Relaxing over my coffee after a good night’s sleep. Feeling well-rested is gradually becoming an everyday experience, more common than not. Like so many other things, it’s likely to fail me at some point, but I don’t focus on that as a concern, or a fear; it’s just an observation, and once made I let it pass from my consciousness.
There is music playing in the background, loud enough to enjoy, quiet enough not to force the neighbors to have to share the experience with me. I choose music that gets me going in the morning, fills me with joy, and moves me to move – dancing in the morning is just about as effective as yoga for easing my arthritis stiffness, and combined they are a powerful way to improve my ease of movement and start the day well. Music is so much a matter of taste – I am glad there are so many sorts to choose from. Like exercise, like diet, like knowledge, the vastness of the variety means I have choices that make life more wonderful, more individual…my experience is built on my choices and it is uniquely my own.
I sip my coffee thinking about my playlist; songs come and go, get added and removed. My playlist is a fairly fluid thing – but there are tracks on it that have real staying power. I liked them ‘then’, and I like them now. They continue to delight me, to move me, to provoke one emotion or another that I enjoy feeling – or seek as a sensation for some reason aside from casual enjoyment. Others are songs I really get into for a briefer period, and lose interest in over time. This all seems fairly obvious and common place, but how interesting that it is a thing, at all. What makes some songs stick around so long as favorites? It isn’t as obvious as ‘meaning’ – that’s one thing I’m quite certain of, since so much of the music I like best is not the least bit deep or particularly meaningful, and very meaningful songs are as likely as any other to quietly move along to the much longer list of ‘music I used to really like’. This is not an important question, as questions go. I’m just getting my brain warmed up for the work day, I suppose. 🙂
I took time yesterday after work to shut down the devices for a couple hours and embrace stillness. My intent had been good self-care basics: yoga, a long soak, meditation, maybe some writing. In practice, I got comfy in yoga pants, and did only enough yoga to be easily able to sit quietly and meditate without becoming stiff, and sat down to meditate without a timer. (No timer? By design, or by mistake? I guess by design; I rarely use a timer because almost without regard to what else I have planned, taking time to meditate is more important than that.) About two hours after I sat down to meditate, I found myself focusing again on more practical matters, smiling softly, content and calm. Two years (and then some) ago, when I started down this path, I found 5 minutes of meditation a challenging commitment to myself, that required a great deal of discipline and seemed to offer limited immediate reward. Incremental changes over time being what they are, I am in a different place with meditation now. The challenge currently is figuring out my new timing, and new routine, to ensure I indulge myself with this particular practice as much and as often as practical. I can say with certainty I benefit from meditating very regularly – and without a timer. It is a practice that puts me first like no other – and has no particular potential to harm anyone else.
The things that have great impact on my experience are often not obvious, or seem somewhat trivial initially. Like a great playlist. Like meditation. Like tiny spiders. Like getting a smart phone. Like living my life in an authentic way, precisely as the woman I am. Like making life’s choices with great care and consideration. Like loving the woman in the mirror. Like a smile. There is incredible promise to be found in the details – like buried treasure, without a map, and some of the details end up being as gems of great value – tiny delights in the broader context, of far more worth than the noise and bother that sometimes fills the day-to-day experience with challenges that are less important than they seem.
“Enough”.
This is not a particularly insightful, relevant, or important bit of writing, this morning. I’m not disappointed – life isn’t always about that. I’m just chilling over my coffee, listening to music I enjoy, playing a bit with words in the playground of my thinking, and preparing for a long work week beginning in earnest. I am learning that contentment has staying power. I am having my own experience, and it is enough. 🙂
