Agreeing to Disagree

I was going through some old journals the other day and came across an email I printed out in October of 2004. It was a message I sent to my son, Mike, the morning after we had had a very angry "discussion" about politics.


Then, as now, we were days away from a major election. The Bush-Kerry presidential race dominated the news. Mike was pro-Bush. I insisted that George W Bush was the WORST president in the entire history of the United States.


It is embarrassing to remember, but we had reached the point where we were actually yelling into our respective phones -- him on his cell phone in Virginia, and me on my landline here on the "left coast." We were like people on those stupid political shows that spend the entire program trying to out-shout each other.

Then suddenly... there was silence. 

The battery in Mike's phone had died. I sat there for a minute, dazed. I was shaking from the emotion of arguing. I was ashamed of myself for letting the conversation get out of hand. The room was SO quiet - did all that shouting really happen or did I just imagine it? It was late, after midnight on the east coast. Should I call him back on his other line? I didn't want to continue the argument. But I didn't want us to end the day on such a negative note.


I was just about to call him when my phone rang. It was Mike. He started talking about something completely unrelated to politics. I was relieved. I began to relax. We chatted a few minutes, said our "good nights" and "I love yous," and hung up. The tension and anger had melted away.


As I fell asleep that night, I thought about my relationship with my son. We've been butting heads all his life. I was an anti-war, anti-gun, no nukes kind of a mom. And I wasn't too keen on the idea of motorcycles, either.

Mike is my polar opposite. He is career military, a gun collector and member of the NRA, a graduate of the US Navy's prestigious Nuclear Power School, and I have lost track of the number of motorcycles he has owned in his lifetime. 

In many families, those differences would be enough to destroy a relationship. Yet somehow we have avoided that fate. In fact, we really enjoy each other's company. As you can imagine, we had LOTS of arguments when he was growing up. But as I wrote in the email the morning after our argument 6 years ago:

"... we have never succeeded in changing each other's minds. But in spite of that, I always feel close to you and I always feel like we love each other. I love you just as much as I would if you and I agreed on everything. ... I personally believe that our relationships are more important than politics." 

His response: "I agree and I love you too."

Somewhere in this exchange, I felt like I had caught hold of something more significant than just me and my son arguing and making up. I had grasped the edge of a train of thought that I wanted to follow. It began with the question:

Why was it that I could have explosive political arguments with my son, and still have a good relationship with him? And why was it that with other people in my life those arguments led to bitterness, mistrust and deterioration of the relationship?

I thought about this off and on for several months. In the meantime, I became fascinated with Byron Katie's process of examining beliefs that she calls, The Work. The process is beautifully simple. You begin with a statement that you believe is true, ask yourself four questions, then turn the statement around. It is remarkable how this simple exercise can shift thinking just enough to allow for some major insights. It became my favorite new pastime as I went through my days, questioning my thinking on just about everything.


One of Katie's questions is: "How do you feel when you think this thought?" I applied this by asking myself how I feel during political arguments and there I found the answer to my earlier questions. When I argue with my son, I feel frustrated. (Jeez, why doesn't he GET it?!) But in political arguments with other people, I have often felt -- scared. 


Neither emotion, frustration or fear, is pleasant. But frustration can easily dissolve. All it takes is changing the subject or finding something funny in the situation. But fear is something else altogether. Fear evokes the fight, flight or freeze response. Stress chemicals flood the cells of the body, preparing us to deal with a perceived threat. If there is no resolution (and with political arguments, there rarely is), the body stays on high alert for a long time. And we feel miserable. No wonder we want to avoid people who insist on "talking" politics.


I began to watch people in social situations when political issues came up. It seemed to me that the most passionate political people often appeared to be the most fearful. Their "passion" was how they dealt with their fear. If they could get other people to agree with them, they felt better, safer. That led to another question:

What are we really afraid of? Why do we even care?

I think it's just this simple - we are afraid that somebody else's ideas will "take over" and we will have to do something we don't want to do, or be forced to stop doing something we enjoy. I don't think it is any more complicated than that. We see a headline, hear a particular phrase, observe someone else's fear and it triggers a sense of threat. When we're threatened, all we have at our disposal is a choice of stress responses: attack, run like hell or stand like a deer caught in the headlights. When we're scared, we can't analyze anything, access our creativity or even think straight.

I've decided that if there is any real threat to our existence, it isn't a conservative or a liberal, Republican or Democrat - it is FEAR.  

We all experience it, but we don't have to live in it. We get to decide if we're going to let fear (and by extension, fear-mongers) run our lives. We are free to examine our thinking and reach for thoughts that feel better. From that better feeling place, we can create a better world.

As Buckminster Fuller said, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." 

A "new model" for my own thinking is one that came, again, from Katie's work. At the end of each inquiry is what she calls a "turn around." That means taking the original statement and asking yourself if its exact opposite could be true.


The subject of politics is upsetting to many of us because we don't feel like we have any control over government. We elect people and hope for the best. We are stuck with whatever "they" decide to do. Government is something that's done to us, not for us. That's how I used to see it, until I turned it around. Once I was willing to consider that government might be bottom up, not top down, I felt more at ease.

I no longer see politics as the cause of our problems. Now I see it as the effect of mass consciousness. Politicians like to think they are leaders. But in my "new model," I see them simply as people who function as mirrors, reflecting our own thinking back at us. The macrocosm is a larger version of the microcosm.

This cause and effect idea might sound crazy to you, but I invite you to just tuck that idea into the back of your mind and observe. Pay attention to the conversations and behaviors around you. Think about the typical complaints about government: not listening; playing the blame game; wasting money; complaining and bickering; refusing to work with certain people; criticizing without proposing new ideas or reasonable solutions. See if you find any matches.


Watch also for the ways our collective fears play out. A politician who backs down on principles in order to placate someone is acting from fear. Attack ads are all fear-based. People say they hate them, but they work. They work because they tap into the collective fears of the constituency. Those ads only resonate with people who live in fear. If a politician wins a race primarily with attack ads, it is because the collective emotional set point of the electorate is fear. To a person who does not live in fear, those ads are either annoying or downright funny.


(Be sure to note the political ads Google serves up on this blog to see some examples of what I just wrote.)


Since that night 6 years ago, Mike and I have had many conversations. But we haven't had any more arguments about politics. Once in a while, he'll make a provocative comment and chuckle, waiting to see, I guess, if I'll take the bait. But I don't. There's not much emotional charge on politics for me anymore.

To paraphrase a classic Pogo cartoon, "We have met the government and 'they' are us." We don't have to change Washington. We have to change ourselves.

How I Became a Landlady

I never thought I would own rental property. I'd heard too many stories about careless renters and middle-of-the-night emergencies for that to seem like a good idea.

However, as I am about to tell you, I suddenly, and quite magically, became a landlady
in the summer of 2002, while on a mission to do something to improve my financial situation.

At the time, I was newly single, living on a combination of savings and income from my landscape design practice. I had money from a divorce settlement plus a modest nest egg invested in a 401K. I was working with a financial advisor who put my money into mutual funds and bond ladders. She assured me that I was doing all the right things. My money would grow and I would be prepared for retirement.

But as time went on, my brokerage statements told a different story. Each month, I watched my assets shrink at an alarming rate.  I asked my advisor if there weren't some other investment options. She encouraged me to stay the course. She showed me articles and charts showing that the stock market was, over decades, the best way to accumulate money. She showed me more charts showing how people who get out of the market and come back later make far less than people who buy and hold. Again, she told me that I was on the right path. 

I wasn't reassured by the charts and graphs. I was in my 50s. I could not afford to wait and see if the "buy and hold" strategy would work. Nor did I have disposable income available to feed the 401K kitty every month. I needed my money to work for me right then, not sometime down the road. In spite of what my advisor said, I was sure there had to be a better way.

There is a Buddhist saying: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

In my case, the teacher came in the form of a book: Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." Even though this book had been a best seller for a long time, it had been flying under my radar. But once my interest in finding better ways of investing picked up, I started to pay attention to whatever information crossed my path.

I was drawn to this book because of the title. My late father - a good, kind, hardworking man - had always struggled to make a living. I felt life hadn't been very fair to my dad. He deserved better. What was it that other men knew about work and money that he didn't? I wanted to find out.

As I started reading, I realized why "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was so popular. It gave me hope and a completely new way to look at money. I could not put it down! The idea that instead of working for money, money should work for me made so much sense. This was exactly the information I had wanted, and never received, from the financial advisors I'd worked with over the years. (If you've never read this book, it is well worth your time and the few dollars Amazon will charge to bring it to your door. A lot has changed in the world since this book was written, but the basic principles of building cash flow streams and putting your money to work for you are just as applicable today.)

I finished reading the book just before falling asleep that night. I woke up excited about what I had just learned and eager to apply that knowledge. But first, I had business to attend to. I had a meeting scheduled with clients ready to discuss the next phase of their landscape design.

I will never forget driving to that appointment. It was a beautiful summer morning. I was high on the possibilities that were opening up for me. And as I drove across the I-90 floating bridge from Seattle to Bellevue, I repeated to myself over and over, "I don't know how I am going to do it, but I am going to have assets that produce income. I don't know how I am going to do it, but I am going to have assets that produce income." 

I arrived at my clients' home and we began our meeting. About halfway through, the phone rang and the husband excused himself to answer it. He came back a few minutes later, very excited. The call was from a real estate broker who was helping them (interestingly enough!) move their money from the stock market into a portfolio of investment properties. Their broker had years of investment experience and was teaching them how to choose and manage properties. He was calling to let them know that the offer they made on a property had just been accepted.

I could not believe the turn this conversation had taken! I had been obsessed with the idea of investment possibilities on the way to their house. I had no idea what those possibilities might look like until that phone call, but what my clients had to say about real estate investment sounded interesting and their excitement was contagious. I left the meeting with their broker's phone number.

I called the broker when I got home. I told him that I'd like to meet with him, but didn't want to waste his time since I wasn't a high income earner. I briefly outlined my situation and how much I might want to invest. He invited me to come in to talk. He said he wouldn't charge me for his time and that within an hour we would know whether real estate investment would be a realistic possibility for me or not.

A few days later, we met. At the end of our meeting he told me that I was in better shape than I thought.  Based on the money I had available to invest, he said I could qualify to buy either a triplex or four-plex, provided that I would live in one of the units. I told him that I didn't want to leave my neighborhood. He advised me not to get too attached to that idea because properties didn't come available in that area very often. As I left his office, he said, "Remember this is not an emotional decision. It's not like buying a personal residence. This is a business decision."

OK, I heard him, but I left his office SO excited! I could do this! I couldn't remember the last time I felt so enthusiastic. I drove home, buzzing with anticipation. I could not believe how quickly things seemed to be falling into place. I had finished reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" only 5 days earlier and already I was on my way to owning a major asset that would produce income! It was almost unbelievable.

But there was more to come! As I pulled into the parking area next to my apartment, I saw that while I was meeting with the broker, a sign had been posted at the triplex across the street from me. It said "For Sale by Owner."

I could hardly believe my eyes! I immediately called the real estate broker, who, upon hearing the excitement in my voice, again reminded me that buying investment property should not be an emotional decision. Nonetheless, the property happened to be priced right. I made an offer. It was accepted. Less than a month later, the deal closed. I was a landlady.

I have never, for a moment, regretted that decision.

[All of this happened before I'd heard of Jerry and Esther Hicks and before movies like "What the Bleep!?" and "The Secret" came out.]

My landlady story is proof to me that: Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen. Nothing is too good to last.

Listening to the Train

A few weeks ago, I went down to Portland, Oregon, to visit friends. Portland is about 175 miles from Seattle and, by car, the trip takes roughly three hours, traffic permitting. Which is to say that it is better to plan on four hours each way. Traffic along Interstate 5 between the two cities has become steadily more congested and, over time, making the trip by car has lost its charm for me. These days, I take the train.

The trip on Amtrak takes 3-1/2 hours from Seattle to Portland, with 5 or 6 stops along the way. I can read a book, watch a movie, walk around, get lunch or take a nap. But on this particular day, I amused myself, as you will see, by taking pictures out the window of freight trains as they passed alongside us.

Freight trains move more freight across the US (42%) than any other form of transport. In terms of ton-miles, trucks come in a distant second (28%). Trains are everywhere, it seems, their tracks crisscrossing the nation, connecting cities and rumbling across the wide open spaces between rural communities.

But most of the time, I don't much notice trains. I hear them, of course, and see them in my peripheral vision as I am driving to and from downtown Seattle on Highway 99. But mostly, trains run in the background of my life. So on this particular day, I was was surprised to find that sitting in a window seat on a train, photographing other trains, was a thoroughly engaging and thoughtful way to pass the time.

Visually, trains have a lot to offer. Different sizes, colors. Forms that follow function, like the tanker below.

When I pay attention, trains bring back memories. As I looked out the window, "ridin' the train," the Grateful Dead's rendition of Casey Jones easily came to mind. As did Arlo Guthrie's voice, singing the chorus of "City of New Orleans."

Freight trains remind me of childhood. I grew up in San Francisco's East Bay Area in a town then called Irvington (which later became Fremont). Our house was in the middle of the block. At the end of the block was a pickle factory and, running perpendicular to our street, the railroad tracks. Even now, 50 years later, I have a clear memory of laying awake on hot summer nights, the windows open to catch any bit of breeze. The air was heavy with the sour smell from the pickle vats. (I wonder now what kind they were. Dill?) And the only sounds were the clatter of passing trains and the groan of train cars being rearranged.

In those days, homeless men, hobos we called them, would sneak onto empty train cars and ride the rails from one town to another. When they got off the train, they would go door to door, offering to do chores in exchange for something to eat. Since our house was just a half block from the tracks, we got to see these fellows on a fairly regular basis. Looking back, it is surprising to me that my mother, one of the least trusting people I've ever known, used to actually "hire" some of these guys. She'd occasionally give a man some outdoor job to do and then set about making sandwiches and coffee while he worked. She would never let me go outside while he was there. She would never let him come inside the house. After he finished his work, she would put his food outside and instruct him to knock on the door and hand her the empty dishes when he finished. 

But of all my memories involving trains, the most indelible is one from a time in my 20s when my sons were little boys. At that time, we were living in southern Illinois near St. Louis, and I had to cross at least one set of train tracks to get anyplace I needed to go. In those days I was usually in a hurry, trying to cram as much as possible into my day. Having to wait for a train (or anything) did not set well with me.

One particular day I was driving with my sons: Brett, who was around 4, and Mike, two years younger. I was running late for something or other and, of course, we got caught by a train. I sat there fuming and ranting about stupid trains, and and why is this thing so long, and why can't they run them at night so they don't screw up people's lives during the day, and... honestly, I don't know what all I was going on about. After a few minutes, I heard Brett's clear little voice.

"Mommy, why are you so mad?" he asked. "Mike and I like the train. We like the way it sounds. Roll down your window so we can listen to it."

I sat there embarrassed, realizing that the adult in the car was not the person behind the wheel. My son was right. What was the point in getting upset? Being upset wasn't going to make the train go faster or keep me from being late. I was going to have to wait, pure and simple. It was up to me to decide how I wanted to spend that time; and there was at least one other choice besides being angry and miserable.

So I rolled my window down. And the three of us sat there, in silence, listening to the train. And in spite of myself, I enjoyed it. 

My wise 4-year-old boy is now a 40-year-old man. But I remember his words from that day every time I am stopped by a train. And unless it is raining sideways, as it sometimes does in the Northwest, I push the little button inside my car that lowers the window, and I listen.

A Love Story

I had an apartment for rent. It was a sweet two-bedroom place in a beach community. Built in the 1920s, it had bead-board ceilings, tiny closets and a huge front deck with a view of the water. Its charm and location had always made it easy to rent. Except for this time.

It was high summer, that time of year when everyone wants to live at the beach. I showed the apartment to countless prospects, lowered the rent a couple of times, heard many glowing compliments about the place, but still I had no renter. After weeks of this, I realized that I had not been very "on purpose" in my approach. I hadn't taken the time to set some intentions about who I wanted for tenants. So I took a few minutes to think about that.

I decided that I wanted a couple living here. I didn't care if they were straight or gay. Young or old. Or what their ethnic backgrounds were. I simply wanted tenants who were happy with themselves as individuals, and as a couple. No drama. Once I decided that, I waited to see who would show up. 

A day later, a young woman from the neighborhood, whom I'd known for a couple of years, told me that she was interested in renting the apartment. She said she couldn't swing the rent on her own, so she would have to find a roommate. My heart sank a bit. I really wanted a couple in that space. But on the other hand, I had always felt a lot of affection for this young woman and I knew that she would find a good person to share that space with her. So I let it go and resigned myself to the idea that I'd have roommates for tenants. (Besides, the law is pretty clear on this - I can reject prospective tenants on the basis of financial or criminal issues, but not because they fail to fit my preferences.)

She ran an ad on craigslist that night and right away got a response from a man who was eager to find a place near the beach. She had had male roommates in college and didn't see his gender as a problem. So they met for coffee, talked about their lifestyle preferences and decided that they could make the roommate situation work. She called me to say that he would contact me to set up a time to see the apartment.

As soon as I met him, I liked him. We did the apartment walkthrough and he took a rental application to fill out. After he left, I thought, "Hmmm, if he's not dating anyone and she's not dating anyone, these two would make a great couple." Then I laughed and shrugged off the idea. The important thing was that I had finally found good tenants for my apartment.

A few weeks after they moved in, they had a house warming party and invited me to join them. After I was introduced to their friends and families, I got something to eat and started looking around at the way they had decorated the apartment. I began to notice photos of the two of them here and there and in each of them, they seem to be standing a little closer to each other than roommates ordinarily would be. I have to admit that I hadn't completely let go of the idea that they would make a great couple. So I chalked this observation up to my imagination, until I saw hinged frames with a photo of the two of them on one side, and what appeared to be a poem on the other. 

The title of the poem was "An Ode to Craigslist," written by the male roommate. In it, he thanks the online service for bringing him not only a wonderful roommate, but a woman who is so much more. As I continued to read, I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I realized that I got what I had asked for. Not quite in the way I expected, but in a way more wonderful than I would have imagined. I was looking for people already in a good relationship to come rent the apartment. I never dreamed that two bright, happy individuals would rent the apartment first and then become a joyful couple.

As long as they lived in this building, I felt that there was a happy little glow about the place. It was a bittersweet day when, just before their lease was up, they came to tell me that they had bought a house and were moving out. I was happy for them; they were so excited to move into their first home. I was also sad to see them leave the beach house. 

On Christmas morning of the year they moved out, they came down to take a walk along the beach. He suggested that they walk by the beach house for old times' sake. And here in front of the building, he asked her to marry him. She said yes. They rang my doorbell to tell me the news. I cried.

Fast forward a few years -- their daughter is now 3-1/2 and I get to see her often. We spend time at the beach where she builds sand castles and hunts for pretty rocks. She is a beautiful little girl and I feel so fortunate to have her in my life. In just a few weeks, she will have a new baby brother. We can't wait to meet him!  

One of the best things about a love story is that it never ends. It has its own life, its own vibration. That vibration ripples far and wide, blessing everyone and everything it touches. Think about your life: what love story can you tell?