I’m sitting here with a nasty headache (not unusual) and a feeling of anxiety that just isn’t entirely going away, but also isn’t attached to anything specific in my right-now experience.  I pause now and again, practice mindfulness, meditate for a few minutes, do some yoga. I ‘feel okay’ in the sense that life isn’t bad, even my mood is mostly quite nice, but I have a clear sense that there is commitment to practice and effort involved.  I’m not troubled by that, today, it seems rather obvious that a desired change would take actual effort; a verb.

Here are two photos taken within a few seconds of each other. Take a moment to consider this:

What we see often depends a great deal on…

…what we are looking at (and what we want to see).

So, there’s that.  So much is really a matter of (wait for it…) perspective. (Why does that delight me so? Why does it seem to offer so much hope?)  Yeah, I’m still meditating on perspective. It remains a worthy concept for contemplation, always fresh, always adding some twist on something, and not once have I had an experience where having more perspective was a disadvantage. Not even once.

Somehow, my musings on perspective brought me around to considering that archetypal question of childhood – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  (How many times is any one of us asked that question? Who ever has an answer at that age? Hell, I’m still fucking working on that one!)  I found myself imagining that I had taken on first one career/calling, then another… and when I got to ‘lion tamer’ my creative thinking brain threw ‘tension tamer’ into the conversation! Suddenly, I was imagining making taming my stress some kind of vocation, a calling, a role – dressed for the circus big top, with a whip or a riding crop, making my anxiety do my bidding.  LOL! I delight myself with the image and imagine further a whole circus or carnival cast – with my anxiety somehow ‘The Main Attraction”.  Metaphors dancing with allegories in my busy imagination playground.  My in-the-moment stress and anxiety faded away, for the moment.  (Nice one, Brain, that was fun.) 😀

(I wonder if I can call upon my Tension Tamer any time I want to? Is this a new tool, or was it an experience?)

Mindfulness is making so much difference for me. Being a student of life and love is providing me with an education of such immense value that it could never be measured in grades, or student loan debt.  More questions than answers seems to be a way of approaching my experience that pays off in a lot more good days than bad, fewer sleepless nights, and less bitter rumination and emotional pain.  Finding security and contentment in ambiguity and uncertainty is an unexpected outcome, but here I am. More content. Healing. Finding more peace in my heart and more comfort with my experience. This is a good place to be, and in spite of the headache, and the arthritis pain, this is a good day [for me].

There’s this one thing that bums me out though… I can only share words about this experience.  I don’t know how to convey how utterly necessary it seems now, how helpful, how lovely.  Well, at least I do have words, and I can share those.  (I’ll count on you to read them, and take from them what is meaningful for you.)   🙂

Mindfulness sees the unexpected heron in a field along a busy road.

There is still so much to learn.