This is an easy restful weekend so far. I slept in again this morning, and although I woke stiff and in a lot of pain, aside from that – which is annoyingly commonplace at this point in life – it’s a lovely weekend, relaxed, and still somewhat productive. I’m not ‘trying’ to get here. I didn’t head into the weekend with a firm plan to relax, or to rest, or to tackle a big list of stuff to do. The weekend began. I’ve continued to practice the practices that work best for me – I’ve meditated more than I often to (which already tends to be often), and probably done less yoga than I could have (and might be in less pain if I had chosen differently).

Yes, of course, coffee. 🙂

I tend to associate the verb ‘trying’ with focused effort and a very specific outcome in mind. I also associate ‘trying’ with frustration; trying puts me on a more direct path to failing, by setting specific expectations of which actions must lead to what outcome. I’ve got challenges with frustration – it is my worst emotion, inasmuch as I just don’t deal with the experience of feeling frustrated well; it quickly becomes unreasoning anger, with risk of tantrums, tears, and actual quite dreadful headaches. As emotions go, I am least skilled with frustration. I find that when I let go of ‘trying’ to do something, or get somewhere, and simply get started on the task, or headed for the destination, building on good basic practices without becoming attached to a specific outcome, I not only enjoy my experience more, I definitely achieve my goals more easily – and more often – with less frustration.  It’s an experience to explore further.

Sometimes the luxury self-care package includes a moment of self-indulgence – my salted caramel cafe au lait, Friday evening.

Friday night’s prolonged periods of reflection and meditation are still ‘seeping into my consciousness’. Yesterday was filled with “Oh!” moments of awakening, generally followed by abruptly stopping what I was doing at the time to pause, sit for a moment with the realization or new thinking, before moving on with the day. I ‘didn’t get anything done’ in the sense of practical matters being checked off a list of tasks, but I spent the day treating myself well, relaxing without guilt, and practicing practices that build emotional resilience for the work week to come, and ones that build the emotional self-sufficiency I will rely on for a lifetime ahead of me. With modern medicine in mind, there is every possibility that I will live beyond 100 years… making me more or less at the literal half way point in life, with a great deal more awareness than a newborn child has. These can be fantastic years ahead of me – handled appropriately. Certainly, there are more paintings to paint, more words to write, and more moments ahead of me.

…and more books to read, more poetry to write. It’s a good day for it.

I find myself asking a strange new question as I move through the hours of my days this weekend. “Is this the life you are choosing for yourself, for the next 50 years?” It’s not actually a yes/no limited question. The question is more intended to provoke reflection on who I am, how I live, and what my choices are – not only how I treat the world, and what I do with my time, generally – but also how I feel in the context of my own experience. Each time I ask myself the question, I take the opportunity to make some small change to improve on how I care for myself, how I treat others, and even how I think about my experience, and the world I live in. I am learning to value and appreciate my emotions without letting them take the driver’s seat; they communicate things about the nature of my experience that reason doesn’t notice right away [or at all, let’s face it; reason has a different mission].

…Now, if I can just figure out how to wring every last drop of delight, education, and value out of experiences that frustrate me, that would be quite spectacularly lovely! 🙂

It’s a good day for being, and for becoming. It’s a good day to try new things. It’s a good day to become more skilled at the things that work well. It’s a good day to honor progress, and appreciate all the small moments and interactions that delight me, educate me, and nourish my heart. Changing the world is a long process, relying on the incremental changes over time of a great many individuals – there are verbs involved. Changing the world within can happen over night; it’s a choice. [There are still verbs involved, and your results may vary. Practice. Begin again.]