Another chance…? Another chance to what, exactly? This morning I woke feeling decently well. Pain…manageable. Mood…serene. Yesterday started well, but most of the day itself was a test of emotional endurance, with physical pain supervising every effort. It was all small stuff, too. I’d just start pulling free of the dense sludge of negative emotion, and get slapped with some new small test of my patience, or balance. I spent the day struggling. Oddly, the day ended relatively well with 90 or so minutes of calm, quietly spent with the family, ending with a couple of episodes of South Park, and the company of my traveling partner. If I could have smushed the opening hour and the closing hour together, the day would have been quite brief, but quite wonderful.

Living isn’t about ‘could have’, is it? Life isn’t about ‘ought to’. Life isn’t about ‘didn’t’. Life is a very real-time experience, however often I bamboozle myself with yearning for something past (or regretting it), or however often I am stalled by an attachment to a future outcome. ‘Now’ is what I’ve really got to work with.

I actually don’t know what turned me around last night. I got home still feeling blue, unbalanced, reactive, and stressed out. I struggled through a shower, through some chores, and even taking care of me basics, and feeding my fish. I politely retired to a solo space, certain at that point that I just wasn’t ‘fit company’ and not wishing to spread it around. I lit some candles (mostly to take off the chill of the room, but I do enjoy the ambiance). I spent the next hour (maybe longer) meditating. That’s all, just still, and quiet, and focused on that simplest point of life, my breath. When I finished, I still had a few tears to go, and they drifted lazily down my cheeks while I took out the trash for tomorrow’s pick up, and made a bite to eat. From that point, it was as if it was an entirely different day. It was…odd.

When I called it a night, I didn’t read or do yoga, or linger awake in the night. I did spend more time meditating, no clock, and once finished with that, contentedly rearranged myself for sleep. This morning I woke feeling fairly good. Correlation does not prove causation, but I do find it noteworthy that many of the improvements in my experience, overall, and bad-days-turned-good experiences, seem to be associated very specifically with meditation. Before it sounds like an endorsement, I’ll also point out I could just as easily say they are associated with tears, but it would be a misleading statement, since I’ve been crying far longer than I’ve been meditating. LOL

I recognize from yesterday’s moods, and from things said during appointments, that I need to slow things down a bit, at work and at home. I’m pushing myself harder than I mean to, and compromising more of my own needs than is healthy for me. Spending more time meditating benefits me directly, but also improves outcomes and experiences for people alongside me, interacting with me. Somehow my ‘to do list’ has grown to pages, and when I take a closer look, it’s unnecessary to push myself so hard; organizing one’s time need not result in self-abuse (no, no, not that kind of ‘self-abuse’! lol).

One winter moment, still, and calm. If I could just get the hang of this one – ‘each time for the first time, each moment the only moment’…I keep practicing.

Today is a good day to slow it down and enjoy the journey. Today is a good day to treat myself with kindness and respect my own time, my own limits, my own boundaries. Today is a good day to change the world.