Archives for category: Free Will
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The Parable of the Rain Barrel

November 26, 2013 //
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Emotional strength and resilience don’t seem to be limitless in my own experience. I got to thinking about it as I walked home last night quite exhausted following a rather ordinary day.  I thought, too, of watering my garden with rain water next year, collected in rain barrels, very green friendly… the thinking got all jumbled up, and of course, a parable resulted from the cognitive disarray.

A rain barrel [image from lifehacker]

Consider the rain barrel.  Rain falls plentifully in some places, less so in others. Collecting rain water allows it to be used later, and applied where most needed – I would water my greenhouse with rain water.  If I set up my rain barrel well, and it collects water efficiently, and I have plentiful reserves, my garden remains lush and well-watered, nurtured and capable of supporting life.  The rain barrel must be open to receiving the water, and must also be able to contain it – to build a reserve.  If I set up the barrel to collect water, but I leave it open, too, at the bottom, so that the water is continuously used as soon as it is received, no water is stored, no reserves are built, and when a dry time comes and no rain falls, my garden is dry and at risk of dying, and unable to support lush and fertile life. Crops would be bitter and less flavorful.

Don’t our emotional reserves, the strength of our heart, and our ability to ‘bounce back’ work similarly? If I am constantly at war within myself, or having to buoy loved ones in times of personal turmoil, with no support for myself, my own heart, my own needs, without taking time to ‘refill my rain barrel’, I become bitter, exhausted, and unable to support life. The very real personal rewards to growth and change are powerful, and capable of nurturing my heart on a profound level – unless I am unable to rise beyond constantly ‘spending my savings’, using the rainwater as it comes, instead of building stored reserves for dryer times.

Today I will love well.  Today I give myself as much compassion as I show others. Today I will also take care of me.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

What It Is, and What It Isn’t

November 25, 2013 //
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It is a Monday. It isn’t a good or bad day, it’s barely even gotten started.

Yesterday evening I had a moment or two of down-deep grieving.

In one case, I experienced the pain and sorrow of seeing people dear to me behave in completely unacceptable ways, and however understandably so, still not okay.  Lingering concerns ride shotgun with me this morning as I ready myself for the day.

In the other case, the wee fish Wyatt surprised me after work by being dead.  That’s just not ever a fun sort of surprise.  As life lessons go, I would have preferred another day, a different fish, or not at all.  I wept without reservations, and found comfort with my partner, who was near-by reading, and as surprised as I was.  He’d also been enjoying looking in on the new guy now and then and had seen him moving about contentedly earlier in the day.  (Oddly, this bit of grief felt so intense in the moment, and seems to have passed.  To be fair, Wyatt had only been mine for about 5 days.  He hadn’t even left quarantine. )

I took it pretty hard in the moment, tears and a feeling of failure, blaming myself – what did I/didn’t I do?  As my emotions began to ramp up my partner turned up, put his hand on me gently and said ”fish die”.  My whole being paused for just a moment, hearing that.  Well, of course. “Fish die.” Yes, they do. Things that live eventually become something that died. Fish, people, dreams… “Fish die.”  It was simple, true, and an observation in the moment that helped me become grounded and calm.

I’m pretty human. I do have a brain injury, and post-traumatic stress. Keeping an aquarium is new for me, and filled with complex process work – I study the tasks and processes that support life in my aquarium as though there is going to be a final exam at the end of the semester. Of course there is; fish die.  It is my honor and responsibility to create a habitat for my fish that supports life for them, that allows them to thrive, not merely endure.  That sense of responsibility is one I bring to my other relationships, too, a step beyond ‘above all do no damage’.

I did some science-y stuff to ensure I learn what I can from the experience: tested the water, looked for process missteps (found a couple that ought not have proved fatal, but better attention to details would have prevented them nonetheless). I observed the environment closely after the fact and made notes about improvements on the next quarantine, and checked those observations against my thriving community tank to ensure I wasn’t carry errors from one to the other.  I made notes improving process steps for my quarantine tear-down/set up checklist. I took a few deep breaths, and said good-bye to Wyatt.  I cried. I cried like a little girl to find him dead.  Some of life’s curriculum is pretty deep.

Today is an entirely new experience. I woke calm this morning, and curious what the day will hold. I slept well and deeply.  I sit, sipping  my coffee, and considering the struggles we have as beings, some shared, some that feel so solitary.  I contemplate the choices we make, and how easily we can choose and choose again, and rage against the outcome of our own choices, seemingly unaware that if the outcome is repeatable, and predictably follows a specific identifiable choice, then we utterly control that experience, not only through our reactions to it, but through the choices that bring us there.  Don’t want it? Don’t choose it.  Simple enough, generally, however tough we may make the process of making a different choice.

Today I choose compassion. I choose tenderness. I choose kindness. Today I choose to smile; there is a lot to smile about. Today I choose eye-contact and conversation; we all spend far to much time feeling alone. Today I choose to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

A History of Predicting the Future

November 24, 2013 //
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It’s early on a Sunday morning. The house is quiet. My usual vanilla latte is exceptional this morning. My heart is calm. My loves are safely here at home, and from this limited perspective of a quiet peaceful morning, all seems well with the world and the most important event thus far is seeing that the new plecostomus, still in quarantine, is out and about busily going about the business of being the fish that he is.

My morning meditation concluded with a strange sense that I was somehow ‘unstuck in time’. My consciousness was feeling very open to the future, aware of the past and vaguely disconnected from both, poised comfortably between them in this pleasant ‘now’. I soon found myself thinking about work, aware there are only 11 working days left- counting today. Left of what? Well, left of now, certainly, where work is concerned. There may be others in the future. There’s that word again. ‘Future’.

The thought of fortune-telling crones, and hucksters, of psychics, and favorite aunts with a gift for guess work, filtered through my thoughts alongside thoughts of my work (meaning employment). I’m an analyst by trade, and have been for most of my adult life. I make my living ‘telling the future’ in a sense, although I do so using math and trending and spreadsheets, rather than tea leaves, Tarot cards, stones, runes, or the stars in the heavens.  The interesting thing about that, though, is that I’ve come away from a number of jobs wondering if the people who make use of analysts actually have a real understanding that it is something different than guesswork, tea leaves, or shamanism.  It starts to cause me a moment of bitterness and frustration, then I left it fall away with a deep breath and a smile. Because it isn’t actually relevant to my own experience what someone else thinks about the work I do, beyond providing me with data to make a wise decision about whether or not to do such work for them. lol.

Yep. Getting to this place was that easy. Nice one, brain, happy to have you on board with the new processes. 😀

This morning, what is real and important is that I love, and I am loved in return – first and foremost by my own self, invested in me, and supporting my experience.  The safety and comfort of my family, and by extension our more distant family members, our metamours, our friends – those are important, too. Even that wee fish in quarantine is more important than most of the things the world would have me attend to, using media slight of hand, and verbal trickery. That wee fish, living his life, figuring out his new world, discovering that he is safe and well fed, and finding whatever fishy contentment he may – even he is more important than most things, because he lives.

Ideologies do not live. Industries do not live. Governments do not live. Laws do not live. Societies do not live as entities independent of their individual members. What is more important about us, as individuals, than this precious life force, this simple existence, this presence to be felt, to experience, to share? All the rest is myth, lies, ‘color’, ‘spin’ – and distraction…or so it seems this quiet morning as I weight what matters most to me now. Where I to face the end of my life tomorrow, wouldn’t it be vastly more important as a measure of my humanity how I treat my friends, my family, my lovers, even a simple fish, than any task I ever completed for any employer? Life is quite specifically not about the paycheck.

So… on to more important things, then. 🙂  The wee fish is quite shy.  Knowing he could be expected to be shy caused me to watch him ever so closely, and in just a day or two it was clear that the under gravel heater in the quarantine tank wasn’t keeping the water quite as warm as my community tank – nor as warm as the new guy would like it. I was also finding it irksome to keep referring to him as ‘the new guy’.  He’s pretty fancy, as fish go, and really rather deserved a proper name all his own.  Science doesn’t serve me well there, personally, and I found his taxonomic name rather cumbersome (Hypancistrus zebra). I purchased a better heater, and one of my partners – who understands how much I value the whimsy of words and of naming  – helped me out with an exceptional name suggestion.  This morning, I delighted in watching ‘Wyatt’ (his whole name is Zoot Suit Wyatt. lol) explore his world; the temperature change definitely improved his experience.

Mindfully living. Mindfully loving. Mindfully tending my underwater garden and the life it supports. It’s a lovely Sunday for compassion, for affection, for kindness – and it is a wonderful day to change the world.

Zoot Suit Wyatt - the new guy makes himself at home.

Zoot Suit Wyatt – the new guy makes himself at home.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

What We Do, What We Don’t Do

November 22, 2013 //
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I’m nearing a year on a very important journey; I find it easier to measure the distance in life’s journey using units of time, rather than distance.  It has been a most singularly choice-driven year of growth for me. It is no surprise to me, considering the matter, looking ahead to future years, looking back on years past, this year is defined by my choices.  It hasn’t always been so obvious to me.

Going the distance isn't about someone else's destination.

Going the distance isn’t about someone else’s destination.

My difficult day at work, at the start of the week, culminated in a profound moment of self-respect, consideration of my own needs over time, self-compassion, and real regard for the work I’m putting into myself to heal and be whole. I’ve invested a lot in my own experience this year. Rather than have any piece of that derailed now, seemingly so close to… something… I made a choice, and after so many opportunities in life to choose the needs of others over my own, to support something outside what I, myself, truly value and support, the choice I made this time is for me.  I resigned from my current employment, and only a few days remain to rise before the dawn and walk in to this office each morning.

I don’t write much about work, in part because I don’t define myself by how I am employed – nor do I define others by what they do to earn a living. I look for something beyond that in the people who are my friends and associates. There was a strange disconnect in my values there, that finally became a challenge. A new bit of life’s curriculum appeared on my lesson plan, because although I don’t define myself by how I am employed, I had been – for many years – allowing employer after employer to have an effect on my sense of self-worth.  The thing is  – it’s not real, any more than any other label we choose to wear.  I am at a place in my life where my needs are vastly more important – and more worthy of my attention and my time – than the needs of any one employer.  The time I spend investing in my health and wellness right now is significant, and worthwhile.  With the encouragement of my partners, I’m taking an opportunity to stop for a moment, on another level, and find stillness – and maybe clarity around my desire to find purpose, and meaning in what I do; something that has value beyond a paycheck.

I didn’t know in February that I would be capable of making a choice like this. I didn’t know I might want to. Hell, in February, I just wanted a reason to go on living. What a very long way I have come this year. What I choose to do to earn a paycheck does matter.

I’m looking forward to the holidays. I’m eager to take a break from the work routine and breathe. It’s premature to retire altogether, but I’m overdue for a break, and an opportunity to reconsider the future, my needs over time, and ‘what I might like to be when I grow up’.  There’s more to life – and success – than a paycheck.  We each define who we ourselves are – and this year, I have changed the way I define myself.

Today I am content, and I am optimistic. Today I am compassionate, and responsive to my own needs. Today… I will change the world.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Turning 50

Reason, Purpose, Value

November 18, 2013 //
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My day started wonderfully well yesterday. Calm, strong, confidant, I enjoyed the walk to the office. Along the way, I passed the spot where someone else, on their own journey, regularly stacks a number of rocks. They are often tumbled down by someone else, on a very different trajectory in life, and that was the case yesterday morning. It touched me and being moved I stood motionless in consideration.

I really find value and a moment of stillness and calm in that stack of rocks, so carefully balanced. I didn’t question that feeling, simply stood and experienced the moment. Then…

I stacked the rocks.

I stacked the rocks.

A humble offering, a moment of gratitude for the serenity that short pillar of balanced stones has offered me so many mornings. As I walked away, I wondered how long it would remain.

On the other side of an extraordinarily unpleasant stressful day at work, during which I had many opportunities to deploy new tools, practice new skills, and discover depths of strength and character I did not know I had within myself, I walked home. I felt aggravated. I felt disrespected. I felt unappreciated.  My walk was aggressive, fast paced, and my heels struck the ground on every step, rather than seeming to move softly over the surface of my experience. I felt angry to the point of wanting very much to define myself as anger.

Then I got to the pillar of stones I had stacked in the morning, still standing there so still and strong. Hot angry tears held back with such discipline during the day spilled out and coursed down my cheeks. I stood, still. I felt my feelings and really gave them the room they need, instead of trying to steady myself and gently hush my spirit. I’d done what I had to, it was finally time for me. I stood and I wept and I felt the strength of my breath, and the simple power of acknowledging choice and will.

I walked on feeling calmed. I got home and my loving family was there to greet me and the evening was gentle and nurturing. Other challenges were set aside for the moment, and we built instead of destroying. No railing against the unfairness of it all, no hours of dissecting the who and the why of every painful moment. I was content to be home, to be safe, to be valued.  As I drifted off to sleep – which surprisingly enough came with relative ease – I heard the voice of a favorite cartoon character in my head “I learned something today…”

Today, I am strong. I am compassionate. I am open to change. Reason? Purpose? Value? I have them in good quantity, and they are my own to make use of as I will.  Today, I will change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women
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