Archives for category: Logic & Reason
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Always Do Your Best

July 24, 2014 //
1

It’s not a demand, really. “Always do your best” is the fourth of the Four Agreements. I keep coming back to it, however many learned tomes I immerse myself in, however many notes I take, or cross-references I make, however many relevant observations or light bulb moments come to me from hours of study, or therapy. I regularly find myself considering, again, the Four Agreements.  (My traveling partner had recommended The Four Agreements, a few weeks into our association, and before we were lovers. I often think of him with love when I am reading it.)

The basics, and a good starting point.

The basics, and a good starting point.

If I had truly mastered these, would I face so much struggle? Would I have hurt so much for so long? If they were nothing more than saccharine platitudes, would I find renewed relevance so frequently, or so often find myself thinking ‘yes, of course’ in contemplation of a missed opportunity to practice one or more of these simple ideas?

I have suggested, and shared, and gifted this small book so many times… As with anything else, there is a verb involved, and the will, choices, and actions of the individual. I think there is a relevant ‘old saying’… how about ‘you can lead a person to knowledge but you can’t make them think’? Oh that’s not it, is it? It’s ‘lead a horse to water…’, but not so very different, truly. 🙂 We don’t live each others lives, and ideally we don’t make each others choices, or undercut each others opportunities for growth; it’s nice to have help once in a while, but the life we live, the path we walk, the choices we choose belong to us alone. A person can read The Four Agreements as many times as they care to, and never benefit because they chose differently, or did not act on what they read. We have the amazing freedom to choose poorly, any time, to be short-sighted, to hold on to grievances, to struggle, to hold on to resentment; we choose who we are. We create our experience.

A rainy day flower. Beauty needs no excuse.

A rainy day flower. Beauty needs no excuse.

Yesterday, in spite of being ill, was a very pleasant day. It was a pleasant day in spite of one partner having to come home to work because construction noise in the office was so significant it was causing major stress. It was a pleasant day in spite of my traveling partner being very focused on preparing for the next trip away. It was pleasant in spite of the rain, and in spite of the headache. We made good choices, and treated each other well. Sure, I’d like not to be sick, but being sick did nothing to diminish the lovely day, yesterday.

Yesterday, maybe because I am ill, I also had a serious nightmare – terrifying enough to launch me from my bed, all my bed clothes in hand, body pillow clutched to me, cowering in the corner, against the back of the bedroom door when my nearest partner came to check on me, having heard the bang of my frightened self slam into the door, or the wall, whimpering. I don’t recall the dream now, only the sense of tremendous relief when my open eyes began to see, and I was safe in my room, my partner gently soothing my fear with tender touches, and soft words reminding me where I was in the moment, and that all was well.  As fatigued as I felt, it was hours before I could persuade myself to try sleep again, and strangely my bed just didn’t ‘feel right’ after that, until I woke this morning, quite comfortably and on time, a tad amused that I’d forgotten to set my alarm at all, and that it didn’t really matter.

There is a part of me that is curious what the nightmare was about. There is a wiser part of me who understands that doesn’t matter at all, and the kinder choice for my experience is to let it go.

What is 'enough'?

What is ‘enough’?

Today is a good day to listen well, really listen, without waiting to speak. Today is a good day to do my best, and understand with compassion that most people generally are doing their best, as well. Today is a good day to avoid making assumptions; assumptions are only stories we tell ourselves, and they have a lot of power to cause needless suffering. Today is a good day to ‘be impeccable’ with my words, using them well and with kindness, and understanding that clarity does not require callousness, or cruelty.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Big 5, Words

Turn and Face the Strange

July 22, 2014 //
0

It was wonderful to welcome a traveler home. I missed my partner while he was away. Interestingly, there was no real stress to it; I knew where he was, that he was safe and in the company of people who wish him well, and had I needed to reach him, I easily could have. “I need a chance to miss you once in awhile.”  He said it to me early in our relationship, and it resonated with me. We all need a chance to ‘miss each other’ now and then, perhaps…like a favorite food, or a favorite book, or a favorite movie; eventually it is necessary to do other things, if only for variety.

I like routine. I admit it. My life becomes emotionally and logistically incredibly chaotic without it, in part because of the TBI; it effects how my memory and thinking work. I work hard to build habits that care for me, that care for my environment, that keep things orderly and keep me ‘on time’; without them, I am all over the clock and all over the calendar without any particularly predictable result, and a lot of things just don’t get done.

On the other hand, creativity isn’t especially ‘routine’, and inspiration isn’t tied to a calendar event, and intimacy and connectedness don’t always follow through on an invitation. Routine can easily slip from ‘planned’ to ‘stale’. Routine can as easily halt growth as support it.  Change and choice and novel stimuli all contribute to being interesting, fun, engaging, and ‘having something to say’. Once again I am faced with a balancing act…

interrupted by an unexpected moment of clarity

interrupted by an unexpected moment of clarity

…And a poorly chosen metaphor. My consciousness is jarred by how often we dismiss what is important in our lives with a diminishing word. We express so much of our experience as ‘an act’, ‘a game’, ‘going through motions’, ‘measuring up’ or ‘checking a box’. How serious am I about who I am and what matters to me? Serious enough to be honest with myself? To be vulnerable with other people? Am I serious enough to look a coworker in the eyes and say “Actually, I’m having a terribly difficult time with life, these days, and I’m not sure I’m up to it” when that is what is true and real in the moment? If we can’t be honest with someone else, what supporting evidence is there that we are honest with ourselves? How honest are you with yourself about who you are, and where you are heading in life, and what you really want out of you? Every day.

Balance is a big deal for me, personally, and I’m suddenly irked with myself for allowing the trite figure of speech to diminish how important it actually is – in my own thinking! Words have immense power to guide us, and to mislead us. We quickly learn to continue to punish and hurt ourselves, furthering the damage done by others, through the use of language. It’s no wonder I still feel so much pain from events in the past; I continue to hurt myself through the use of language. Guilt, shame, social anxieties, fear, resentment, chronic anger, chronic frustration, a sense of being held down, held back, and diminished – all these things can be byproducts of the shitty way I sometimes treat myself…out of habit, having learned to do so from others who also treated me badly. I see it in others, too, and while it can be tempting to criticize or judge, or suffer the pain they inflict as intended; we’re all so incredibly human. Each doing what we think, in the moment, is ‘right’ or ‘good’ or ‘necessary’ or some other combination of still more words to justify the shitty way we’re treating that other human being. Very few people think of themselves as ‘the bad guy’, however heinous their actions.

What are your relationship values? Have you chosen them wisely? Do you practice them willfully? Can you state them in simple language? Are you ‘one of the good guys’ – or are you…not? If your relationships are generally contentious and unpleasant and fraught with anxiety, perhaps embracing and cultivating different values is something to consider? Choice. Change. It isn’t really likely you can control or change the behavior of another human being, unless they choose to allow it. Certainly you have no particular direct influence over their thinking, but no one out there has as much power over yours as you do. I’m just saying…make your choices for you.  Unhappy? Choose change, but choose it for you; you have no real right to force change on someone else.

Don’t forget Wheaton’s Law. “Don’t be a dick.”

Today is a good day to remember that other person over there is a human being, too, with all the rights I have myself. Today is a good day for kindness. Today is a good day to be who I am. Today is a good day to appreciate what I have to offer the world. Today is a good day to choose wisely. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Words

An Entirely New Experience

July 21, 2014 //
0

Here it is, another day. Another week. Another sequence of moments about to unfold, touched by choices, and circumstances, colored by coincidence and thinking. Today is an entirely new experience. It’s a lovely morning to contemplate that, it is a Monday.

I slept like hell last night. It hardly matters this morning; it has become routine during periods of prolonged wakefulness, to choose an appropriately comfortable supine pose, still in bed, and meditate. There’s no ‘goal’ and I’m not ‘trying to get back to sleep’, I’m simply taking advantage of the quiet night hours to meditate, because I’m awake, because it’s a quiet activity, because it feels good, because it creates a lovely state of relaxation. Sometimes the need is greater, and I sit up and take it quite seriously, meditating in that timeless time in the wee hours, before the alarm goes off. It’s a nice bonus that I am often able to return to sleep afterward. Meditation did nothing to help my sleep, when I tried meditation to help me sleep. Meditation has done a lot to help my sleep in general, now that I am not trying to make it improve my sleep. lol There is real insight somewhere in there.

It is enough this morning that the headache I woke with dissipated while I was meditating, and that I feel rested in spite of having relatively little sleep. ‘Enough’ is good with me; I am not looking for more than that.

Enough.

Enough.

On the subject of new experiences, I spent the weekend focused on study, self-work, contemplation, and yoga. I don’t have a clever portmanteau for it (like ‘stay-cation’ or something of that sort), but it was time I definitely needed after an emotionally difficult week. I am still learning how to take care of me, and a big piece of that is boundary setting, communicating limits, and honoring those boundaries and limits myself enough to remind others to honor them as well. It doesn’t come nearly as naturally to me as undercutting my needs and fostering resentment over time – I’m super good at those, but find they don’t suit my long-term needs, or build healthy relationships.

One choice. One change. One moment.

One choice. One change. One moment.

So…it’s back to work, another week, practical details, calendars, meetings, ‘getting it done’… I have a busy week ahead. I observe that I have both the experience of eagerness to get back to a job I love, as well as mild impatience – because what could be more important than investing my time in me? (Every Monday I face that dilemma, and wonder why our culture is not more advanced by now; we have the technology to provide greater leisure to all…why haven’t we done so? I’m good at being employed, but it isn’t what I want to be doing with my time, in general.)

I am eager, too, to welcome my traveling partner home. I haven’t had any particular stress over his absence, I guess because he doesn’t feel gone to me, aside from missing the experience of his touch. He needed some time away, and certainly I’ve benefited from that time myself. (He said something once about the value of an opportunity to miss each other, and I have observed the truth of it in my own experience.) Still, I enjoy the tales of travelers, the opportunity to sample something different from the experiences I’ve had myself, the newness and intimacy of the restored connection, the subtle differences in language brought home from faraway, and stories. I just love stories, and my partner is a good story-teller. I hope to listen well.

Something changed for me last week. It requires further consideration, acceptance, and understanding. Fewer words, less thinking, and more awareness seem useful on this one, and it may be some time before I write much more about it. I find that I have a more clear idea of what I want in life, what I need from and in my relationships, and the choices it may take to get there. That’s a very big deal, I suppose, although it rather gets in the way of other things just at the moment. The timing is peculiar. Last week sucked in a most extraordinary way, but I managed a good amount of emotional resilience, balance, and self-compassion, and greater ease and a feeling of naturalness to making room for my emotions, and being kind to myself. I had feared learning emotional self-sufficiency might result in … greater loneliness. That isn’t seeming to be the case, so far, instead I feel more whole as I learn skills that allow me to rely on myself as a sort of emotional ‘first responder’. So far, pretty awesome. There’s more to learn, of course, and I suspect that like mindfulness itself, emotional self-sufficiency is more a practice than a goal. 🙂

Finding love everywhere starts with how I feel about myself.

Finding love everywhere starts with how I feel about myself.

So, yeah. Here it is morning, again. Time to start a new day. Today is a good day to treat myself well, and to embrace my values – and my friends. Today is a good day to smile at small children. Today is a good day to remember most people are already doing their very best, much of the time. Today is a good day for kindness. Today is a good day to recognize that respecting my own boundaries and limits, and setting them clearly, and managing them well, is a very nice way to tell myself ‘I love you’. Today is a good day to change the world.

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Big 5, Words

And There Was This One Time…

July 20, 2014 //
0

It seems a strange morning to write. My thoughts are incoherent and disorganized. Various ‘reasons’ I’m sure, though I don’t think it really requires an explanation, does it? I’m smiling and thinking how rarely an explanation changes an experience, however it may change my perspective.

I slept restlessly last night. I woke in a state of panic and dread at 1:42 am. I had no recollection of my dreams, and no awareness of any startling sounds or movement in my environment. I still occasionally have night terrors, and having crashed out around 10:30 pm, the timing is right. Knowledge offered no relief from the feelings, but it gave me leverage to use new skills to soothe myself, slow my heart rate, calm my breathing, settle my emotions, and eventually return to sleep. Meditation – the most powerful Rx I’ve ever been prescribed for a whole host of bullshit that challenges me.

The mysteries of the sleeping self are sometimes best left as mysteries.

After waking, dreams fade into the distance.

I woke abruptly, later, and still early (for a weekend day, when I could theoretically choose to ‘sleep in’). I woke shortly after 6:00 am, and feeling uneasy and vaguely pissed-off. I started the morning with more meditation, no agenda, no pressure, and from meditation I moved on to yoga; this gentle routine has become such a feature of my experience that I no longer plan it on my calendar, or set a reminder on my phone, or put a sticky note on my monitor. This slow unfolding of self in the morning is part of who I am now. It’s a nice change. By the time I got to the kitchen to pull a shot of espresso I felt calm, and content. It isn’t always that easy – honestly, the words make it sound ‘easier’ than it actually is. There is an implied commitment to practice, a commitment to self, a commitment to healing – and these require real effort, and a willingness to come back to the practice again and again, in the moment, and the will to face myself in the mirror of my minds-eye in a truly vulnerable and honest way, aware and still, inside myself. ‘Easy’ is not an accurate descriptor.

Practice. It's the practice that is the point; there is no 'mastery'.

Practice. It’s the practice that is the point; there is no ‘mastery’.

I still feel whatever is agitating me lurking in the background of my consciousness, an anxiety that comes and goes, as if it is preparing for some sneak attack, and checking regularly to see if I am still aware. (Personifying my issues isn’t something I take literally – or lightly – but I find that some of my issues are more easily faced when they have, well, faces. lol. 😉 ) I am hopeful that continued practice, presence in the moment, moving through my day mindfully and with great self-compassion will be enough to prevent some nasty attack on my equanimity by my demons. My analyst-brain urgently wants to pick at this sense of unease that returns now and then, to force it to give up its secrets, and tell me ‘why’, but it is a misleading temptation; giving in to it would likely result only in more pain and distress, because most likely there is no ‘why’ at all. Not in my here and now, at least, and perhaps not even in the remnants of last night’s dreams.

When I feel aware of the unease, this morning, I face it. I breathe. I feel myself relax. I move into the moment in a more present way. I take time for a few moments to be still, aware, to be compassionate and show myself kindness; I am human, these experiences of unease are uncomfortable, and result in more emotion on that blue end of the spectrum unless I slow down and take time to care for me. This morning, I have many small opportunities to practice emotional self-sufficiency. This morning life’s curriculum seems to be of the lab variety; hands on, and practicing. I’m okay with that; I expect willful change to require both choice and effort.

The map is not the world. Hell, the map isn't even the journey.

The map is not the world. Hell, the map isn’t even the journey.

Today is a good day to practice taking care of me. Today is a good day for compassion and for kindness. Today is a good day to build equanimity. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Big 5

Practices and Building Blocks

July 19, 2014 //
0

It’s a quiet day of solitary practice. I have spent it on meditation, and study, mostly. I started the morning with yoga, and later interrupted it with a walk in the sunshine before the heat of the afternoon sets in. It has been supremely chill and I feel calm and balanced. I generally write quite early in the morning, as I sit down with my first – now, only – coffee of the day.  Today is different. It is a different day, so I guess there’s at least that explanation for it. 🙂

Every day an entirely new experience, a fresh start, a new opportunity to wonder, and to grow.

Every day an entirely new experience, a fresh start, a new opportunity to wonder, and to grow.

This morning I am building my joy on mindfulness, perspective, and sufficiency with compassionate acceptance that others are free to do what they will; their choices and their experiences are not mine. It is, so far, quite a lovely day.

Some of it is about choices...

Some of it is about choices…

Some of it is about perspective.

Some of it is about perspective.

What will I do with the remainder of the day? Well, hopefully more of whatever is delivering on this delightful experience of the moment. I doubt it is as simple as the tasks I am starting and finishing; the yoga, the meditation, the walking in the sun, the two loads of laundry, and the careful study and cross-referencing of more relevant material are not actually why I am enjoying such a lovely day. They are simply what I am doing, from moment to moment, as the day progresses. My limited understanding of things, as it exists now, suggests that it is the choices to do these things for me, in the way I am deciding to do so, and with what specific intent, and level of presence and engagement that is the why of my lovely day. As with most practices, I will have to do it some more to be certain, and to find it a reliably repeatable experience. I’m content with putting in the effort. What could be more worthwhile than learning to treat myself well, and enjoy my experience, unless it may be the later ability to extend that courtesy and general good treatment to others, because it is simply my day-to-day experience, and the way I behave ‘as a practice’?

I don’t have that much to say today. The day is mine, and I will return to it.

Today is a good day to be still for a moment.

Today is a good day to be still for a moment.

Today is a good day to practice what works. Today is a good day to deliver on the promises I have made to myself. Today is a good day to cherish the moment, and pause to be grateful for all such moments as these. Today is a good day for right now. Today is a good day for love, and emotional self-sufficiency. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Big 5, Words
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »