Archives for category: The Big 5

However Long the Night

August 16, 2016 //

Morning comes. I’ve not experience one morning yet that hasn’t arrived precisely on time. Each new day is exactly that, new. We can begin again – every morning, if we need to.

One new day, approximately infinite possibilities.

The smallest of my choices still matter, if not to the outcome of my circumstances, then at least telling of who I am. I think that over for a moment; even if the choice I make, action I take, or words I express don’t actually appear to change what’s going on around me, they are a reflection of who I am. I take time to consider who I want most to be, what my values truly are, and how I can best express them.

What matters most?

Last night as I opened the patio door to cool evening air, and closed the screen door, I noticed a young praying mantis hanging from the inside of the screen, about to be trapped inside. I gently coaxed her onto my hand and slowly carried her outside. I did my best to be quite gentle and move slowly to avoid stressing her out more than necessary. Initially, she sought escape, then held very still, watching me from my hand. I placed her with great care in the taller roses in the patio garden – plenty to eat, and seeming relatively safe, I took her picture while she continued to watch me. I looked for her this morning, but she had gone, or had hidden herself too well for my pre-coffee eyes.

It doesn’t matter much at all what I say about how I feel about life. (You either) Words are words. It is our actions that reflect our values. Our rhetoric is meaningless next to our vote. Our keywords are not relevant to our choices. The books we read are not the human beings we are. We become what we practice. There are verbs involved.

Every day, I can begin again. 🙂

Tags actions speak louder, be here now, be kind, be love, be the change, choose love, choose wisely, just saying, love and lovers, meditation, mindfulness, practicing the practices, taking care of the person in the mirror, The Art of Being, The Big 5, use your verbs, we become what we practice, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law, you do you

Categories Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

This One’s for You

August 15, 2016 //

I woke early this morning. I considered going back to bed. I didn’t end up making that choice; I made coffee, instead. Yoga. Meditation. Then I took my coffee into the studio with the intention of writing. I found myself staring out the window, watching the sun rise. As the morning turns to day, I see cats, here and there, in the tall meadow grass, watching and waiting. Crows walk awkwardly about in the playground on the meadow hilltop. It’s an ordinary sort of morning, preceding what is likely to be a very hot day. All the windows and doors are open to morning breezes.

A day ahead, ready to enjoy.

I sip my coffee, and think over a conversation with a dear friend, last night. Anxiety is a major demon for both of us. I understand how bad it can get [for me] and he has my sympathy, my compassion, my affection… and my frustration. How do I effectively communicate that some things have really helped reduce my anxiety, generally, and also resulted in the bad moments I still have being notably less horrible? Is that truly possible, or are we such that we must truly walk our paths utterly alone? Do I have any cause to expect that what works for me will work for anyone else? How do I force the understanding into his brain, give him hope, encouragement, shake him free of his suffering? I can’t, actually, can I? We can share our ideas… but the verbs involved are our own. When it comes to growth, it’s not possible to “grab the mouse” and say “look, move over, I’ll just do that…” – and it wouldn’t work, if we did.

This one’s for you. Yes, you. Here are some things that help with my anxiety, and they might help you, if you practice them. (It does take practice.) (No, seriously, you have to actually do them.) (More than once.) (Maybe a lot.)

Breathe! No kidding. I can’t tell you how often my anxiety affects my breathing, which stokes my anxiety, with causes my chest to feel tight, which affects my breathing, which… yeah. Stop. Just stop. Breathe deeply. Feel your breath.
Anxiety is a liar, and thoughts have only as much substance as we give them. Stop “thinking it over”, get out of your head and into your body – walk, dance, run, bicycle, lift weights – whatever physical activity you can connect with, really get into, and just be in that moment, doing.
Meditation – we become what we practice. When I practice calm, I am calmer. Not only that – a regular meditation practice has, over time, become lasting calm, generally, and lasting contentment. I have bad days, bad moments, sure – they are days. Only moments. Weather, rather than climate.
Connect with someone, talk, share an experience, or have a profound conversation with a friend – or a stranger.
Allow yourself – or even reach for – an engaging intellectual distraction. Learn something new. Read something that takes your thoughts a different direction entirely.

I’m not a neuroscientist, or a doctor, or a therapist – just a person. A person who has struggled – does struggle – with anxiety. I don’t tend to have to struggle so much, or with such painful intensity, or as often these days… something is working. I’m pretty sure it’s a verb. 🙂

As for that other matter… the issue of self-loathing, feeling unworthy… you are loved. I know some of the people who love you (specifically you… and maybe also you, over there…), and they’re awesome. Why do you doubt? I mean… besides being human, and the anxiety and whatnot. 🙂 No, we haven’t overlooked some invisible flaw only you can see; we love you as you are. You are uniquely you, and as far as I know, each of us who love you earnestly desire to be in your good company. I don’t know better words to say you matter to me, that you are loved… Maybe you haven’t been there for yourself as often as you’ve been there for those of us who love you so? It’s okay to change that. It’s okay to look yourself right in the face, just you and the mirror, and see some of what we see in you, and share that joy. It’s a new day. You can begin again. You can join us – and love you.

I sip my coffee, and think of my friends… each so valued. Each so human. I have friends who struggle with depression. Friends who struggle with anger. Friends who struggle with jealousy. Friends who struggle with ennui. Friends who struggle with anxiety. Friends who struggle with feeling unworthy. Friends who struggle with feeling a fraud. Friends who struggle to be their authentic selves. I also have friends who don’t struggle so much, at all. We are each having our own experience. Growth requires a hearty helping of verbs, of practice, and the patience to observe incremental changes over time.

Today is a good day to ask a friend if they are okay. Today is a good day to be there for someone. Today is a good day to change the world. ❤

Tags being and becoming, contentment, meditation, mindfulness, perspective, practice, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, you are loved

Categories Anxiety, Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

What Is Life Made Of?

August 9, 2016 //

I am thinking over the week to come. I won’t see my traveling partner again for a week, and sometime Thursday we’ll lose touch altogether while he’s away, and I won’t hear from him until sometime late Monday or early Tuesday. In all other respects, the next 7 days to come seems entirely ordinary in every way. It’s strange that the presence of one human being, the specific characteristics of one voice, one touch, one human being’s… way, can be so completely woven into so many other elements of my experience, isn’t it? I won’t actually be “without” him… not entirely; I am reminded of him everywhere I turn.

Love is everywhere – well, everywhere we make it.

It’s a gray morning. Traffic in the distance sounds muffled. There is no obvious sunrise, just the day lightening from twilight to definite day time as I sip my coffee. I sit quietly. Writing isn’t so easy today. Some days the words queue up in my consciousness, sentences forming faster than I can type, ideas spilling messily onto the page. This morning? Thought. Consideration. The slow gathering of recalcitrant words. Sentences… sort of. My mind wanders to the lawn beyond the window, the caw of crows on the far side of the park, the morning itself. I am slow to wake fully. I continue to sip my coffee and consider the morning, and to wonder “what life is made of” other than details, choices, consequences and time? It’s not really fair to the topic to describe life with such brevity.

I ache from physical therapy, yesterday. The gray day hinting of rain ensures I don’t overlook my arthritis, either. No headache – that’s something.

A few words exchanged over instant message with my traveling partner makes my morning feel more “real”, more complete, and it’s something I will miss while he is away. This week we don’t travel through life together. We are each having our own experience. Sharing those details will come later. His absence feels more real this morning, having spent last evening together and knowing it’ll be one week from today before we can be in each other’s arms again. I keep coming back to it. Fussy and fretful in some moments, relaxed and content in others. How very human! 🙂

I don’t feel much like writing this morning. That’s come up a few times recently, since being emotionally attacked by someone I thought was a friend, on Facebook (a connection to my recent disinclination to write that I hadn’t previously made). It’s a feeling of subtle over-exposure, an awareness that, yes, people who don’t like me, don’t support my views, disagree with me wholly, find me without value – or worse – may also read my writing. It is, as they say, a free country. I am discomfited by that. It is a strange emotion to acknowledge, and one of the very few emotional experiences that has ever left me feeling reluctant to write. I am struck by the detailed awareness of something that has the potential to silence me as a human being. I don’t like thinking about the feeling; it is as unpleasant as feeling it.

“What is life made of?” seems a good question to ask, and the answers I contemplate have their own value. “What silences me?” seems a terrifying question that I don’t want to ask, and have even less interest in answering – and I resent that. So. Perhaps I will spend this peculiar and rare solo week asking myself that question, and listening to the answers. Life’s curriculum reaches me in many forms.

Today is a good day to face the woman in the mirror quite fearlessly; we’ve been through a lot together, and I know she’s got my back. 🙂

Tags are you going my way?, emotional self sufficiency, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, love and lovers, meditation, mindful living, mindful love, mindfulness, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

The Post I Didn’t Write

August 7, 2016 //

This morning is a lovely cool sunny summer one. I’m enjoying my coffee slowly, listening to birdsong and watching the sun crawl lazily into the Sunday sky. I make a point of savoring this gentle experience, because this wasn’t likely to be the experience I’d be having this morning, just a couple years ago. This morning, I wrote a very different post than what I might have written a year ago under similar circumstances. 🙂

A picture of night.

I woke at 3:00 am to a dense core of raging anxiety consuming my breath. My body felt panic-tight. I sat bolt upright in bed, struggling for air, and wrapped in fear. A nightmare? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t remember a dream, and when I woke I was alert – too alert for sleep. Too anxious. My brain immediately attacked me with all the ‘nevermore’ idiocy available from the darkest and most insecure reaches of my consciousness, dragging me from panic to despair like a horror film monster. I sighed aloud. Got up without internal commentary, or external tears. I shuffled into the kitchen for a drink of water, like an uneasy child. I medicated (cannabis is safe to use as needed). I didn’t fight back my insecure thoughts, instead I took them with me to my meditation cushion, sat awhile watching the cloudy night sky shift and roil overheard, breathing, focused on breath. I breathed in the cool night air through the open patio door. I breathed out the anxiety, imagining it a fog that would dissipate as vapor across the meadow. I gave myself time without concern for the hour, and let myself settle down in my own time. I don’t know what time it was when I returned to sleep. The night sky was still quite dark.

Here it is, morning, and it is a lovely one. I never quite know how to communicate how much difference building a good meditation practice has been for me. Or how much difference it made [for me] to give up psychiatric pharmaceuticals in favor of improving my self-care, and getting real therapy. Pills didn’t solve anything, or even really improve anything; they slowed everything down. The Rx pharmaceutical drugs were poisoning me, impairing my ability to create, and stalling my growth as a human being. Without also having real therapeutic support of some kind they were chronically useless, and probably killing me very slowly. (My opinion here is related to my experience only, your results may vary, and I am not a medical professional; my opinion does not have the weight of scientific fact, and should not be used to make decisions about your own prescription medications and whether to take them! If you have doubts, please talk to your physician. If you don’t like their answer, please get a second opinion – this blog should not be considered medical advice of any kind!)

My first cup of coffee is finished. The sound of the wind chime through the window charms me into listening awhile. I lose the thread of my writing… I decide to move on with the day from here.

Today is a good day for a second cup of coffee, and a leisurely moment. Today is a good day to enjoy the value of incremental change over time, and a moment of celebration with the woman in the mirror. Will it change the world? I don’t know, probably not, and I am willing to wonder, and to enjoy today. 🙂

Tags awake at 3 am, be the change, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, incremental change over time, medical cannabis for anxiety, meditation, practicing the practices, ptsd, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, what are you perfecting?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, medical marijuana, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

Shades of Blue

August 5, 2016 //

I woke feeling strangely out-of-sorts, not quite cross, but not feeling buoyant, merry, or joyful. I rested well. I even slept in and woke some time after the sun was heaving himself into the sky again. My coffee tastes good, and for the moment I am not in any noteworthy amount of pain. I feel subdued, nonetheless, and not as enticed by the prospect of the morning as I have generally grown to be. I can’t quite force an understanding smile, though the intent to have one is there…

My traveling partner arrived last night later than he often does. It’s been a busy week, and he’s got busy days to come, in preparation for an upcoming festival. It’s still days away, and it’s likely we’ll see each other once or twice before he departs. He’s busy getting ahead on work in order to vacation comfortably and he made the choice to return home at the end of the evening, rather than stay over with me. There’s no stress in that, no aggravation, no sense that I am in any way less important to him – but I miss him on this sunny Friday morning. There’s something about sharing our morning coffee that isn’t like any other moment.

I’m not yet entirely awake. I sat down to write first, because missing my traveling partner had overcome me, before I woke. My routines broke with my implicit expectations. I sip my coffee and wonder about the day… the song in my head isn’t a sunny one…but it is one that I strongly associate with a tender moment with my traveling partner, wrapped in love. I put it on the stereo (the only way I know to vanquish a musical “earworm” is to play the song) and let the tears come – and they do. They aren’t hateful, contemptible, bad, wrong, or weak, they’re just tears; they are a sign that I feel. I totally do. This morning I feel love – just more of it than I can contain.

Tangentially, isn’t it strange how powerful music is? I can sometimes change my mood – a lot – by changing the music I am listening to. So, I try a little of this and a little of that, and watch the sun continue to rise. It’s a new day. It feels good to begin again. 🙂

Tags begin again, being and becoming, emotional self sufficiency, learning to love well, listening deeply, love and lovers, mindfulness, mood management, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what are you practicing?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

However Long the Night

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This One’s for You

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What Is Life Made Of?

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The Post I Didn’t Write

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Shades of Blue

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