Archives for category: The Big 5
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What’s the Point?

March 24, 2018 //
1

As questions go, this one, “What’s the point?”, plagued me for a long while. I mean… what is the point? Is there a point at all? And, yes, even “what is it?”

Where does this journey even lead?

Hell of a transition right there, sorry about that. Here’s the thing, though, both metaphorically and in life, it’s sometimes those unexpected changes, abrupt edges, and unscripted plot twists that really lead us somewhere profound, if only we are willing to follow them. I mean, realistically, we have choices. If we’re fortunate, we’ll make choices that take us in the direction of greater wisdom, of living well, of loving with our whole hearts, and of being ready to accept the love of others… Or something very similar. 🙂

Wisdom comes with time. If we allow it.

It’s been an interesting weekend. I’ve consumed quite a lot of coffee. Strangely, it hasn’t seemed to affect my sleep… but… I haven’t been trying to stick to any sort of regular habits, so maybe I wouldn’t notice. 🙂 I spent Thursday on self-care. Friday, too, more or less, and getting my hair cut certainly counts. It was a lovely experience, and I’m delighted with the adorably subtle misty mauve shade of my hair, now. I spent today hanging out with an old friend, even enjoying my garden together for a few minutes (and it was nice to have stronger hands than mine helping me with the big bale of compressed garden soil, and his good-natured company). Together we planted three biggish bins of flowers, dividing up the seeds by color and sowing them such that summer will be festively adorned with big blooms and bright colors. 😀 More coffee. Ran some errands. It’s a been a restful weekend opportunity to reconnect with what matters most (to me) (in my own experience of living well).

Hints of drama swirl like distant storm clouds on the horizon of my weekend awareness. It’s nothing to do with me. I exchange conversation with my Traveling Partner on and off, hurting when he hurts, feeling frustrated to be far away, and feeling relieved to be distant from it, too. I’d help if I could, but… it’s very true that there’s not actually much I can do. He is having his own experience. So is she. So are they. So are we all.

I hear from him in the afternoon. I smile for almost an hour.

I contemplate a future in which a weekend down home requires no cancellation – because I will have my own space, and can easily take my ease (and whatever distance) I may need without any inconvenience to another. I let my imagination wander to carpets and cushions and a tent cozy with amenities. I imagine Turkish coffee and misty morning views. I imagine meditating as the sun rises, or sets, undisturbed except for the distant sound of bass thumping, and the nearer sounds of chipmunks, hummingbirds, or crickets. How delightfully easy it will be for my Traveling Partner to enjoy a coffee with me, if I’m only a walk away! How deliciously connected and intimate it will fill to be so near, so conveniently at hand. 🙂

I sit smiling for some rather long while recalling my first authentic Turkish coffee, enjoyed in the desert, in the early 90’s. It seems so very long ago from this moment here, and it’s much too late to enjoy yet another coffee, today, although suddenly I very much want to. lol The late afternoon light begins to fade slowly to evening, and I’m definitely not in the desert. I smile, and begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

It Adds Up

March 23, 2018 //
0

The rain continues to fall. I woke early and got my boots on for a hike. It ended up quite short; the trail I’d chosen was slick and muddy, and the steep bits were treacherous. I turned back when it stopped being pleasant, because I didn’t head out with any need or intention of conquering a challenge; I was just out for a pleasant hike. 🙂 The rain had other things in mind, and I’m frankly not the one to argue with the weather. lol

Yesterday was delightful. I continued to tidy things throughout the day. I read. I meditated. I worked in the container garden on my deck. The experience of increasing order over the course of the day seemed to also result in a deepening sense of contentment and order in my thinking. It occurred to me that today would be a weekday, and ideal to get an appointment to have my hair cut. Today began to take shape; I would spend the afternoon “in the city”. I added a couple casual errands to my list of stops, not with any firm outcome in mind, but more a sightseer on life’s journey, today. A favorite wine shop… just to check out what sherries and ports may be in stock. A favorite spice merchant…because spices smell good and inspire me. I could get my nails done… I could go to the museum… the library… that fun little shop that is always closed when I pass by…

…I feel a wave of poignant memory wash over me and sorrowful tears spill down my cheeks unexpectedly, as I recall the first time I shared a work commute with my Traveling Partner, and shared with him my earnest desire to go to a shop at a particular train station along the way. I’d only barely pointed it out, and he was on his feet, extending his hand to me, “Come on,” he said. I followed him – because I wanted to be with him. We enjoyed browsing together, and sharing excitement over this or that artisan ware or beautifully crafted piece. Year after year, ever since, at every birthday, and every Giftmas, I’d asked him to buy me something specifically from that place. It wasn’t the most convenient location, generally, for either of us, and so it never came to be – and it never will. That shop closed permanently after the holidays were over this past year. It exists now only as a precious memory. A moment missed. I let the tears fall; it’s just a feeling. Feelings also pass. 🙂

There are still tears on my cheeks, and already I’m okay. It’s nice to be in this more resilient place as a human being. There is no particular chance that a poignant moment, a sad memory, or a regret will blow an entire day, these days – and why should it? These are things to consider, surely, but no more than that. Moments to learn from. Moments to cherish and to understand. Moments that make for a nuanced experience with real emotional depth. I reach for my Rick and Morty earrings, a cherished gift from my Traveling Partner. He “gets me”. I smile, feeling well-loved.

It’s a lovely morning to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

How’s That Experience Going?

March 22, 2018 //
0

My evening ended with a plot twist. Being the author of my experience day-to-day, I wasn’t taken by surprise in any noteworthy way; I am the protagonist, I am also the plotter, and the chooser of twists, in this one very human story. 🙂

I’m not on the road this morning. I’m not headed south to the countryside for a long weekend. I don’t yet know much about what I am doing, but it isn’t that. lol I chose differently.

I take my Big 5 relationship values super seriously, and I attempt to apply them to all the different relationships I have with others. Respect, compassion, consideration, openness, and reciprocity seem pretty foundational to achieving contentment and harmony (to me). I made choices about my weekend based on these qualities in my relationship with my Traveling Partner, and his Other (by extension, friend, family, and metamour). She’s having a shit time of things right now, very human. I respect my Love, and also his desire to care for this other human being. I feel compassion for his situation (complicated), her experience (difficult right now), and their journey together. I consider what she may need, what he may need, and what I need for myself. I recognize the love and respect (and consideration) that went into comfortably accommodating my need for (rather a lot of) space to live and grow and work out my bullshit without ruining friendships, love, or just the general good vibe every-damned-where, when I moved into my own place. To reciprocate, at least this weekend, it seemed pretty clear that changing my weekend plans could be the most loving-kind thing I could choose for those dear to me. Or… I could stick to my plans because I’d made them, and risk creating a more difficult experience for everyone concerned (including me). Well, shit. I not only don’t want to do that, I don’t need to, and have other intentions and desires for my own experience this weekend; I’m celebrating Spring. I made the choice to cancel my trip down this weekend.

I haven’t yet planned the weekend, and now I am sipping coffee, and listening to commuter traffic pass by on a dark gray misty rainy chilly spring morning, that, in the abstract, had seemed a likely one for a hike in the early morning (not so much, actually, as it turns out).

I woke at 4 am feeling “ready for the day” – and such was my original planning that this would have been “time to go”. lol I went back to sleep content to sleep in as late as I cared to… and woke up at 5 am. I made coffee. Watched the sleepy gray dawn grudgingly admit day break had arrived. I did dishes. Tidied up. Made a second coffee. Put away some laundry. Purposeful but without a clear agenda. Relaxed and feeling easy in my skin.

…Still no idea about the days ahead. I think I’m even okay with that. It’s a good day to take a trip. To find an adventure. To pursue an unexpected novelty or fanciful notion. It’s a good day to paint. To write. To finish this book I am reading. It’s a good day for exceptional self-care. It’s a good day for leisure. I’ve been needing this. Not just the leisure between work shifts, or the leisure of time enjoyed with loved ones wedged between work weeks, but also the deep satisfying soul-healing leisure of time spent mindfully with self. So far, so good.

Really, though, my point this morning is not about what I am specifically doing with my time and my experience. It’s about a question. How’s your experience going for you? You know; the one you are having. The one you are choosing. If it isn’t what you’d hoped it would be, there are some options. My favorite first option is to take a closer look at expectations and assumptions; are you heavily invested in some outcome, or an assumption that is untested, or an expectation that is unstated? Are you attempting to force real life to comply with your narrative? (Don’t forget; you made that shit up in your head, and possibly without even fact-checking the details.) Totally something that can be corrected. If you choose to. The second great option when having a less than ideal experience is also about choices – your choices, your actions, your verbs. Don’t like what you’re doing? Do something different. Don’t like the outcome unfolding around you? Choose another. I’m not saying this is as easy as using words – your results may vary. Here’s the thing, though, you’re already choosing – and what you are choosing is this.  If you don’t like it, you do have other choices. Tons of them.

I think where a lot of us get stuck (I know I do) is that the menu of choices is pretty vast, and the easiest way to manage that cognitively is to pare it down to the most extreme choices, or the most obvious choices, or the choices that “get a reaction” in some seemingly useful way – instead of legitimately, authentically, sincerely, considering our choices in a wholesome positive way that truly contains the potential to change things up for the better. Sometimes we aren’t even aware that we are shunning authenticity in favor of manipulation, control, or chaos. It can be hard to watch another human being go through that (and put everyone around them through that), but I don’t know how to shake someone out of those shenanigans, and can’t force anyone to “be authentic and real”. Certainly shouting that at people hasn’t worked well for me (yeah, I’ve tried that). lol

I hope your experience is a lovely one. I hope you are content and satisfied in life, day-to-day. I hope you feel, deeply, heartily, and with great awareness – and I hope you reason clearly in spite of your strong feelings. If not, and you want more or different from life, why then I hope you choose something different. 🙂

I’ll be over here, enjoying Spring, and this opportunity to begin again. ❤

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

Choosing Practices That Work

March 21, 2018 //
2

I’m contentedly sipping my coffee this morning and anticipating the long weekend in the country. I’m even looking forward to the drive, which would seem strange if it weren’t for the weird new little practice I started practicing days or weeks ago (I don’t remember now, long enough to have already become a thing I do); I make a point of reminding myself why I’m using the car, before I start it up, before I pull out of the driveway or parking space, before I start driving anywhere at all.

My commute has been much improved, and seems to get continuously better, and I am, each time, less reactive, less annoyed, less angry, and less likely to arrive home feeling that I’ve basically just wasted those minutes of my life – or even aged myself further by way of added stress. 🙂 Pretty good outcome for what amounts to 3-5 minutes just talking things over with myself. lol

It’s a simple practice. I sit for a moment, and take a few deep cleansing breaths, and ask myself a question. “What’s the point of this trip in the car?” The first time or two, I stuck to old habits, and framed my answer as “getting from ___ to ___ by hh:mm”. This, unfortunately, wasn’t helpful for me; I have hang-ups about time and time management, and the focus on time resulted in a focus on the outcome itself, and resulted in an increase in both anxiety and aggression. I felt as if everyone was in my damned way, an impediment to my forward momentum and timely arrival. Nope. Not helpful at all. I switched things up a bit, and focused on other important qualities about driving places: enjoying the time, arriving safely, creating an overall safe and comfortable shared experience alongside my fellow travelers. No kidding. The first time I focused on the safe arrival aspect, I found myself amusing myself with “safety games” – could I make this particular drive safely, without aggravating myself or other drivers, and also fully 100% participate in our social contract by also following all the traffic control rules and laws? Making “enjoy the time” a goal in my commuting experience ended up taking a lot of pressure off me to get somewhere else to enjoy that time, and I stopped driving around with the implicit understanding that driving around is a shitty experience to be kept short, avoided, and endured, and started… enjoying the drive. It’s nice. Much improved.

I still get frustrated by all manner of ass-hattery and douche-baggery. No doubt. I’m incensed when entitled fuck-nuts decide the right-turn-only lane at a particular intersection is an ideal way to simply get around all of the rest of us, also going that direction on that road, also waiting at that light. Yep. Totally human. I even feel a certain smugness about not doing that douche-bag bullshit, I totally do. lol Because… fuck that guy. I’m better than that. Well… at least about stealing the right away at that intersection right there. (Still totally human, probably should avoid being smug, in general.) …But, I feel less aggravated than I did, and less likely to hit some breaking point that could result in real rage, which is a huge win.

It’s a simple enough practice. Doesn’t work at all if I don’t practice it (confirmed). Works pretty well when I do. 🙂 Your results, no doubt, may vary. It’s the way of things, isn’t it? What works for me, however profoundly, may not work for you. Try it out, find out for yourself, and either adopt it as a practice that works, or discontinue it as a practice that does not work for you. 😀 Of course, if it “isn’t working” the first time, it is a practice, so you’ll likely want to try it a few times… you know… practice it. Be sure it isn’t working, or find out that it does. 😀

It’s a new day. A good one for beginning again. A good day to practice what works. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Seriously? You Could Do Better

March 16, 2018 //
1

Couldn’t we all do better? A bit? Give that some thought. Are you really the person you most want to be? Every day?

I am feeling frustrated with humanity, generally, and it pivots on competing memes, the willful stupidity of human beings defending pet ideologies, and the unavoidable truth that every damned one of us has some pretty fucking hateful moments, and lugs around some pretty vile baggage. I’m mostly quite done with every damned body pointing at the other guy with criticism about hate, seemingly unaware that they, themselves, have some similarly hateful moments.

Fuck, people, look in the god damned mirror.

I’m not making this point unaware that I am, myself, quite human. On the contrary, I am frustrated and puzzled by some basic confounds in my own thinking. I am concerned about implicit biases I am likely wandering around with, that may inform my decision-making in a fairly stupid way. I worry that things I think I “know” are not well-grounded in fact, to the point that I am regularly seeking proof that I am wrong. (Because, frankly, finding out I am wrong is the only shot at correcting poor quality reasoning – I don’t give fuck-all for being right, and it isn’t helpful to “know” that I am, when it comes up.)

What’s specifically giving me metaphysical indigestion this morning is the head-on conflict between posts/memes/commentary suggesting that “gun control is not the answer –  be kind to lonely kids!” is The One True Way, and the other batch retorting “don’t suggest anyone else is responsible for violence except the sociopaths committing it – you could be encouraging vulnerable kids to become entangled with sociopaths!” because setting good boundaries is The One True Way. Fucking hell – are we all really that stupid? Is it not 100% entirely obvious that this is a false dichotomy? That the jigsaw puzzle of American violence is a tad more nuanced than that? Fuck your overly simplistic idiocy. So done with that kind of simple-minded horse-shit.

It matters how we treat people. It matters what we accept, as a culture, with regard to how people treat each other. It matters when we frame the discussion in terms of the value of one group of lives or another, or the worth of one individual or another. It matters how we talk about – and how we prosecute – violence. Yes, when we let domestic violence crimes go unnoticed, undiscussed, and unprosecuted, we build a culture in which some children grow up thinking their anger (an emotion, nothing more) has more value than the actual lives of others. We created that scenario as a culture, as a society. We deepen it when we devalue women, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. When we foster rape culture, and suggest in our institutions and laws, that how women dress or behave is somehow righteous justification for another human being’s lack of self-control over their use of sexual behaviors, we defend violence over “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are at fault for the culture that exists.

Does that mean we are also accountable, individually, for the individual acts of violence of other individuals? Nope. We are each responsible for our own actions… including those actions that foster a culture of violence. So. Yeah. It’s not us vs. them. It’s not as simple as a single choice between two clear options. It’s about actually fucking being aware of the consequences of our actions, and of our institutions and laws, and we are responsible for the society we create. We built this. Stop acting fucking surprised. Fucking fix it.

Fuck, I am so angry about this. Just do better, damn. How fucking hard is that?

What are you going to do to make this a better country to live in for everyone who lives in it? (Yes, including people who are incarcerated, people who are poor, people who are undocumented – have you read some of what they are put through? Every.Damned.Day. “Inhumane” doesn’t begin to describe it, and that’s really not okay.)

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do better. Just that. Something. Each day, today too, I am going to put my will and my actions toward being a somewhat better human being than I was yesterday. And again tomorrow. Then again the day after that. I will spend a lifetime working towards being the woman I most want to be, building the world I most want to live in. Tearing down the bullshit and baggage I learned growing up, or later on, or built myself. No excuses. I can do better.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories anger, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words
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