Category Archives: advice

Mitakpa–Impermanence

I recently read a book entitled “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter. You can pick it up here if you are interested. It is a phenomenal read and beautifully puts into perspective the relative ease of our current lifestyles and the somewhat shocking problems that derive from it. It is overflowing with ideas to research outside of its covers and I’m sure this won’t be the only blog post I write thanks to the abundance of interesting topics it covers. But one topic, more than anything, really resounded with me, and that was the idea of mitakpa.

Mitakpa is a Tibetan word that roughly translates to impermanence in English. When I thought about it, I realized that I was almost certain I had ever used that word and wasn’t sure if I had ever seen it come up in text or conversation. I had a feeling I knew the jest of it, but I looked up the Dictionary.com definition of it just to be sure.

 noun

the fact or quality of being temporary or short-lived:

As taught by Buddhists, the idea of mitakpa is that everything born is subject to death and decay. They practice the concept by deliberately thinking about death and the dying process 3 times daily—once each in the morning, midday, and evening. You may be thinking what I was thinking when I read that. “Wow, what a miserable thing to do.” But when I learned how they expounded on that, it made a lot of sense both practically and philosophically.

They look at life as a journey towards a cliff in which everyone, inevitably, will walk off one day. It may be tomorrow, or it may be in 80 years, but one day it will happen. We have two choices regarding that cliff. We can either act like it isn’t there and be surprised when we find it, or we can acknowledge its existence and plan our course accordingly. It has real “one life to live” vibes but it hit me on a completely different level.

You can live a complete life without ever thinking about the cliff but imagine how differently you would chart your course if you made peace with the destination. I thought about who I was walking with, what we did along the way, and all the flowers I would regret not stopping and smelling on the way when I saw the cliff come into view.

I also thought about the people that chose to walk with me. Would they come to the end of their journey and wish they had walked with someone else? Was there something they wanted to stop and do along the way that I ignored while placing a higher priority on someone else? Good grief when you think about it, what an honor it would be for someone to choose to walk to the edge of that cliff with you. Am I doing everything imaginable to make their journey just as fulfilling as mine?

One great thing about youth is that, if you’re lucky, you don’t have to think about death very often. If luck continues to be on your side, you won’t have to deal with it much at all until you get older, more mature, and better capable of dealing with it properly. I was lucky on both counts but it seems as though my luck has finally caught up with me. I’ve now lost all my grandparents and recently just laid to rest my mother, who was 60.

My mom was still alive while I was reading “The Comfort Crisis,” but she wasn’t doing very well, and the thought of her potentially dying had begun to creep into my mind from time to time. I thought about her journey to the edge of the cliff and wondered if she had a fulfilling trip. I hoped she hadn’t experienced too many regrets and I prayed the time she spent with me was something that made her trip a little more enjoyable. I was also curious as to whether she could see the end or not and if she could, had she made peace with her journey? It comforts me to think that she did.

I don’t think about death 3 times a day as the monks do, but I do try to make a point to think about it from time to time. It takes me out of my comfort zone a little bit and helps keep me centered on the truly important things. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do feel certain about one thing–life is a tremendous blessing and should be treated as such. I feel fortunate to be alive and healthy with no sign of my cliff in sight for the moment. When it finally does enter my horizon, I hope to greet it with a smile and walk off it with no regrets.

Your Straw is in the Bag

I was on a late evening chicken nugget run for the kids and decided to go through the drive-thru at one of the fast-food joints in town. I ordered, drove around, and paid for the food like a normal tax-paying citizen. When the young lady handed me the food she said, “Thank you. Your straw is in the bag.” I thanked her and proceeded to drive out of the parking lot. But then I realized something—I didn’t order a drink.


I opened the sack and, sure enough, there was a straw laying right there amid all the chicken nuggets and sweet and sour sauce packets. But, why? We went on to the house, ate dinner, and carried on with the rest of the night, but for some reason, I could not get that poor lost straw out of my mind.


After spending way too much time thinking about it, I concluded that the woman at the drive-thru window was so accustomed to handing customers a drink before or after their food that it was simply a habit for her to put the straw in the bag and let the customer know it was in there. It may even be company policy. Possibly, it is just something she decided to do after repeating the scenario thousands of times.


Whatever the reason, it made me reflect on my behavior and how I could potentially fall victim to making the same mistake with my interactions with people on any given day. One thing I have noticed about soul searching or doing a “check-up from the neck up” is that, if you REALLY do it the right way, you often won’t like the results. This time was no different.


How many times had I kissed my wife or told her that I love her purely out of habit? Did I even think about the action or the words at all? I wonder if she could tell the difference. How many times have my children wanted to tell me something and I just halfway listen to them? Their youthful enthusiasm will only last so long. Did I give their conversation the attention it deserved?


Have I had a friend who needed someone to talk to or a bit of advice? Were they using small talk to help build up the nerve to ask a question that might be hard for them to ask? I hope my indifferent or un-attentive attitude didn’t deter them from trusting our friendship enough to speak freely. Am I doing the best I can at work, or have I been on cruise control? Are there people or causes that I could have helped along the way if I hadn’t been for going through the motions nonchalantly?


I got some marriage advice from a man once that has stuck with me for a long time. To paraphrase, he told me that marriage was like traveling down a river in a 2-person canoe. If no one paddles the canoe, then it just goes wherever the river takes it. To get where you are doing, both people must be paddling in the same direction. I think this advice is not only great for marriage but also can be applied to life in general. If nothing else, just to remember that you are “on the river in a canoe” may help us be more deliberate with our behavior and how it relates to other people.


Being “deliberate”—I really like that term and I wish I could take credit for it. In my opinion, it is the best word to use when describing how we can keep from getting stuck in our behavioral ruts. I’ve tried this in my daily life and, let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds. For others, it may look different, but for me it means putting the phone away for hours at a time, turning the TV off unless I am actively watching it, looking people in the eye when they are talking, planning my day, taking a moment to step back and look at what is truly important in my life RIGHT NOW, and sincerely thinking about what I think a good life would look in the near and distant future.


I’m not a psychologist, counselor, or guru, so maybe what I’m saying doesn’t relate to you at all. But, I can tell you that after a short time of making it a point to “be deliberate about being deliberate,” I can see some immediate positive impact in my personal life. I’d wager a hefty bet that the long-term benefits will be numerous as well. The young lady at the drive-thru window changed my perspective in a way in which very few people have done before. Maybe she DID know what she was doing. Either way, I’d like to thank her for putting that straw in my bag.