Archives for posts with tag: love
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Out Changing the World, brb…

March 25, 2013 //
2

Did you miss me? Ran out of internet while I was gone? Printed word long forgotten in the wake of local political scandals, fear-mongering news-media, and the impending zombie apocalypse? It is possible, perhaps, that someone out there in the wide world rolled out of bed, flipped on their technological connections to the world, and felt bereft of this fleeting handful of words we share between us so regularly… I might have doubted it, but for two things that were delightful reminders that we do indeed make our presence felt in the world, however small our piece of that puzzle happens to be; an email, and a conversation.

Saturday, as I rode the train home from a visit to a lovely big local farmer’s market, I had a casual meeting with a young man who, as it turned out, reads my blog. That was a little odd, and very serendipitous – what a privilege and an honor to see and connect with someone unknown who reads my words, and gets his own value from them…a stranger on a train…a moment of connection. I felt so open to the world, to my experience, to all the potential that exists for each of us as we move through the connected spaces in our lives.  It was profound and moving. [And hey, please thank your Mom for me for sharing my blog with you – and good luck with life and tough choices!]

Sunday a simple email from a cherished friend; a playful inquiry and a loving reminder that there really are people out there, reading my words, hearing me, and preserving our connection through this space.  I felt, for a moment, a tad neglectful of friends and loved ones, and let that go quickly; it was a wonderful weekend of connecting with people and experiencing moments.  It was a weekend rich with love, Love, fun, humor, and a very good slow roast of beef, and I can’t find fault with myself for enjoying that with my whole heart. 😀

Now, Monday arrived rather gently, and I woke slowly to a later alarm and enjoyed a solitary coffee as the dawn broke. I took time to meditate, and it seemed only moments had passed when the rest of the household woke, too, and we shared a few minutes of smiles and harmony before I headed to work. Even the walk in seemed gilded with love itself, and the birds enjoyed it with me, sharing their songs of morning, losing my attention only now and then – I am sometimes distracted by the sparkle of frosty dew on blades of grass.

I am finding today to be a very good day indeed.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Turning 50, women, Words

Troubleshooting My Connectivity

March 14, 2013 //
2

“Thank you for calling technical support…”

Today I am contemplating all the times in my life I have endeavored, with limited success, to ‘troubleshoot my connectivity’ in relationships.  This year I finally recognized I was not sufficiently skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced with what makes connecting emotionally with another human being work, to successfully complete troubleshooting my challenges with building healthy relationships.  I certainly didn’t have the right tools to fix glitches, programming errors, or resolve the issues I have regularly found myself facing. This year I ‘called technical support’.

Before I say more about that, I’d like to say something about the way our choices in language, even grammar, can influence our thinking.  Consider the sentence “I learned X about relationship building.” It implies, fairly specifically, that the learning is completed, and in the past, and that something is now known – and tends to limit change and additional growth, by expressing the gained knowledge as a static thing. On the other hand, the sentence “I am learning X about relationship building.” equally clearly implies that learning is ongoing, making it subject to additional potential for change and growth. I rather like change and growth; it is taking me new and wonderful places in life. I am discontinuing the practice of referring to learning in the past tense, since I don’t think I can conclusively show that any one thing I have learned is truly static and unchanging (except, perhaps, Euclidean geometry, but even there – I just don’t know everything!). So, onward to the future, hopefully always learning.

So…I called technical support, metaphorically speaking, and got some help with ‘troubleshooting my connectivity’. I am learning some important things about healthy relationships, and building and sustaining close connected relationships. I am learning:

  • that mindful listening is not about preparing a reply, waiting for my turn to talk, or ‘getting a word in edgewise’. Mindful listening requires my entire devoted attention to the person talking, hearing their words, and giving my attention to understanding their full intended meaning.
  • that hearing words is different than listening, and often results in urgent replies, or interruptions that are not relevant to the key point being communicated. Listening is about meaning, and may require clarifying questions before a response to the communicated points is appropriate. ‘Communication’ is about the meaning, not the words.
  • that when I am immersed in my own emotional experience, and stray from being mindful-in-the-moment, I find it difficult to listen to someone else, to be compassionate, and to connect with them.  (That experience is not about whether or not they – or I – want to connect, but more whether or not we each allow and accept that connection.)
  • that compassionate observation of others’ experiences with connecting with each other is a valuable ‘blackboard’ at the front of the classroom of life, and as with any other classroom, in front of any other teacher, if I am passing notes or daydreaming I may miss something important – and every day of life is a learning experience, but every day is also a pop quiz – being mindful results in a much better experience. 😀

Thursday… and it was a short night, but I woke in a good place in spite of that. I’m feeling a bit under the weather, but my health through the winter has been good, so I guess I’m overdue for a sore throat. lol. It’s hardly worth mentioning, although if I end up quite ill, I probably won’t write for a couple days. It still looks to be a lovely day.

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women

Taking Time

March 13, 2013 //
0

I am taking time to enjoy today. It’s a good one. A good night’s sleep, a lovely morning of music, lattes, and great conversation, and now headed to see one of my dearest friends (and a woman of great character and heart). It’s the connections that make this such a wonderful experience. I feel like a child staring in wonder and fascination at something new and surprising. My face feels tugged by the persistent pull of an irrepressible smile.

It’s only Wednesday. Seems a good day to tell someone they matter…to share a heartfelt moment, to be vulnerable – and ready for wonderful things to happen, not merely prepared to endure the day. 🙂

Riding the train, listening to Dave Matthews telling me what he knows about love…I want to remember today, forever…

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50

Cherishing the Dawn

March 11, 2013 //
3

I don’t actually have any appreciation for the weirdness that is ‘Daylight Savings Time’. It makes no sense at all to arbitrarily change the clock back and forth bi-annually…unless of course it makes sense to force people and systems to change-up routines thus, for no valuable purpose aside from change itself. lol. I feel for all the people who take prescription medications that are timing sensitive, or whose experience relies heavily on routine.  Those things matter, and those people have an experience to deal with making this adjustment. Having said that, it was interesting to watch the dawn unfold slowly as I walked to work, having gotten used to some daylight before I even head to work in the morning. The walk was a pleasant one and I listened to birds sing and wondered why it had seemed there were whole years of life I do not remember hearing birdsong…and I felt a soft excuse for rain begin to tease my skin with tiny droplets of mist as my journey reached its end.

It’s an interesting experience, life.  Practicing a more mindful approach to the experience of life is pretty interesting, itself.  Yesterday went sideways for a little while, but I managed to enjoy my own experience pretty well in spite of that, aside from a very human moment or two or real irritation and taking something more personally than had benefit. I got past the tough bit with considerably more ease than has been my experience in the past.  The mindfulness practices seem to take those apparent mountains of issues and stress that appear on the horizon some days and render them harmless potholes on the residential road of life, instead of sinkholes on my autobahn. lol. Taking things a little slower, and being compassionate with myself is feeling pretty good.  The day and weekend ended wonderfully well, in spite of the brief bit of… less-than-awesomeness. Time, compassion, and love, Love, and fun are great connection builders!

Just in case I was on the verge of being too complacent with my progress, Mother Nature showed her humorous side this morning and reset the menopause counter to zero. Cruel prank or life lesson? I guess that’s up to me. LOL

Happy Monday! Today, I’m not taking out my issues on other people; they’ve got their own to deal with…for now I have a surplus of smiles to share. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Le Sacre Du Printemps

March 10, 2013 //
1
Spring blossoms

Spring blossoms

This morning I woke with a headache and a snarl. Unpleasant. Very real. Very human. A quad latte and a couple hours later I’m over being snarly, at least. I still have a nasty headache. Not much to do about it besides treat myself well and with compassion and patience.

It was a sweet gesture that one of my partners put on Larry Coryell playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. I love his version of that piece of music (so much that I’d have linked it, but couldn’t find a good YouTube video of it).  Chilling with coffee, talking about projects shared and individual…’making love’ on a level that isn’t about sex, and is about family and connection. In spite of the headache, I feel pretty good.

It’s been a very good weekend. I have been enjoying my experience so much that I didn’t realize I hadn’t written a post on either Friday or Saturday…there are so many people sharing so many moments and so many words, though, it seems unlikely that the world ran short on reading material. lol. It has been an interesting couple of days, existing in my now, and sharing time with my partners; love, Love, and practicing mindfulness. I figure I’ll be practicing indefinitely, too.  It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one can ‘achieve full proficiency’ at with the end result of stopping…it’s an ongoing thing…unless I am seriously misunderstanding the how/why of it.  It is interesting to see the small things I’ve misunderstood in life to the point of causing myself pain or confusion, or throwing weird roadblocks in my own path. Like…learning something; I’ve spent a long time thinking that the point is to ‘know it’ or become ‘good at it’ to the point of some level of expertise or ‘completion’ then stop, show my work, and get my grade, certificate, compliment, affirmation, acknowledgment, pat on the head, promotion, award, trophy…something that makes it an ‘achievement’ more than an experience or point of ongoing progress and growth. ‘Ongoing’. Life is ongoing. Even the noun is more a verb than a noun, because nothing about ‘life’ stands still.  Through the headache I can feel a glimmer of something I didn’t understand trying to peep through the fog of my filters and weirdness.

I cooked dinner the other night…mindfully. That was…interesting. To be really committed to the processes and really focused and aware of the elements of the experience made a very simple meal a different experience in both preparation and enjoyment. I had the subjective experience that the food tasted better, although it was a very simple meal of fettuccine pesto with chicken and red peppers. My partners sure seemed to enjoy the flavors of it more than just about any other meal I’ve prepared for them.  I’ve been exploring a lot of every day experiences with more…I don’t know, call it ‘mindfulness’ or call it ‘self awareness’ or call it ‘commitment to the moment’, I’m not sure it matters what name I give it; it is the doing of it that seems to change things. I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t ‘get it’ sooner? I know it isn’t that no one mentioned it, or that there were no books about it, or that mindfulness practices didn’t exist…was it a lack of readiness on my part?  Did it fall into the set of ‘things the TBI put out of reach for a while’, like algebra in my teens and twenties? Was I unwilling to understand or unable? Does that matter? I’m getting more comfortable with questions, and less hung up on answering them; I find myself speculating whether there may be a correlation between the lack of impulse to answer all the questions, and my generally reduced anxiety level the last little while, then I let that go, too, and chill in this lovely quiet time and space.

Tonight I hope to be in the kitchen making a simple meal for my family, and enjoying love and family and making ready for another week of work and life.  I’ll be seeing an old friend on Wednesday, and I’m excited about it.  We’ll also have a house guest this week, and I feel relaxed and comfortable with that, which isn’t always the case with me. I have dreams and plans and goals, and a life to live with a smile. That feels awesome. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women
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