Anyway, few colleagues have insinuated that someone must have said something that hurt my feelings or I'm disappointed with our alumni association as perhaps the main reason why I stop Brain Waves. Rest assured that it takes a lot more than just words to hurt my feelings. No, I could not think of anything that would get me disappointed with our association. Certainly I have some disagreement like many of us, but not disappointment. A significant number of the 66, however, are asking why stop now, and if I love what I’ve been doing, why stop? And a couple of colleagues are asking; what’s the significance of five years? Believe me. The reason is not love lost, for there is no love lost between you and me as far as I’m concerned, or between me and Brain Waves, or between me and our CIM alumni association. The main reason is interest shift. And the significance of five years is that it had been my goal when I started Brain Waves and it’s what I had committed myself to do. It has nothing to do with anything else.

     You see, when I promise myself something or when I commit myself to doing something for a certain period of time, I feel obligated to fulfill it. My conscience will not give me peace if I rationalize or make excuses to justify my failure of not being able to fulfill my commitment. Excuses have never been and will never be one of the basic ingredients of a quality life. They can never stand to be tested against the flow of life. So I avoid them and do the best I can. It’s a lot better to do what you promise to and fail, than make excuses for failing to do it unless there’s an emergency.

    Gertrude Stein said: “Let me listen to me and not to them.” I’ve spent a number of times in solitude the past few months mulling over my decision to stop Brain Waves, and do something else that I want and prefer to do. Will I be able to do what I now want to do and still continue Brain Waves? Do I have the time and energy? Etc. I have always believed that the privacy of silence, not the asking for advices or talking to others, often offers us the honest answer we need. It’s in our solitude that the thoughts that visit our brains can get the necessary attention they need. It’s in our solitude that we actually come to know ourselves - to realize and understand our strengths and weaknesses, to acknowledge our commitment to life, and to appreciate the many nuances that distinguish us from others. It’s in the stillness that we detect our soul’s inclinations. It’s what I do when I have a hard time making decision – spend time alone with myself – to find the clarity I need to make the best forward movement. Actions from our heart have a way of softening our struggle for a decision.

    I believe we all know that our lives, yours and mine, are a series of selections. We select projects to do, activities to participate in, and friendships to cultivate, etc. And often we’ll have to forego some of the selections we’ve made, not because we don’t like or love them anymore, but mainly because our interest has shifted and thus we no longer have the time and energy to be able to do our best for some of these selections. We don’t want to sacrifice our best and ignore the quality of our works just to be able to produce anything. Do we? Of course, there are those who would do that, but not me. It’s because if I do that - producing something less than my best, in other words, providing you with something less than what I believe you deserve - it’s going to be hard for me to live with myself.

    Since spring, my extra time and energy have been spent mostly on attracting, if not taking care of God’s little creatures. As I have mentioned on the previous issue of Brain Waves, I have been fascinated by the birds, bees and butterflies even without the beers and barbecue in our backyard. I just love doing something to attract them like making gardens, planting flowers, shrubs, bushes, berries and trees, and I’ve planned many back-breaking projects in the next 3-5 years that I want to do them myself. I don’t want to hire someone for these projects just to have them finished early. For one thing, money is tight and I want to do them one at a time. I want to be in control like I've got the world by the balls. For another, I enjoy looking at the results of my own labor. I want to bask in the glory of my own creation.

    While many things can be sought after, worked hard for, or struggled over, there are things simply exist - and exist well. God’s little creatures are just a delight for me to watch, and I watch them everyday, in the morning before going to work and in the afternoon when I come home from work. They make me ignore the annoyances of my job as I look forward to watch them again and make sure they’ve got everything they need.

    I love feeding the birds, reading and learning about them, watching them and their different behaviors, listening to their songs or calls, etc. and in short, I’m just obsessed with them like I’ve never loved anything like it before. For some reason, they make me feel useful, alive, accepted and appreciated. I thought the birds would migrate when cold weather starts, but to my pleasant surprise, many of the birds are staying and they’re hungry, feeding on my feeders. The little ones like the chickadees, for example, need to eat frequently especially in the afternoon before dark because they need the fat they eat to insulate them from the cold during the night. That fat is metabolized overnight so that they have to get to the feeders to eat early in the morning even with the frost or snow still on the ground, or they may freeze to death. Poor little creatures.

    But what monopolizes my attention the past several weeks is the woodpecker that lives way up on a dead tree in our backyard. He plays his beak drumming against the tree in staccato rhythm, but every now and then he changes his rhythm from marching to jazz to Beatles to hard rock, etc. especially when he sees me doing something outside. I’d like to think he is playing for me. I have been trying to attract woody to come down and visit my feeders so far with no success. But I won’t stop doing something until he finally accepts my invitation. There are two of them but I rarely see the other one. I really don’t know which woodpecker is male or female. I just assume that the female maybe nesting.

    God’s little creatures are what my interest shift is all about, believe it or not. Helping these creatures is just gratifying to me. It gives me some spiritual enhancement, peace, pleasure and many more pleasant feelings to watch these creatures playing, feeding, pecking something on the ground, basking in the sunshine, and in short - enjoying life. Except for the predators like the hawks and peregrines which fortunately I haven't seen in our area although there are so many buzzards around, the birds get along well with each other, the big ones like the mourning doves and cardinals and the small ones like the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and sparrows are feeding together, many on the ground pecking the seeds that other birds spilled from above. They are happy and satisfied for what they get.

    Nature, insignificant it may be to our life, if we learn to appreciate it with delight and be able to connect it in some way, has a way of showing us the wonders of greater things. Thomas Bailey Aldrich said: “What is more cheerful …. than an open wood fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring.”

     The birds show us the wonder of life in its simplicity and that the simpler life is, the happier it is. Yet despite so many choices, we, humans, almost always choose complexity, all too naïve to think that behind every complexity, we find the happiness we are looking for. So we fuss and fight, compare and compete, even cheat and lie to gain advantage over others, often unaware that competition and comparison breed envy and jealousy, spawning hatred and resentment. Further, by comparing ourselves to others, we’d unwittingly ignore what we have, what we are capable of doing, and we’d be looking at what everyone has, what they are capable of doing. As we focus our energy and attention on others rather than on ourselves, we hinder our ability to discover our own skills and talents. Thus we’d end up envying the qualities others possess

    So instead of simply sitting back and enjoying what we have and what we’ve accomplished, we continue to race through life struggling over something we see far into the future and unable to see the ones that are right in front of us, unaware that doing so, we are only robbing ourselves of the opportunity to see more than just one little slice of life. We struggle and suffer in order to be happy. It’s like we want to be miserable to be happy. Somehow the birds have known all along that simplicity is more satisfying than complexity.

    Happy Holidays! Again!

    Clem

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