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Begin Again (Again)

August 28, 2020 //
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Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes predictably so, sometimes unexpectedly. It’s going to happen. That, by itself, is pretty certain. Life can get messy, complicated, painful, and unpleasant, sometimes.

…Still worth living…

Begin again. Take a breath. Cut yourself some slack. Take a step back and look at the situation differently. Make healthy choices. Express sincere regret, and offer (and accept) an unreserved heartfelt apology. Give people (including yourself) room to be human. Listen deeply. Breathe.

No, seriously – breathe.

Eventually tears dry. Eventually angry words stop lingering in the air. Eventually there is an opportunity to reconnect. Make a point to give room for those things to happen. Beginning again sometimes requires us to let go of hurting, or at least be aware of the hurting of those we have, ourselves, inflicted hurts upon – and ideally seek to do something about that.

I definitely pay the price when my meditation practice falls apart.

No finger-pointing or blame-laying here. I’m a mess and every bit as human as I could possibly be. This is not written from the perspective of me telling you, from atop some lofty tower, these are reminders for me. The woman looking back at me from the mirror is not always the person I most want to be.

I have some things to reflect on. Things I need to grow from. Things I need to make amends for. Things I need to make right. I could do better. I know there are choices to be made. There are practices to practice. There are verbs involved.

…First I’ve got to begin again.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Frustration, grief, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Big 5

Perspective, Balance, and Pandemic

April 21, 2020 //
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Well I’m sipping cold coffee this morning, and taking a short break from work. I’m thinking over the last 24 hours, and also the last 6 weeks. Giving consideration to the challenges of life in the time of pandemic, and finding some opportunities for wholesome perspective, and balance.

I think about the crazy shipping delays on some goods that have been ordered recently. I sit awhile with the recognition that it is a fortunate convenience to have shipping available at all.

I think about the lack of availability of some goods (hey, these are not the hotdogs I like!). I feel fortunate to have access to delivery services, even for groceries, and substitutions mean still being able to have meals, in spite of stock running low on specific items. I feel fortunate to be able to use such services.

I think of the “sanity projects” here at home, and the occasional frustrations when attempting to order this or that item for those, and getting stalled on depleted stock, shipping times, costs. I slow down and recognize how often my partner and I are able to “work around” those limitations, or how often waiting a few more days really isn’t anything more than a minor inconvenience, and a bit disappointing.

I think about small things that have big emotions attached, like a favorite fish deciding to jump free of an aquarium, and landing on the carpet. The stress of being worried over the little guy was (and is) real – but so far, he’s a survivor, not a fatality. Life gets pretty real sometimes, and where loss of life is concerned, a single fairly common fish is a much smaller concern than “COVID-19 vs. humanity”. Feelings are feelings; perspective makes the weight of most of those a much lighter burden to bear.

I think about the small aggravations that go along with working from home (so hard differentiating between work time and life time). I’m fairly fortunate to have this as “a concern”, at all. The fact that I am still working is part of what makes some of the other things so minor, so worthy of a moment of perspective.

I think about how fortunate my Traveling Partner and I are to enjoy each other the way we do, and how grateful I am to be staying at home with this particular human being, rather than some other. I’d be fine alone – but I’m glad I don’t have to be.

Sure, there are some inconveniences. There are moments of unique tension and stress. There is emotional fatigue (I mean, seriously? How much more pandemic news do I really need, right now?). There is also real joy, real intimacy, real connection, and real opportunities to continue to learn, grow, and to practice.

So… what now? Another beginning, I suppose. I’ll start with this perspective, and gratitude, and proceed from there to kindness, empathy, and patience; we are each having our own experience. Those are not all uniformly easy, or stress-free (most are neither easy, nor stress-free) – why would mine be?

Here’s hoping each new beginning you embark upon takes you closer to contentment and perspective, and that your days give you reasons for joy, even if you must search for those. ❤

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5

That Bad Taste in My Mouth

September 4, 2019 //
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This morning, my coffee “leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth” in a fairly literal way. I’m not sure what I did to ruin a perfectly adequate cup of coffee this morning… good coffee beans, the usual process… Regardless; this is one dreadful cup of coffee. I sip on it anyway, reluctant to wake my Traveling Partner, asleep in the other room. It was noisy enough making just one cup of coffee. Honestly, it’s not that bad – call it “drink-ably terrible”. lol

I woke from what seemed a sound sleep, smack in the middle of dreams of reality, sufficiently plausible that I was surprised to discover myself awaking to the alarm clock. (oh, blech, this coffee!! LOL) The morning has been thoroughly routine, and soon I’ll leave the house, begin the work day, work through that, return home in commuter traffic, relax with my partner for the evening, crash out seemingly too early (it always seems “too early”), sleep more or less through the night, then repeat that for what unexpectedly seems like … a lifetime. There have been years when I’ve felt the experience to be a brutal grind, and my life filled up with petty resentments, other years (like this one) in all practical respects, it simple feels necessary, entirely practical, and if a bit tedious at times, there’s nonetheless no resentment to it. It works – for me, for us, for living life, just generally.

Yesterday I added some work tools to my personal device in preparation for my trip to “the home office”, which will be next week. A plane flight away, to “a far away city”, and I admit I face it more eagerly than not. I enjoy this job, and feel appreciated, purposeful, and prepared. My Traveling Partner doesn’t do things to hold me back or discourage me; it is a healthy partnership. I feel supported. I sip my coffee, and ask myself an important question: am I providing adequate reciprocity with regard to work, to life, and to ensuring I encourage my partner, and nurture my partnership? It would be a poor choice to nurture my career, while leaving love to whither. I’m not that woman, as I understand myself… So, I take time to consider my words, my actions, and how I prepare for this couple of days away. It matters so much to ensure Love itself is treated with consideration and high regard. What could matter more? 🙂

Staying on the path is a choice, and there are verbs involved; the journey is the destination.

My brain attacks me briefly over a perceived “funny vibe” I thought perhaps I may have picked up on, briefly, last night. It’s not a very effective attack, and I grin at myself over my coffee. Questions work. 🙂 Like a beam of light shining into a shadowy corner, a non-confrontational question seeking clarification on an assumption, a subjective experience, something vague and unconfirmed becomes… just an answered question. lol Most of the uncomfortable weirdness in life and in love are “shit we made up” that only exists in our heads – until our own anxiety and stress causes us to make it real. 🙂

I continue to sip my dreadful coffee – really let myself down on this one – and allow myself to briefly consider uncomfortable moments and “funny vibes” that have occurred in various interactions with an assortment of other human beings, and then let each one go. I breathe, exhale, and relax. No need to make up imagined stressors – real life will make sure I get a fair share of real stress, no problem. LOL

Life is not about perfection – and imperfect things are often quite lovely.

I sip my coffee thinking about sky reflected in water. No reason, it just seems something lovely to contemplate. I consider small lovely moments, and recent achievements, and brief unexpectedly deep connections, and enduring love. Love matters so much, on this whole other level. It still feels unsettling and a bit strange that it had to begin with me – with the woman in the mirror. I struggled to find real security in relationships while I struggled to “love myself”, and once I sorted that bit out reasonably well, it seemed to strengthen other relationships, most particularly my relationship with my Traveling Partner.

…Funny… I’m the one traveling in the world, this time…

…Omg, this coffee is just the fucking worst. LOL

I finish off my coffee, grateful to have it, grateful to finish it, and still thinking about how to deepen and nurture love. Love matters most. 🙂

It’s time to begin again, right here, with the love I know. 😀

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Breathe Through the Moment

May 30, 2019 //
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Moments come and go. Whatever shit you’re having to wade through in life, it’ll pass. You can, of course, slow that process down some, by clinging to misery. I don’t recommend it. Take a breathe. Relax. Be in this moment, and let that one go.

Sometimes the flowers are tucked away behind the vines.

Sunny days come and go. Rainy ones, too. I’m just saying; this, too, shall pass. That’s real. Take a breath. Have a cup of coffee. Walk in the fresh air, among the trees, or under broad open skies.

“Human” isn’t always easy. Actually, quite the opposite seems to be the case; being human often seems needlessly difficult. Worse – we choose the difficulty level on the game of life, more often than we realize we do. We make specific, considered, deliberate choices to make the game so much harder. I’m not sure why that is. We could each do things quite differently than we often do…

…You can begin again. Let it go. Breathe. Start over. Just a thought.

My coffee is good. This moment is deliciously quiet, and gentle. Morning has not yet really gotten going. I’m okay with taking that slowly.

We each walk our own hard mile. We often don’t notice others suffering, and have little ability to place the suffering of others in the context of suffering generally; our own pain often feels like the worst pain, ever. “No one else could ever understand how bad this is…” We isolate ourselves from the support we are seeking, forgetting how common most of these human experiences actually are. We sometimes choose to withhold compassion and kindness, because we aren’t receiving it, ourselves. It’s weird how that works.

I sip my coffee and consider The Big 5. Respect. Reciprocity. Consideration. Compassion. Openness.

I could do better.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Big 5, Words

Taken Out of Context

May 14, 2019 //
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An ordinary enough Spring morning. I’m sipping coffee. Minutes are ticking by. The cool dawn air fills the apartment. My fingers click rhythmically on the keyboard. Traffic swooshes by, beyond the driveway. I am considering the “blank page” in front of me – both actually, on this monitor, and metaphorically, this day ahead of me.

Ask the questions. Do the verbs.

Yesterday’s work day was productive, and felt… short. Very short. The evening that followed was delightful, connected, and relaxed. I slept well. I woke easily, just minutes ahead of the alarm clock, feeling rested. This cup of coffee tastes delicious. My clothes feel quite comfortable. Given this context, the fact that I feel content, merry, and relaxed, this morning, is no particular surprise, right?

This gets me thinking about context, generally. When I find myself feeling miserable for one reason (or many), it changes my outlook on everything that touches my experience. I tend to take more things personally when I am in pain, for example, even though there’s no direct connection between the physical experience of pain, and other qualities of other experiences. It colors my mood, and thus, colors my perception of my experience. If my mood, itself, can alter the way I see my experience, and if the experiences I have in life have the potential to alter my mood… is this a trap – or an opportunity? I used to feel it was a sort of sick joke, and emotional Catch-22 wherein, no matter what, the outcome was always that life sucked. One way or another, I was back to misery, pretty inevitably.

Mindfulness practices, and specifically meditation, unraveled that “trap” – turns out I set that trap myself, and caught myself regularly, fair and square. lol I did most of that to me. I mean, sure, I learned all of it somewhere, but that is so much less significant (for me) than the idea that I built that trap, maintained it with great care (and many verbs), and resisted treated myself any better for a long time with the sort of will and commitment that one generally sees from the eager or ambitious. Sort of scary, looking back, how very skillfully done all that was, and how ferociously I protected myself from any sort of healing progress, for so long. Choices.

Context matters. Where am I right now? Am I okay, right now? How do I feel? Pulling my awareness to this present moment, again and again, and allowing the bullshit narratives to fall away until I am only this human being, breathing in this moment, uncomplicated by assumptions, expectations, and clinging to what is not, there is so much less misery in my experience. This helps me sort out random frustrations, hurt feelings, poorly managed fury, dark days, weird sorrows – nearly all that mess is just made up bullshit, and I can choose differently. It’s often about context. The assumptions I make about this or that detail (or person) really fill it out and make it seem so real. It generally isn’t. I giggle, imagining a world in which everyone around us was truly the embodiment of my assumptions, my thoughts about them, instead of being who and what they actually are.

When I allow others around me to be who they are, without my assumptions and expectations clinging to me, them, or the connection we share, I can also relax and let go of any ludicrous notion about changing them, or fixing them, and just enjoy (or not) who they are, themselves. I can be who I am, too. We can share that time together authentically, and maybe even learn things from each other, and grow. If I’m clinging to a golem built of my assumptions and suppositions about them, filtered through my experience of life and projected onto them, we aren’t even really together, are we? I’m just hanging out with a different version of myself. lol It’s also much easier to be open to people, letting them be them, staying firmly “me”, myself… fewer verbs needed to be real, than to shore up an image.

Context… and authenticity. Perspective. Consideration. Awareness. Presence. All good words for a Tuesday… I think I’ll go out there into the world, with a handful of words, and a gentle heart. It’s a good beginning. 🙂

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