Sharing is Caring and Other Truths of a Share-able Economy

The most meaningful moments in my life spent with other people have one common thread: sharing.

I’ve been a member of the CouchSurfing community since 2007 when I started hosting strangers at my 3 bedroom apartment in Logan Square.  I opened the couch and home I shared with three roommates to these strangers and we shared moments, parties and experiences together.  I connected with people from all over the world through CouchSurfing.  We overcame language barriers together.  We shared food together, talked politics and social norms.  We cut the bullshit of every day conversation and just got to the good stuff.  We learned from each other and ultimately we changed each other slowly – each experience undid all my false perceptions of different cultures, countries or people with truth; with the expansiveness only experience can provide. 

I found out about the film: One Couch at a Time, through someone that I had the pleasure of hosting myself who is featured at some point in the film.  In the documentary, the brave Couchsurfer Extraordinaire, Alexandra, hits up 6 different continents and couchsurfs through her way through all of it.

This film was inspiring – not just to the wanderlust escape artist inside of me but also to the wide-eyed young woman full of hope in the midst of all the global and economic crises surrounding young people today. 

I remember my first job armed with so much idealism and thinking: Why are we still working this way?  Why can’t we change things?  We don’t have to do things the same way our fathers or mothers did.  We are the leaders we've been waiting for!

Then the reality of student loans and bills hits you hard – harder than it ever did for past generations and you lose hope in being able to change the status quo, but this film made me believe in possibilities again.  I don’t have to live this super sequential story board life to have everything I want.  I can have it through community, through sharing, through human connection with others.

The people are demanding transparency, environmentally friendly resources, and innovation with technology as modern-day sharing’s vehicle of choice.  Those who cannot understand this will fail.  A new age is dawning – one that will demand more from all of us.  It will demand better businesses, better neighbors, better communities, better leadership and it is now. 

“Opportunities thought impractical because of perceived trust barriers are now fair game.  The examples of Lending Club, Couchsurfing and Thredup show that people are engaging in intimate transactions with strangers driven by technology, new norms and need.  This is the trust frontier.  We have yet to discover how far we can push this frontier.  This is the decade when we answer the question: ‘How much can we share?’”

-Neal Gorenflo, Publisher, Shareable Magazine

I am hosting a screening of One Couch at a Time and discussion on the share-able economy on Thursday, May 16^th at 6 p.m. in the South Loop.  Please email me directly if you’re interested in attending.  The screening will be free so long as you bring something to share.  Seats are limited – first come first serve.  See you on the other side of this exciting frontier!

How I Really Haven't Changed Much Since I Was 17...

I've been staying at my parents all weekend.  Every time I spend an extended period of time in this house I can't help but remember my childhood growing up here.  I revisit old books I loved so much I wore the spines out.  This past weekend I found my journal from when I was 17 years old - going on to my senior year in high school.

Let me just quote some of the ridiculousness here:

July 30, 2001
The world is fake and the reality becomes the superficiality of the world, but if perception is reality than is everything just some big illusion?  Is the world a lie?  There is corruption at all levels and I wonder where the honesty went and what happens when it's all gone.  Is it all gone?

Typical thoughts for a 17 year old kid...

Or this gem:

I wish there were no price for freedom.

 Really Jen?! This is hilarious.  Or how about quoting Catcher in the Rye (I can totally tell I was reading this book by my style of prose at this particular moment by the way):

It's funny.  All you have to do is say something nobody understands they'll practically do anything for you.  -J.D. Salinger

There's a shocking amount of things written about boys that I don't even remember.  This brings me some peace 10 years later knowing that the guy(s) that I crush on now I probably won't remember later.

So if you're wondering if I was always this intense, the answer is yes.  Also, reading this brought on a humbling realization that I haven't changed much.  I still talk about the existentialists and the fate and plight of humanity and of course, guys. Though, I'd like to think I'm slightly more optimistic in my philosophical approach these days.

Exploring the Dark Side

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.” 
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

I often think of this quote whenever I have a jarring encounter with someone.  I think of it when I get annoyed about something or during those moments where I look at someone and my inner critic comes out.  My darkness; my enemy, exists within me.  It’s a good lesson and one I’ve recently been encountering on the mat.

Often times yoga teachers say that when you don’t like a pose, you should figure out why – what does that pose bring up for you? What stored up memories, energy or junk is stored there?  Are you ready to let it go?  What sorts of thoughts go through your mind when you’re in the pose?  Why is this uncomfortable?  Why are you angry?  Where is the compassion for yourself?  Why aren’t you surrendering to the experience?

In general, when you have a strong reaction to something it has to do with you.  As Hesse writes, “what isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

So next time you’re in a difficult pose, frustrated by someone else or angry about something in someone’s personality, perhaps the lesson lies in looking inward. 

I borrowed this image from here.

I know, much easier said than done, but most things worth doing are.

The Chicago Project: Validation and Humility

This past weekend I went to King’s Spa with some girlfriends of mine.  King’s Spa is a Korean spa so for the first part of the experience you get completely nude in a room full of other women to enjoy a steam room, showers and hot tubs.

King's Spa 

My girlfriends came up naked and we all looked at each other for a moment before one friend said: look at us; we’re beautiful.  We – as a whole – not based on this superficial notion of beauty but based on our willingness to share this experience with each other.

That set the tone: validation.

My friend has this tattoo on her arm: it says: do not seek outside of yourself in Latin.  I pondered this as an array of different bodies walked past me.  Body-positive experiences are something I’ve been intentional about having lately starting with the naked bike ride and taking my next steps with my yoga practice.

Throughout the evening I pondered the notion of validation within our society and seeking it from external factors.  I’m very guilty of this – as we all are.  I seek validation from the men I keep in my back pocket to make me feel attractive or the books I read to prove my intellectual prowess and the social circles I maintain to show some sort of status. Still, I keep coming to the same conclusion:  when you lose the ego you feel no need to be validated by others.

Humility is honest; it’s vulnerable and damn it, it’s scary.  It’s sitting naked in a hot tub and feeling at peace.  It’s telling the truth even when it hurts you to do so.  It’s smiling at a stranger on the street with no expectation of receiving a smile or recognition in return.  It’s walking into a room with quiet confidence knowing you have nothing to prove. 

It’s also very hard work as we fight against our conditioning in this society.  The ego likes to keep one safe.  The ego keeps my sunglasses on as I follow the beat of my heels hitting pavement attuned to my ipod making no human connections walking down my street.  The genuine me, however, wants to be honest, vulnerable and notice how lonely everyone really is and say, it’s okay, look at us; we’re beautiful.

Freedom Prayer

Feel the itch to

Shed some old skin

Live in the transformation

Let the Serpent back in

Watch as it coils around you

Until you can’t breathe

Your bones begin to crack

While your gender, age, height, race…

Those defining characteristics

Begin to deconstruct as your body condenses

Wrapped in the coils tight

The Serpent then begs the question

Of your identity

Before swallowing you whole

You’d be surprised just how seductive

That kiss of death could be

It strikes at you quickly

Without warning

Leaving you forever changed

The old you was far too safe

Too boring

Death comes in to set you free

Pray.

I am not my body

I am not my past

I am not my religion

I am not my sex

I am not my eyes

I am not my university

I am not my career

I am not my family
I am not even my poetry

If you could only remember

Death sits behind your left shoulder

What’s worth fighting for?

What’s left to cling to?

Comes a time

That you just can’t carry it around anymore

I pray to the Crows

Scavengers of the sky

I offer my body

If only to free my soul

Open my pumping heart

Satisfy their thirst

I am but my Father’s daughter

Came into this world with no possessions

This is all I have to offer

Tired of clinging to a false sense of autonomy

Freedom is the unhinged and unsecured

A floating leaf; subject to God’s will

The Wind’s doing

I’d lay naked before Her

This is how I pray

Lay bare enticing the Serpents, Crows

And Wind to come to me

I smoke the tobacco for all my relations

The animals too

Om

Aho

Hallelujah

And if I could strip down

Be delivered an empty vessel

For Spirit to live through

I would

Surrender completely

And watch how the Serpent saves you

A transmutation of DNA

An evolution of grandiose proportions

Don’t let the fear of death hold you back

For self preservation means nothing

Compared to this final sacrifice

I will never be anything more;

Anything less;

Than this.

Taking the Leap: Leap Year 2012

“People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition.  We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult in a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Full excerpt here.

I’ve been meditating on Rilke’s words a lot.  People do have a tendency towards the easiest path.  We tend to like what we are good at and build up those strengths while neglecting our weaker skills and compensating with our strengths because it’s easy.

Crow Pose

I’m horrible at yoga.  (I know, I know, how can anyone be horrible at yoga?  It’s the most noncompetitive form of physical activity in existence, but I am!)  I’m awkward and completely lack the grace that most yoginis have when flowing into poses.  Sometimes I still confuse my left with my right, I fall out of balance and my crow has repeatedly kissed the earth and not in a good way.

So, clearly, I should become a yoga teacher, right?!  Totally!

I can never just wade into the water and gradually go in; I’ve got to dive in each time.  As such, I just handed in my expensive nonrefundable deposit this past week towards a yoga teacher training certification program – equivalent to getting a Bachelor’s in Yoga and now there is no going back.

Back in February, I thought about how 2012 is a Leap Year and then I stumbled upon this Leap Year project site and wanted something to contribute.  I think this is it.  My training begins this September and goes until my 29^th birthday in February.  I’ve done some pretty wild things in my life from living with wolves to fasting for 40 days to being a full time solo wanderer unsure of where I’d lay my head the next night, but I have to say I think this is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I’ve never been much of an athlete and my relationship with my body, though it has evolved thanks to my yoga practice, has been a tumultuous one.  Committing myself to teaching a physical practice to others is incredibly intimidating and scary, yet I absolutely feel it is the next step in my own personal evolution.

I’m diving into the difficult, wrapping myself around my weaknesses and hoping to come out of this a better human, or in the least, knowing my right from my left.

Beauty Marks

She’s wearing that little black dress

You said she looked so beautiful in

Though she never believed you then

She examines her body in the mirror

Bruises all over her arms; a scraped knee

She’s a mangled tigress

In a sea of picture perfect kittens

Wearing fancy party dresses

Their little bodies in tact

She doesn’t wear shoes

She can’t run in at any given moment

She examines oceans of flawlessness

Only to stare at the scar beneath her chin

The motorcycle burn on her shin

She’s earned every single stripe

She consoles herself; licking wounds

‘cause domestication’s for the tame

She always colors outside the frame

She’s learned to scan every room

For any movement resembling her own

Still she’s only met a couple with that wilderness

A few with a will too strong to harness

Like her, they’re hard to hold onto

Disappearing when the night wind blows

Endangered species learn to be unreliable

A heavy adaptation to ensure their survival

So she stalks her loneliness

Balks at the emptiness

Learns to sit still in the darkness

She seeks a hunter

Someone of her kind

Not to tame her

Not to maim her

Not to capture or contain

But maybe to see the beauty

Outside the frame

For now in her little black dress

Waiting for the night’s wind to move her

Finally believing she too, is beautiful

Through the scars and the marks

Each indicating from where she came from

And how far she’s come

After all,

Her hunter will know her

By her stripes

The Good, the Bad and Enjoying the in Between

It’s amazing to me how many people call to check on you when you behead your ex-boyfriend in one of your poems (like you’ve never done that?)

As a writer, you draw on the sadness or the discontent because for many of us, writing is a way to get those negative emotions out of you.  No one wants that festering inside of them.  It’s important to remember that hurt, sadness and anger are all nothing more than a moment in time.  Once I put things down on paper I feel lighter.  It’s a meditative exercise in letting things go (even if you behead people in the process).  J 

We are all just moments in time and moments shift.  Each one is different and as such, we are different.  I am not my past; I’m far too present for that. 

I was watching a Louis C.K.  stand-up bit how we constantly expect good things to happen to us.  He jokes around about some guy who spills coffee on himself and how the guy’s reaction to this extreme anger and then this victimization like  "how could this have happened to me?!”  He goes on to discuss how it's absolutely ridiculous that we expect ONLY good things to happen and then freak out when the bad happens.

As a society, we have a tendency to EXPECT that only good things happen to us.  It’s natural of course, no one says, “I hope that I fall off my bike today.”  No one wakes up one morning thinking: “I hope I get into a shitty relationship.”  No one says, “I hope my friends all abandon me and I lose my youth and beauty and end up living alone with 20 cats.”

Instead we say, “It's going to be a gorgeous day and I'm going to bike along the lake to enjoy it."  We say, “I’m going to find the one and we’re going to be in love forever and it’s going to be amazing.” We toast to all of our fine friends, “To our splendid future!  Friends forever!”

When things don’t go our way it’s devastating for many of us.  Yet, I wager we wouldn’t be half as happy with the good times without the bad.  How would we even recognize the difference?   Would we be as strong as we are without having to struggle?  Would we appreciate the times when we are able to relax and let it all go if there weren’t points where our muscles were tense and sore from carrying too much on our shoulders?

All moments should be taken in stride from the joyfulness to love to heartbreak to depression because for better or for worse, it’s a moment and it will be over before you know it.

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