In the aftermath of the holidays and a refrigerator full to the brim with leftovers, I remember a disturbing fact: 1 billion people in the world are hungry while we in America discard - throw away - 40 percent of our food a day (I heard that the estimate is about 1200 calories per person per day). Do the math. If we - 325 million strong - stopped wasting food - we could feed perhaps 130 million people with what we already discard!

Remember when no one wore seat belts and littering was commonplace in America?

I do. It was the way of the world when I was a child. We would throw paper or garbage out the car window as if it was nothing at all. That was the norm of behavior until an awareness campaign changed our mindset. “Buckle up for safety buckle up”….and soon we all wore seatbelts. The Litter Bug came on the scene and soon we stopped littering and then began recycling.

Perhaps we can launch an awareness campaign to Stop Wasting Food….a JUST ENOUGH campaign for restaurants to serve smaller portions, for diners to request ‘just enough’.

I am guilty of wasting food - each week I clean out our frig and still find I throw food away - albeit with a twinge of guilt. But it has my attention and I’m finding that I do it less and less. When we are in a restaurant our family does a lot of ’splitting’ meals and we are never leaving hungry. And, food is rarely left on the plates.

My parents used to say ‘eat your food and join the clean plate club’. We all need to become its members today.

Let’s turn our attention to our own food consumption and remember, Less is More.

Reduce your food intake - at home and at restaurants - eat enough to be full but don’t overeat and overconsume: eat Just Enough.

Clean your plate. Use your leftovers up so nothing is thrown away.

We can likely solve the hunger problem globally if we attend to our own behaviors locally.

What an easy New Years Resolution to make……eating Just Enough.

Happy 2010 - the year of ‘just enough’.

In America, individualism (a doctrine that the interests of the individual are ethically paramount) is a driving force, from the basis of the economy to the government. Can this concept of individualism go too far? Perhaps it explains part of why among graduating high school students there is an increasing trend for their number 1 and number 2 goals in life to be ‘rich’ and ‘famous’ (according to a Pew poll).

It seems that individual fame and fortune reap our attention all the time, regardless of its source, from Bernie Madoff to Paris Hilton to John Edwards to Michael Phelps (swimming to smoking): famous or infamous - they seem to blur together.

I was surprised to read the other day that in some cultures if you are asked ‘how are you?’ the answer never begins with the pronoun ‘I’ but rather with a ‘we’ as in ‘we are fine or not fine’. The ‘we’ refers to the extended family of the respondent. Without the health of all, there is no health of ‘I’ at all.

That struck me as a nice way of seeing the fallacy of individualism taken to the extreme. We are never really an ‘I’ alone, we arise through the input and shaping of others - from our genes to the environments in which we are raised, to our parents, families and friends and workplaces. In the psychology of many Americans there is a tendency to ‘push past the family’ rather than embrace it and expand from there. But our ‘I’ of happiness (or not) arises in our dependent nature.

The idea of individualism can be seen along a continuum of sorts - and perhaps we have moved a little too far to the extreme. It is this extreme that may inflate our narcissism as a nation. Perhaps many of the ills of American society today arise because we have forgotten this continuum itself and boxed ourselves into one extreme corner.

From this corner, we create unrealistic expectations for our members which results in widespread ’self-criticism’ and ’self-loathing’. We are doomed to failure if we fall short of expectations, and our expectations are located somewhere in the stratosphere, so high they can rarely be reached.

Our individualism has run amok. We praise our children for being unique and create a sense of expectation that they can rise above the masses and ‘be noticed’ because of their uniqueness. But they have all the same fears, sorrows, joys, and pains as everyone else and the chance of rising above the masses is miniscule in probability - we dangle a carrot that they can rarely reach. The ‘you are special’ message doesn’t match their reality and striving sets in. We want to meet the challenge, to rise above the others in our uniqueness or individuality regardless of the means of getting there: attention from the masses validates our arrival.

How do we undo this social ill, not let go of individualism per se but perhaps move a bit back to center on its continuum? Perhaps we need to change our language, borrowing from some cultures that recognize the We in Me and answer in the plural?

Perhaps we stop idolizing individual successes so much and shift our attention to group endeavors - the volunteers en masses that help with disasters (floods, fires, etc) without singling out a ‘hero’ all the time, attend to the actions of organizations (Congress, Senate, Supreme Court) NGOs, schools, hospitals, rather than focusing on individuals who capture our attention often because of ’scandalous’ behaviors. We need more messages that focus on the importance of our ordinary nature, an embracing of our strengths and weakness, of our humanity itself. An acceptance of who we are just as we are. Maybe we focus on the efforts of teams, communities, organizations and groups, rather than the individual. It is a continuum - this individualism concept - perhaps we can move a bit more toward its center.

We can each investigate how we express our individualism in our interactions in the world. Perhaps our ‘I’ can be ‘We’ more and more. And if we attend more toward the group and our communities than our particular roles in them maybe we - as a society - can move more toward the Center.

And from the Center, we may live with greater equanimity and shared humanity.

The other day I heard a grandmother talking about her teenage grandchildren. It had been a long-time habit of this grandmother to send birthday checks to her children and their children on those special days. After years and years of this gift giving, she decided to stop because no one said Thank You anymore. The birthday card and check had become so routine, so expected, that the obligatory and kind response of thanks had been forgotten.

Having been a recipient of checks like these from my own grandmother, I was horrified at the reality. I was raised at a time when mandatory ‘thank you notes’ were common courtesy. Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, any gift followed with a handwritten thank you. As a teen I remember vividly wishing my distant relatives would forget to send me that handmade red Christmas sweater with the large buttons on the front so I would be saved from writing a Thank You note full of insincerity.

But now I found that I had also skipped sending the note for checks and cards that came as well. I no longer urged my own children to write the ‘thank you’ note in the age of emails and cell phones, instead I might remind them to call or text a thank-you in response.

We were all remiss in expressing our gratitude to Grandma.

I am guessing that I am not alone. The art of saying Thank You and how we do it is changing in this paperless age. Thank-you notes still arrive after dinner parties, weddings, and baby showers but, for many of us, they’ve fallen by the wayside for Christmas and Birthdays - especially to those most closest to us.

This grandma’s experience reminded me of the importance of remembering to act with gratitude and kindness particularly to those whom we love most, the ones whose love we sometimes take ‘for granted’, the ones whose love we are most assured.

It is much easier to remember to say thank you to a stranger’s act of kindness than that of a loved one just because it is so out of the ordinary, so novel. But the little actions our loved ones do to help perhaps need our greatest attention, because they are so easily missed against a backdrop of constant giving and sharing.

Habits readily lead to ‘taking things for granted’ and we often forget to notice such kindness until it is no longer available.

Rather than wait to detect these small acts of kindness from your loved ones when they are no longer around, make every effort to do so today. And remember to express your gratitude for every instance - with a smile, a hug, a word of thanks or even a Thank-you note. There is no time like the present to acknowledge all the gifts of kindness you may be given today. Tomorrow it may be too late.

The recent arrest of Philip Markoff, the accused Craigslist Killer, shakes us up because it is an example of a façade of normality covering an action of evil. It takes the idiom, ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ to the extreme.

I wonder how, if the accusations prove to be true, his current fiancée will ever trust her own judgment again. In the face of mass betrayal, we question our judgment of good and evil, of character, of others, of the world, and subsequently, of ourselves.

The case raises two issues for me: 1. How do we learn to trust ourselves, and 2. The stories we tell that shape this trust.

I grew up in the 50s at a time when the face of suburban normality reigned. Beneath the surface of many ‘perfect-looking’ families of the 50s were the typical emotional ups and downs of life, but such emotions besmirch the image of perfection so they were often kept behind closed doors. Hiding an inner turmoil (no matter how big or small) with an outer face of ‘perfection’ creates a dissonance that ultimately requires resolution; in the Markoff case it may be resolved through arrest, but for many of us resolution is achieved through changing behavior, therapy, self-help, 12 step programs, etc.

When you become aware of such ‘dissonance’ in your life and take steps to create greater coherence of inward and outward worlds, you may develop a heightened sensitivity to areas of greatest dissonance. For me, it is those who seem a bit too ‘perfect’ (sort of like the recovered smoker who can smell a cigarette miles away).

I recently spent the day with a person who seems to have it all together - beauty, wealth, inner happiness, outward success - and it triggered a ‘red flag’ regarding this person’s authenticity. I found myself looking for evidence in his thoughts, words and actions, to support the thesis that underneath his external perfection, there was a human full of faults just like me. Of course under a microscope, tiny hairs look like tree trunks. (I remember hearing how Ed Begley Jr. - perhaps the most authentic environmentalist around - is criticized as a hypocrite for any minor deviation to perfection).

This led me to #2 above, the stories we tell. The story or standard we set creates the environmental backdrop for how we judge those around us. My colleague paints a story of perfection so I raise the standard for his behavior to coincide with the story. Any minor deviation now becomes a massive sign of inauthenticity. I’ve set their standard so high, they must fail to achieve it. It is similar to our hindsight search for human faults among those who achieve heightened states of consciousness, like Christ, Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama. To accept our own human nature, let us find elements of it in those of us who seemingly transcend it.

In the pristine world of perfection, a tiny blemish appears monumental; in the acne-filled sludge of the dark side of human nature, a tiny blemish is undetectable. Human nature is both pristine and sludge and it helps to keep them both in mind.

The recent film the Soloist helps make this point in a different way. Amidst the clamor and chaos of Skid Row, the homeless main character Mr. Ayers, is normal - healthy by degree. But placed amidst the ‘normality’ of a 4-walled apartment, his insanity rises from the mist. How wise Mr. Ayers is to know this about himself, to know his sanity rests in the environment within which it is viewed. In the Chaos of Skid-Row, his own sense of kindness and countenance are revealed.

From these examples, I learned a lot about Trust and the Stories we tell. It seems to me that we develop a sense of Trust in ourselves as we recognize our two sides of human nature - sludge-like and pristine - and that they are part of us all, no matter how big or small they may seem. Trust arises when you recognize both and repeatedly choose to act from one (pristine) and not the other (sludge). The Stories we tell shape the context within which we view these two sides of our human nature. It is important to recognize the changing context (stories) so that we never forget both sides, to prevent one side from becoming too large that it overwhelms us or too small that it is forgotten.

I’m not a very tangential thinker — as in, I am someone who sees ‘the big picture’ or cuts to the chase sooner rather than later. I do pick up tidbits of thought often idling along the side of a conversation and reflect on them later, but I tend to, in the course of a conversation (at work, home, and even with friends), see goals or endpoints (from A to B) and move rather quickly toward them. I’ve always known that about me and remember times when I would grow impatient of others for not seeing things as clearly and as quickly as I might. That arrogant way of thinking hit me hard on Sunday when I stopped into a day spa while on a long walk with my husband in Los Angeles.

We ventured in to ask about what kinds of treatments they offered at this spa and in reading over the menu of options, were intrigued by one called ‘The Traveler’s Delight’ — a full-package treatment including manicure, pedicure, body wrap, massage, lunch, and meditation. My husband asked, “How long do we need if we do this treatment?” to which the spa representative said, “Oh, it depends on if you want a male masseuse, who’s busy, who’s available, etc.”

Now that’s not at all what my husband and I were expecting. (He, like me, sees the shortest route of thought from A to B). We merely wanted to know how much time would be necessary (4 hours, 5 hours, etc.) to get the full treatment. I tried again, “Okay, assume we can have anyone we want because we have booked this months in advance and there are no barriers to our needs, if we come in at 9 am, what time would we be finished?” To this new query the Spa representative said, “Oh, we don’t open at 9 am. Our hours are from 12-8 Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and 10-6 other days.”

AAAHHHH!…Would this tangential thinker ever give us a straight answer?

We left the spa and I asked my husband, “How do you describe that kind of thinker?” as I know several at my place of employment. How would you ever explain to that person what you really want to know? They seem to get caught in little detail and miss the point completely. Yet, if they don’t see things the way you see them, then how, how, how, could you ever make it clear?

It gave me great pause to see again the diversity in our human nature, how we each think and connect the dots in the world around us. I talked to another friend about how frustrated I was (and am) at times when I want an answer but am forced to wait or try multiple ways to get my question across to a tangential thinker. She understood it as well and justified my criticism by the nature of their position; if the guy is selling spa treatments, he needs to be good at hearing the question and responding effectively.

Although I agree with my friend, it gave me a great opportunity to see my own subtle yet very present feeling that my way was the best way. I decided to try to explore the world from the tangential thinker’s perspective upon my next encounters with such people to experiment and see first, why they are frustrating to me; and second, what the world would be like from their eyes.

I discovered that patience remains elusive to me at times like these and that the process of being taken on someone else’s meandering mind ride tests my patience. It has provided me with a new challenge or experiment of sorts to examine the source of such impatience. It dawned on me that this is the sort of frustration teachers experience with students who don’t get it upon first, second, or third explanations. And, what about the life of the student, or the adult, who thinks tangentially while many in the world do not? They probably do not understand why those around them are getting angry, impatient or frustrated when they are trying their best to just do their jobs (whether a spa Representative or a student in high school). Thinking differently can be a great challenge if we don’t pause and see how critical or intolerant we are.

I’ve never seen the term ‘tangential thinking’ used as any particular cognitive style in psychology but I am pretty sure it is related to what is called executive functioning (i.e. goal-setting and following through on goals). Yet, in my experience with ‘tangential thinkers’ in everyday life, I’ve discovered another place in which I am quick to judge the thinking style of others as perhaps less than that of my own. It is in these discoveries of subtle judgments and projected inequality that true equality and patience show their loving heads.

We often forget the temporary nature of life soothed by an illusion of stability in our day-to-day routines, lulled into a false belief that we are somehow permanent. We are reminded of this temporary nature when untimely deaths occur, like that of Natasha Richardson or the less famous faces of so many others. On Monday I spent the afternoon at a funeral where my friends were celebrating the life of their eldest son, merely 19 when he died in a tragic accident. The loss of life, particularly when young, jolts us into remembering the fragility of life.

Why ponder on this fragility and impermanence of life when the illusion is so soothing?

From my own experiences of death - fear of it when afflicted by illness to experiences of loved one dying - I know that living life fully, with a constancy of purpose and determination, arises in the realization of our temporary nature often brought forth by a brush or touch with death. I often ask myself why that would be so? Why is the removal of something so necessary to see its value and live it with determination - what might be called a permanence of purpose?

Then I’m reminded of the sky. When I see the sky -whether blue in day or black at night - I realize it is through the relationship of the sky to objects such as the horizon or clouds or stars or moon that it can be known as sky. While that may sound a little odd imagine this text without spaces between the words. Without the spaces, the letters have no meaning. Much of what we know arises from seeing that which reflects it, like seeing objects because of the background or understanding life by knowing death.

The sadness felt in times of loss are ones that words often cannot soften. Yet, in death we often discover the fullness of live lived by another and in that experience learn to live our own lives more fully. I never met my friend’s son before the memorial service on Monday, but in its aftermath I found I knew their son in ways unimaginable in life. The impact he had on so many others, the love he had for music, for discovery, for words, were expressed in the words and images shared that day but more by the outpouring of love that filled the space as we said goodbye.

I found a quote by Abraham Lincoln last week - before this young man’s life expired - and it now had more meaning than I could have imagined.

He said, “It’s not how many years in your life you’ve lived but how you’ve lived those years”. The young man’s life was short but the spaces he created filled eternity with love.

I spent four days in D.C. at the inaugural activities last week. Overall everybody was extremely excited and full of enthusiasm, lots of smiling happy faces, lots of kindness prevailing in the air. But there were crowds and long lines to get into events; despite being full of enthusiastic people energized by Obama there was still waiting, waiting, and waiting in really cold weather. These were the conditions that set the stage for a pervasive amount of ‘line cutting’.

One friend I know ‘cut’ into the front of a long VIP ticket line to be quickly admonished by a distinguished looking gentleman, ‘Young Lady, he said, that is extremely rude and dishonest. Do you know that the line begins about 1.5 hours behind us?’ My friend was humiliated and wandered to the back of the line. An hour or so later, all forgotten, she had befriended her line mates when four people cut in line in front of her. Indignant, she pointed out their unethical behavior and was readily ignored. Oh, but that did not dissuade my friend. She decided it was outrageous that someone would so blatantly ignore her admonishment; she continued to berate the line cutters. Eventually two of the four departed - fed up with her complaints. But the other two kept going, ignoring her comments.

Finally at the gate, she turned to the two and offered a truce of sorts: “Just admit you’re wrong and I’ll let it go”, she says. Stone silence. My friend cannot let it go - her self-righteousness is so painful. Her husband comes to the rescue reminding her that when someone doesn’t want to let go of something - you cannot make them. All you can do is let go of it yourself. My friend learned a cool lesson that day in the cold - do what you might, we cannot change anyone else, we can only change ourselves. And noticing how quickly we put ourselves above others is one sort of behavior that easily emerges, is often hard to see, and usually causes us pain.

A Buddhist teacher once described that idea to me visually - if you bend your index finger into a hook and think of it as a ‘thought’ that may grab you, or anger you, or bother you in some way. Think of the other finger (hooked as well) as how you relate to it. If you hook the fingers together, that’s you ‘holding on’ to something tightly, but imagine if you just straighten your one finger. The things that you attach to, that you hold on to, that cause you stress and discomfort, can be released fairly simply by you changing your view! Just straighten your finger (release it from your mind).

Line cutting is likely to be around for a long time. I was thinking about it as a type of ’selfish’ behavior. Biologists know that sharing and compassion - altruistic behaviors in general - are difficult to explain from a biological evolutionary perspective because genes that code for the opposite (selfish genes) would quickly overtake those that code for altruism. It is this problem that led to the rise of sociobiology and kin selection (the idea that we ‘help’ those who are close to us genetically because it, in effect, increases our own genes — see E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology for example). In contrast to these genetic models, Susan Blackmore argues for memes (ideas that replicate) as an alternative mechanism for the spread of altruism or non-selfish behavior (based on work of Richard Dawkins, see The Selfish Gene).

Line cutting may seem far removed from the selfish genes of survival, but it may also illustrate the challenges we face in building a more compassionate, kind society. We each likely have in us a little bit of ‘line cutting’ or a tendency to break rules when they benefit ourselves at the expense of others. Notice if you rush ahead of someone at a Starbucks, take a taxi first when perhaps you weren’t really there first, maneuver your way to the front of a line, or rush ahead of others to get first choice of some merchandise. Noticing these intentions when they arise and taking note of our actions (what we choose to do in response) may help us direct our evolutionary future somewhat. Perhaps we can override our biology of selfishness through awareness and choose to act in kindness.

A few years ago I had an epiphany of sorts in which I experienced a radical shift in consciousness, an increased insight into our ‘changing nature’. I realize that such dramatic jumps in awareness are rare among the thousands and thousands of mini-jumps we experience everyday. But it also became clear that in every increase in conscious awareness is a new challenge of ‘letting go’ to some attachment - some idea we might be clinging to ever so subtly or hanging onto with every ounce of strength. Inevitably change occurs and our awareness merely glimpses it.

I see how hard it is to accept change at times because there is a comfort in the illusion of stability. Some of us prefer ignorance to recognizing our part in change, particularly if our actions have harmed others in the process. I’ve been wondering if that underlies President Bush’s closing comments regarding his lack of involvement in many of the current country problems. Other times, awareness arises, we see it, and begin the process of letting go. Sometimes it is fast, sometimes slow.

I thought of this when I saw Hilary Clinton at the swearing in of President Obama. She had to let go of so many feelings to accept and embrace the change in her new position. I thought of it when I heard of Senator Edward Kennedy’s collapse at the inaugural luncheon. Illness happens, often unexpectedly, sometimes forcing us to even let go of life. I thought of it when I saw the past Presidents and Vice Presidents - Carter, Clinton, Gore, Mondale, and Quayle - at the Inaugural luncheon. Leadership changes and with it often go the expectations of previous leaders.

Sometimes awareness of change is public - as in the political realm of the last four days - but most of the time it is private, the times we have to let go of hurt feelings, anger, disappointments, and a whole host of experiences.

Letting go can be hard. Whenever we do so, it means we accept a new ’self’, a change in who we are, because in every shift in awareness we are no longer the person we were before it arose. And therein lies a need to ‘let go’ because we are usually attached to our sense of self as some stable unchanging character. When time is interspersed between such moments, like the self you were at 5 and the self you were at 30, their distinction becomes easier to see, but in every moment change arises (whether micro or macro in size).

Perhaps we need to keep reminding ourselves that with each kernel of awareness, change is evident and with it emerges a need to let go. When we see how the two are tied together, we may know that in the joy of discovery (awareness) is the struggle of release (letting go). With awareness of their repetition throughout life, perhaps both arise more readily and easily. I’m guessing that is a key to Wisdom.