Monthly Archives: October 2023

Cultivating Joy

This is the second of my blogs on The Book of Joy by The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. The first was essentially a book review–https://rhondaashurst.com/2023/06/03/the-book-of-joy/. This second blog is about my experiences of cultivating joy using the practices in the book over the last six months.

As often happens in life, I’ve been given an interesting opportunity to work with moving from suffering back into joy over the last week while I was contemplating this blog post. I finally got Covid! Of course, it picked an incredibly bad week to visit me. I was facilitating the last Quakerism 101 class on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning was my Embodying the Light class, Thursday was a performance at UNR I wanted to see, and Saturday I was to clerk a memorial for a dear friend and attender at the Meeting House. I had also inadvertently exposed a lot of people to the virus, including the Meeting during Sunday Worship and my 88-year-old mother.

I remember staring at the positive result and immediately crying out, “NO!!! This can’t be happening! Not this week!” Then I was mortified that I may have given it to a lot of other people. Quickly my head began running away with me down a rapidly descending spiral of catastrophic thinking. When Scott got home and I shared it with him, he met it with his usual “darn the luck” calm and reminded me that this too shall pass. I so appreciate his steadiness in moments like this. It helped me to get a grip and start figuring out logistics. A Quaker Friend encouraged me to read the practice on Acceptance in the book.

I sat down and did the meditation, coming into the present moment and following my breath. Then I brought into my mind my difficulty in accepting my current Covid situation. As instructed, I reminded myself this is the nature of reality, and this is what is happening right now. I breathed into my heart and felt all the disappointment and fear. I cried a little, gave myself a hug, and told myself it would be ok. Then I asked myself what I needed to do to meet the situation in a positive and helpful way. A list began to form in my mind, so I got a piece of paper and wrote what came to me. By the time I finished the practice, I had an action list of decisions to be made and people to call for help. I felt empowered rather than overwhelmed and helpless.

As I worked my way down the list, I was met over and over by helpful and caring responses of friends and family. So many people stepped up to take on the tasks I could not and expressed their concern and good wishes for my speedy recovery. By the time I was done, I had tears again, this time of gratitude and joy. I felt so very loved and comforted. I thought, how lucky I am to have so many caring and wonderful people sharing my life! This feeling stayed with me all week as people brought food, ran needed errands, called, texted and phoned to check on me. Everything I was worried about was taken care of or rescheduled. The memorial was wonderful by all accounts and others had the opportunity to shine their ample Light and skills on the day. Of course, I was sad again that I didn’t get to go, but I’ve found joy in experiencing it through the eyes of those who were there.

This week of not feeling well and being isolated brought to mind so many of the joys of my normal, healthy life: energy, freedom from pain, hugging my honey and being near him, the company of others, clear sinuses, the ability to taste and smell, a clear head, good digestion, strength, freedom to come and go as I please, sharing food, silent Worship, physical activity, dancing, and the list goes on! It was a powerful exercise in appreciating what you normally have when it’s gone. There is so much I take for granted.

As I move back into health, I hope I will remember the valuable lessons I’ve learned from my Covid experience. This has definitely been my most challenging test since reading the book, but I know more will come. In general, I’m finding that I spend more time in joy and appreciation of the present moment, and less time stressing needlessly over long to-do lists or things that are out of my control. Looking back on these last 6 months, I see that I’ve been easier on myself and taken things as they come. I see more clearly what is really important and what is not. I’m more ok with being a messy, imperfect human and I can laugh more easily at my foibles. When I have struggles with suffering, I try to remember to go to the practices and find one that is relevant to the situation and work it. For my struggle with the suffering of others, I’ve found the Tonglen practice helpful—breathing into my heart their pain and suffering and offering out joy, love, Light, peace, courage and strength. I’ve discovered my heart is big enough to hold a lot of suffering with love and compassion.

What a treasure this book has been to me! I’ve resolved to keep it near as I travel down the roads of my life. It’s a valuable map and I’m ever grateful it found its way to me. It turned what I saw as a Covid tragedy into a Covid gift.

Goodbye to Our Nissan LEAF

We traded in our sweet 2016 Nissan LEAF for Scott’s new Nissan Ariya in June after over four years of service. BeeBee, as we called her, was such a cute car and the perfect introduction to driving EV’s. It’s always bittersweet and nostalgic to look back on the life of an old car that’s moved on.

When we bought her used in 2019, we had just installed solar panels and realized how much excess electricity we were producing. We decided it was time to take the plunge and buy an EV. We’d just bought a Toyota Highlander Hybrid for Scott to replace his old 4 Runner, so we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. As luck would have it, 2016-17 LEAF’s coming off leases were incredibly cheap at the time. We saved $6,500 buying her over what it would have cost to buy a 2016 Nissan Juke in 2019 (the comparable gas car to the LEAF). Nissan had released the next generation battery with over 150 miles range and no one wanted the old technology anymore. She only had 23,000 miles on her and was in great condition with all 10 bars of her battery life remaining. In the beginning, she could go over 100 miles on a charge.

We fell in love with her zippy speed and cozy interior. We especially loved the heated seats and steering wheel in the winter. She was mostly my car, though we often shared her to save on gas in the Highlander. She was a very reliable car and an easy keeper. We saved a lot of money on repairs and maintenance over my old Subaru Forester, not to mention all the gas savings (see below).

This year her battery lost another bar, down to 7 out of 10 and her range was closer to 80 miles (60 realistically). Scott was needing a car that could go out of the valley if necessary, so it was time to move BeeBee along to a new home. Nissan gave us a good trade-in price for her and one of the employees there ended up buying her. We hope she’ll introduce a new family to the joys of driving EV’s.

Thank you BeeBee for 4 years of fun zipping around town in you, and for helping us get over the EV hump! We’ll miss you!

For the first half of 2023, we drove 1944 miles in the LEAF and saved $318 in gas over what the Juke would have used.

Over the course of her 4+ years with us, BeeBee saved us over $10,000! That’s pretty awesome when you think about it. $6,400 of that savings was from not paying for gas and in the savings of repairs and maintenance over what it would have cost for the comparable gas car. We also saved a lot of money on buying the LEAF ($6,500 over the Juke in 2019), but we gave some of it back on the trade-in ($2,500 less than the Juke in 2023). Still our total savings purchasing the LEAF was $4,000 over the Juke. We also saved about 18,000 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere by driving the LEAF instead of the Juke.

If you’re thinking about trying an EV, going with an older model that still has life in it is a smart move. As technology moves on, they sell at discounts and then they save you a bunch of money too, not to mention the carbon you don’t put in the atmosphere.