Granted, my ideas for it tended toward the traditional, even the tame.
Soon after, he found his own way to celebrate the occasion (more on that soon).
Anyway, I thought Vlad would enjoy celebrating his 4th birthday todaywith his cousins—my sister’s two six-month-old pups.
They all get along famously, with Sadie (far left) perhaps having a bit of a crush on him.
More on Vlad’s birthday in a moment.
Several diverse roads led me to this month’s new meditation theme, Recognition HERE.
Chief among them—now that all my physical possessions are hyper-organized—came from tackling my digital universe.
I can even pinpoint the moment decades ago when I started tumbling down a slippery slope: one evening when a tech assistant showed me the shortcut (⇧ ⌘ 4 on the Mac) for screenshots.
In fact, the image below—a screenshot of my screenshots—only adds to the problem.
Fortunately, despite their sheer volume, sorting through them is relatively easy.
Even so, there was a fleeting moment of cyber laziness—the digital equivalent of faking my own death and starting a new life in Rio under an assumed name—when I seriously considered dragging them all to the trash.
If I’d indulged in that impulse, many things would have been forever lost, most particularly all the amazing comments from the now defunct chatrooms of DailyOM courses.
There are literally hundreds of moving (albeit unsorted) posts from strangers thanking me and sharing their successes that I wisely ⇧ ⌘ 4’d.
Although the engagement between writers and their audience has always been both intimate and distant, the online world amplifies both extremes.
Relabeling all those screenshots and putting them in a Recognition folderwas more than just ego gratification; being recognized was good for my soul.
Speaking of which…
My great friend SARK’s work above so beautifully captures this basic human need.
Indeed, it’s fundamentally human to want our uniqueness perceived and honored.
In fact, while we’ve all heard that no two fingerprints are alike, what I find more interesting is how long mankind has known that.
I was surprised to learn that fingerprint impressions were used 4,000 years ago in Babylon for contracts and in China as early as the 3rd century BC to sign documents.
Even thousands of years ago, way before infrared facial sensors that work in the dark, there was an inherent recognition of an individual’s uniqueness.
Of course, we may not always be craving recognition.
(Again, new meditation HERE).
While Cheers might have been “the place where everyone knows your name,” I have a long history of wanting to attend a yoga class anonymously, park myself in the back row and simply take the class that’s offered.
I have no impulse to show off by doing the most advanced version of the pose being taught, and never consider for a second “going off book” and doing my own thing.
Even so, whenever I find a class I really like, it’s usually only a short time before the teacher becomes curious (if not slightly suspicious) about that hyper-flexible guy in the back row who’s clearly been around the yoga block more than a couple of times.
Often those people—like Robbie—become my closest friends, which is indeed a very small price to pay for having my cover blown.
On a much larger scale, one of my favorite writers, Edward Everett Tanner III, better known by his pen name Patrick Dennis, had a bizarre second act after his literary career waned.
He’d achieved massive success with Auntie Mame (1955), its broadway and movie adaptations, and even become the first author to have three books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list.
After mismanaging his finances, he took an unusual path: working as a butler for ultra-wealthy families—most notably Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s—under a different name.
Not only did this give him a comfortable and secure life in lavish surroundings, apparently he fully embraced the irony that he was serving the type of elite people he once satirized in his novels.
None of them had a clue about his past literary successes.
For him, rather than faking his own death and heading to Rio, recognition was no longer on the menu.
There is, of course, a danger when outside recognition tries to substitutefor self-worth.
I’ve always loved this poem by Nobel Prize winner, Derek Walcott.
Although it speaks to those heartbroken by lost love, its truth—that one must recognize one’s true self again—is universal.
LOVE AFTER LOVE
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
And now, back to Vlad’s birthday…
Post-cousin gathering with dog cakes, Vlad and I set out for a recreational area seven minutes from our house.
At the base of a small mountain, it encompasses 640 acres of scenic open space offering a network of trails for nature walks.
An ideal hiking companion, Vlad runs ahead but looks back and waits for me, coming when he’s called and staying put when directed.
On the last leg of the descent down, as I was returning a text, I heard fevered splashing off to the side.
Apparently, he’d come too close to the edge of the lake, the ice broke, and he plunged in.
Vlad struggled to get out, but he was never in real danger since I was there.
Carefully, I stepped onto the frozen pond and grabbed his harness, giving him the slight boost he needed to climb out.
A few shakes later and he was ready for the next adventure.
Of course, like Vlad on the ice, there’s a tricky balance to be found between seeking recognition and cultivating self-worth, between stepping into the spotlight or, like Patrick Dennis, choosing to fade into the background.
That’s why the kind of self-love Walcott describes often comes as a surprise.
When we finally recognize ourselves as “the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another,” we at last become aware of our inherent worthiness.
That awareness is one of the many things I love about Vlad.
He doesn’t question whether he’s seen or valued, or need any reminders from screenshots that he’s making a difference.
And while cold plunging is certainly trendy (and who am I to question his birthday choices?), he may have just demonstrated the ultimate value of being recognized.
When we are truly seen, and known, and loved, we can trust that whenever we do slip, or miscalculate, or finding ourselves suddenly in over our heads in icy waters, someone will be there to help us back up…
Someone who recognizes us.
