[singlepic id=431 w=320 h=240 float=center] One of my blog readers took the liberty of sending my video on Amy Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", to Amy Chua herself! I never would have done this on my own, but that's why I put my stuff out there for others to read!

Here's Amy's email which was sent to that reader, Denise.

Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 08:36:51 -0500 From: Amy Chua Subject: Re: FW: The Music Within Us

Dear Denise:  Thank you SO MUCH for sending this to me -- and yep, Lisa totally got my book and yep, she is totally right that no one else has!!  (Only correction is that I never choose or even saw and never would have approved the awful WSJ headline..)

I think Lisa is BRILLIANT, and I love what she says and the passages and moments she singles out.  She even gets it about my dogs!!!

I am setting up a website for my book, partly because to try to correct misunderstandings, and I will post this video.  Please feel free to share all this with Lisa!

Best, Amy

I am not posting this so that you can read something written by a published author calling me "BRILLIANT". Although that's nice and all, the reason I am posting this is to encourage you to GET INFORMED before you form judgments and opinions and join in the fun of media-generated controversies. Form your own thoughts and opinions, reflect on your own life, and learn your own lessons. Do not stop at what the journalists and media or others are telling you. Do not believe what others say until you have questioned it with your own body, mind, and heart. Know that you are always free to create your own story.

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News or Entertainment?

The "awful" Wall Street Journal headline Amy's referring to, which drew so much attention to the book, was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it generated huge amounts of controversy, and therefore discussion. On the other hand, it was a misleading excerpt that did not reflect what the book was actually about. After I read it, I laughed at the overwhelming number of "news" reports that interviewed Amy solely to ask the question, "So, are Chinese mothers really superior?" Anyone who has read the book would know that this is not what it's about. A more informed journalist might have said, "Amy, your book actually had nothing to do with arguing for or against the superiority of Chinese parenting. So why the misleading headline in the Wall Street Journal?"

But that would require a journalist whose incentives were actually aligned with informing people of the truth.

It reminds me of something I learned a few days ago on a call with a news producer for one of the morning shows on a national television network (hint: not "yesterday", and not "tomorrow"). She was teaching a group of life coaches how to pitch a news story and try to get more exposure for ourselves and our businesses. The summary of the call was, "Keep in mind that on television news, we are not trying to inform people, we are trying to entertain. Our objective is to produce television that will keep audiences from changing the channel so that we earn dollars from our advertisers. We want something controversial, and we want something that everyone is talking about. If you can't package your story to meet those criteria, we're not going to be interested."

I appreciated this very candid look into the mind of a "news" producer. It's not often that someone from within the corporate ranks of the entertainment industry will share information like this so openly. Maybe I expect "dirty little secrets" like this to be kept behind closed doors, so that we'll keep tuning in and watching television and generating advertising dollars to pay the bills for the national networks.

But think about what she said for a minute. Isn't she saying that everything created for television news is motivated by entertainment value, controversy, and popular opinion? And weren't we taught at some point (in those halcyon days of our youth) that news was supposed to be objective, fact-based, and devoid of personal opinion?

Our world has changed. We have collectively created an environment in which there is no respite from sources of entertainment. It takes even more self-discipline in this kind of world to think clearly, independently, and creatively. At the very least it requires a heightened awareness to realize what we are consuming, when we're told something under the guise of "news", when we're being entertained versus being informed.

Is it news, or is it entertainment? Can you tell the difference? It's up to you.

Tiger and cub photo by Keven Law, used under a Creative Commons license

Amy Chua book photo by the author