Archives for category: Allegories
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A New Day, A New Virus

March 2, 2019 //
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Well, new job… new opportunities for contagion. lol Shit. I’m sick. Oh, it’s not any sort of dire life-threatening sort of thing, just an annoying virus of some kind. It began with robbing me of my appetite night before last, but I didn’t really notice that. Yesterday the tickle in my throat, and a spectacular fit of sneezing heralded the coming of the new virus with more certainty. By midday, in the office with it, the weakness, aching joints, and fatigue, joined the party, and I went home to take care of myself. I think my Traveling Partner may have it, too, but I was too sick yesterday to be at all clear about that; he was an absolute pro at providing nurturing and care, and if he was sick, too… wow. It wasn’t obvious, and as sick as I was, we enjoyed our time together.

…I meant to actually just go to bed, and to do so early. What I actually managed to do was sit around wrapped in a fuzzy blanket staring blankly at the television for several hours, then went to bed. lol I woke too early, but also too… awake. Now? Now I’m up. It’s a new day. I get started canceling plans; I am still feeling ill, and there is no good reason to expose my friends to this. I’m already looking forward to that moment when I… just go back to bed. Self-care first, and some coffee, then I will yield to the call of warm blankets, and a quiet room.

Mindfulness will not prevent a head cold. A great meditation practice will not prevent me from feeling confused, weak, and ache-y, when I’m sick. This is just real. I keep grinning every time I consider the “new love” excitement of realizing that mindfulness practices really were helpful for me – every day, every moment, significantly improved with them – and how easily I was tempted into enthusiastic cheer-leading, and also into gradually slipping into thinking errors about what it was capable of doing for me. Great self-care means practicing all the practices that support my wellness – emotional and physical – without putting any one of them on such a high pedestal that it becomes a set up for failure, over time. I’m not dissing meditation or mindfulness, at all, I’m just pointing out that – as is often also the case even with the medicines we take – no single practice (for mindfulness, for self-care, for emotional well-being, for physical health…) can do 100% of everything we need – for everything we need. Just… It doesn’t work like that.

I’ll still meditate today, if I’ve the mind for it. It’s an important practice, a foundation of my emotional health, and I get a lot out of it. I’ll still practice mindfulness, as much as I am able to while I’m feeling ill, and whether sick or well, it’s a practice I find worthwhile for keeping me grounded, realistic about life, and able to maintain a clear perspective on the things that matter most to me. I’ll shower, and practice good hygiene. I’ll make the effort to eat healthy calories. I’ll drink water. I’ll rest. No one of these great practices will cure the common cold. It is what it is. They are what they are. Only that.

…Imagine how awkward, uncomfortable, disappointing, and frustrating it would be, if I fostered a belief that meditation would cure my cold… and then it just didn’t. I might be angry. I might give up on my practice, and lose the benefits it does provide me. I might lash out at others, or rhetorically, spreading my feelings around my tribe or community, and undermining the practices of others with the festering wound of my disappointment and my sense of failure. I would wonder if I were “doing it wrong” and whether it’s “all bullshit”. What a lot of wasted emotional bandwidth. 😦

Meditation has been a practice that has served me well, thus far. I continue to practice. I value the effect it has on my day-to-day experience. I am emotionally more well, in the context of having a committed meditation practice. It’s still only what it is, and it can’t be more than that.

Today I have a cold. At some point, I’ll meditate awhile, and when I’m done with that… I’ll still have this cold. These experiences are not related to each other, and that’s entirely okay. This? This is not my best writing. It is, however, a parable. A moment to pause and reflect on what meditation is – and isn’t – and what it do – and what it don’t do. 😉

Once I’m over this sickness, I’ll definitely begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, anhedonia, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices

Weird or Not

February 28, 2019 //
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It’s sometimes necessary, I find, to accept what is. No, I mean, really, really push past the clinging and exasperation, the disappointment, the frustration, all of it, and truly accept the “now” I find myself in, and do so quite fully, without denial or blame. It’s not always easy. Words are easy. Verbs take effort. Reality may allow me to delude and deceive myself awhile, but… reality always wins. It is.

…Let’s set aside the also real reality and true truth that we make up a lot of our experience in our own heads, and much of what we “believe” about our circumstances is in no way actually supported by reality. It’s made up bullshit we refuse to let go of. Truth. Mull it over.

Reality always wins, and most harshly, reality wins in some uncomfortable ways when I refuse to accept things as they are, without clinging, without attachment, and without self-deception. It’s snowing again this morning. Well, it was. As has been the case for a handful of days, now, our weird winter weather continues; snow during the wee hours, enough to dust everything and coat the roads. By noon, it will have all melted away in the cold winter sunshine. I’ll head home in the winter chill, across dry pavement, perhaps a hint of rain in the sky. The cycle will repeat. Schools have been canceling on days without any actual snow. Businesses have been closing, or opening later, on mornings with utterly dry pavement. It’s… strange. It is also 100% of what it is, and nothing more; no amount of argument or discussion will change it. Reality doesn’t bow to opinion. Ever. My feelings about the snow are not relevant to the facts, themselves. Reality is not an emotion.

I think over the day ahead, without much regard for the weather. I expect it will be more of the same, as it has been; my expectations still don’t amount to facts, truth, or reality. I contemplate my commute, and think ahead to spring, and maybe handling it differently. Park closer to work, spend less distance/time on the light rail or bus, walk more. The walking more sounds so lovely… I already get more walking than at my last job. I’m not sure what changed besides the address that frees me to do so… a different mindset. Did I make that change? (Probably.) Is the role that different? (It is.) Is the location more enticing for walking around? (Definitely.) Choosing change comes with a ripple effect; when I have chosen wisely, so many details are changed for the better, and when I have chosen poorly, quite distressingly similarly, many small details may change in ways that affect my experience in less pleasant ways. Choosing wisely is worth slowing down for. Fully considering the changes I choose, and the changes those changes may cause, is worth making time for. Change will come, regardless, and choosing it skillfully, navigating life instead of bobbing haplessly along its currents, can certainly alter the outcomes.

Well… here I am. Another day, another beginning – and more change to choose, more choices to make, more life to live. It’s already time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Adjust Your Focus

February 25, 2019 //
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Monday stretches out ahead of me like some sort of… Monday. I’m okay with that. There have certainly been times in my life when each Monday (or, that is to say, the starting day of each work week) carried a very specific signature dread. It didn’t seem associated with the job I had, the boss I worked for, or the circumstances, generally. Mondays felt “cursed” in some way. It was reinforced, although I didn’t understand it for a long time, by the cultural jesting and aphorisms about Mondays. Thinking Mondays are any worse than any of the other days is an illusion, though.

Think of the mind’s eye as functioning mechanically; to see, it would need a lens, and a focal point, and one might well expect that adjusting the focus would bring things into view more clearly. It’s a pretty good analogy. We become what we practice, and by extension, we do tend to see what we are looking at, and it may not always be entirely obvious if our perspective is in some way “out of focus”. Is there dust on our mental lens? Are we focused more specifically on something outside the frame? A loose metaphor attempting to capture how thinking errors, and an unwillingness to allow our perspective to be well-informed by what we can see (when we observe) and understand (when we permit ourselves to be open to new information). Happy Monday – use it wisely. 🙂

Monday is Monday. It’s just a day. We gave it a name. Rotate the wheel a turn and it lands on another day – couldn’t that one have been “Monday”? It’s rather arbitrary labeling, and wholly fictitious; we made that shit up. Let it go. Let Monday be Monday, and also just be a day in your experience. Another new beginning. A new starting point to begin a new week. Let go of what is not now – past or future – and take a deep breath before you head to the office, the job site, the unemployment office, an interview, your studio, a wilderness trail, a retail outlet, a cafe, a library, a doctor’s office, a classroom, or whatever destination Monday might take you. Have your experience with an open mind, and an open heart. Choose to have your own experience, your way. Choose to be the person you most want to be – authentically. Make the choices that take you there, however slow the progress may seem to be.

What one thing could you choose to do, or change, that nudges you gently in the direction of your goals? Are you doing that, today? No? Something smaller? Incremental change over time is built on small choices – millions of those, over hours, days, weeks… until we have transformed ourselves. I’m just saying – you have amazing power over your experience, even when you feel you have little power over your circumstances.

I’ve just started reading “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry“.  I’m ready for this one, now. I wasn’t, earlier. The new commute provides me with more time to read, since I take the train. I’d been very much wanting to refocus my attention on the written word, and really make more time – take more time – to read. Study has great value, and I find that reading from printed works seems a more effective learning strategy for me, personally, than most video material can actually compete with. It’s not a given that a medium that grabs my attention in a visceral way (like tv, movies, and YouTube content) will also teach me; hasn’t seemed to be the case, at all, in practice. Books work. Your results may vary. Perhaps it is to do with something about me, as an individual (likely not, honestly, we’re all very similar in most ways), or something to do with how the mental process of reading works in human brains? Anyway – I read. It works for me. I talk about what I read, which reinforces what I’ve learned and runs it through all manner of critical thinking drills, to validate that new information. I never regret the time I spend reading. 🙂 Maybe that’s enough reason to read?

So… I’ve got Monday ahead of me, a book in my backpack, and… I think I’m ready to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, Words

Next!

February 21, 2019 //
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I’m looking at this list of bullet points. It has become an outline of future work, mapped across future days. My morning coffee has become a can of cold fizzy water. The day is nearing the end, and I am smiling. I’m smiling, in part, because I love what I do. The other part of that smile is because I’m not being asked to yield what remains of my day, or my energy, beyond an utterly routine commitment to a shift. Comfortable. Sustainable.

There is no clock on the wall. My sense of aesthetic suggests there should be. There is no potted plant on my desk, or standing in the odd corner between a structural post, and the wall; a plant would look great right there. There is no bookcase with books, filled up notepads, coffee mugs, and tchotchkes, against the wall, where I expect to see one. The floor is bare concrete. The bare overhead light contributes to the very industrial look of this place. I’m not bitching; the temperature is comfortable, the break room is amply stocked with icy cold fizzy water, and very hot coffee, both in reliably good supply.

I arrived eager and confident a couple days ago, and the fit is natural; I belong here. I am still in that “assessing needs-gaining access-learning tools-looking ahead” sort of place, and that seems appropriate to the circumstances. I let myself fill my awareness with this moment, and these circumstances. No holding back. No trepidation. All in. I am comfortable here.

…The walls need art…

…I’ve got plenty of art…

Tomorrow is another day. Another beginning. Another step along this path. I’m ready for it – I’m also tired, at least, tired right now. Relaxed, contented, fatigued – the fatigue of a day’s work, done well, and fully appreciated. All of that. No more than that. It’s lovely.

The challenge, now, is shoring up healthy practices, and building new routines around these new circumstances. The commute is different. The location is different. Simple things like badging in, logging into tools… finding my way directly to my office, all new, and all such simple things, generally; it’ll still take me weeks to get comfortable and functioning on updated implicit memory. In the meantime, I laugh at myself each morning as I go down the hallway toward the office in which I spent my first day, by mistake. My office is the next corridor over. lol I’ll chuckle when I attempt to login using credentials from the last place I worked. I’ll grin with merriment when I find my way to the men’s room, instead of the ladies’ room, having to back track, then reverse through a seeming maze of hallways and glass boxes to the opposite side of the building, because, at least for now, it’s the only route by which I remember where the ladies’ room is. I’ll laugh out loud when I walk into my boss’s office, thinking it is mine (mine is on the opposite side of the hallway).

I’ll go home still smiling. Tomorrow, I’ll begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, The Art of Being

Inner Demons? Me, too.

February 20, 2019 //
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“You’re not alone in this,” I whispered to myself when I woke a tad ahead of the alarm. Startled out of sleeping by a sensation of choking. Of being choked. That invisible hand wasn’t “real” – outside my nightmares. I made coffee. My coffee is good. Meditation calmed me quickly; there was a time it would have taken longer, and required more attempts. Progress.

…I sometimes find I need a… score. A theme song. A soundtrack. This morning I stride across a metaphysical battlefield, Monster Slayer, Demon Killer, just a general Wednesday-morning-got-a-job-to-do, bad ass. A theme song would be good here… something… Oh. This works nicely. Stand down, monsters, you have no power over me. Not today. 🙂

At this point, it’s an ordinary Wednesday morning. 😀

No kidding, though, giving my personal inner demons a face, and a way to constructively face them “outside myself” has been a helpful way to get a grip on some of my challenges in life. I’ve far fewer “inner demons” to deal with these days. (Maybe they don’t like the music I play? 😉 )

Every demon – every day – a new battle, a new battlefield. Still, as demons go, fighting the ones that are built purely on my subjective experience of life, and live entirely within my own head, are surely the easiest ones to slay with music? lol I enjoy the practice of imagining myself at my strongest, my most capable, of savoring my successes, of bringing my strengths into my self-awareness when I am feeling attacked from within. This morning, my inner bad ass has her combat boots on. “You ready, Battle?” I ask myself. The answer? “Fuck yeah. I got this!”

I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, War and News of War
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