Spring blossoms
This morning I woke with a headache and a snarl. Unpleasant. Very real. Very human. A quad latte and a couple hours later I’m over being snarly, at least. I still have a nasty headache. Not much to do about it besides treat myself well and with compassion and patience.
It was a sweet gesture that one of my partners put on Larry Coryell playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. I love his version of that piece of music (so much that I’d have linked it, but couldn’t find a good YouTube video of it). Chilling with coffee, talking about projects shared and individual…’making love’ on a level that isn’t about sex, and is about family and connection. In spite of the headache, I feel pretty good.
It’s been a very good weekend. I have been enjoying my experience so much that I didn’t realize I hadn’t written a post on either Friday or Saturday…there are so many people sharing so many moments and so many words, though, it seems unlikely that the world ran short on reading material. lol. It has been an interesting couple of days, existing in my now, and sharing time with my partners; love, Love, and practicing mindfulness. I figure I’ll be practicing indefinitely, too. It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one can ‘achieve full proficiency’ at with the end result of stopping…it’s an ongoing thing…unless I am seriously misunderstanding the how/why of it. It is interesting to see the small things I’ve misunderstood in life to the point of causing myself pain or confusion, or throwing weird roadblocks in my own path. Like…learning something; I’ve spent a long time thinking that the point is to ‘know it’ or become ‘good at it’ to the point of some level of expertise or ‘completion’ then stop, show my work, and get my grade, certificate, compliment, affirmation, acknowledgment, pat on the head, promotion, award, trophy…something that makes it an ‘achievement’ more than an experience or point of ongoing progress and growth. ‘Ongoing’. Life is ongoing. Even the noun is more a verb than a noun, because nothing about ‘life’ stands still. Through the headache I can feel a glimmer of something I didn’t understand trying to peep through the fog of my filters and weirdness.
I cooked dinner the other night…mindfully. That was…interesting. To be really committed to the processes and really focused and aware of the elements of the experience made a very simple meal a different experience in both preparation and enjoyment. I had the subjective experience that the food tasted better, although it was a very simple meal of fettuccine pesto with chicken and red peppers. My partners sure seemed to enjoy the flavors of it more than just about any other meal I’ve prepared for them. I’ve been exploring a lot of every day experiences with more…I don’t know, call it ‘mindfulness’ or call it ‘self awareness’ or call it ‘commitment to the moment’, I’m not sure it matters what name I give it; it is the doing of it that seems to change things. I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t ‘get it’ sooner? I know it isn’t that no one mentioned it, or that there were no books about it, or that mindfulness practices didn’t exist…was it a lack of readiness on my part? Did it fall into the set of ‘things the TBI put out of reach for a while’, like algebra in my teens and twenties? Was I unwilling to understand or unable? Does that matter? I’m getting more comfortable with questions, and less hung up on answering them; I find myself speculating whether there may be a correlation between the lack of impulse to answer all the questions, and my generally reduced anxiety level the last little while, then I let that go, too, and chill in this lovely quiet time and space.
Tonight I hope to be in the kitchen making a simple meal for my family, and enjoying love and family and making ready for another week of work and life. I’ll be seeing an old friend on Wednesday, and I’m excited about it. We’ll also have a house guest this week, and I feel relaxed and comfortable with that, which isn’t always the case with me. I have dreams and plans and goals, and a life to live with a smile. That feels awesome. 🙂
Evening Light 
Maybe “practicing mindfulness” is more like “practicing medicine” or “practicing law” and less like practicing for a performance?
Business and education and entertainment and advertising all drive us to focus on the future or the past or someone else’s lives or the lacks in our own — very little in our culture says, “Hey, take a minute to savor and enjoy your own experience of what is happening Right Now, To You.” It can take something huge to draw us up short so that we examine ourselves and our lives. Other factors (like daily stress) can keep us from focus on now.
It took a while for me being out of a situation where I had to perform a particular role in order to preserve peace (as I perceived it) before I could examine my own feelings about a lot of things and figure out what I really wanted. I don’t have a routine for such examination or mindfulness, but at least I’m no longer actively in denial. And responding to your writings helps me turn my focus inward, since so much of my day-week-life is spent focusing outward, whether by necessity or by choice.