Archives for posts with tag: meditation
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Are You Ready?

March 29, 2019 //
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I woke drenched in sweat. Unexpected. It was early. I got up and made coffee with shaking hands, disturbed by… what? Nothing much, I guess. Brain working over time. Short day in the office, today. It’s not really “time off”; I’ve got a medical appointment. Is that stressing me out? I sip my coffee and wonder. I take time for me.

It’s such a human experience being this creature of emotion and reason wrapped in this strangely fragile meat sack. lol My coffee tastes good. My body feels uncomfortable, otherwise. It is what it is. Fuck. At least I got some sleep.

I enjoy the companionship and presence of my Traveling Partner on a most peculiar level. Always have. He’s my friend. My love. My buddy. My partner. The one person I reliably enjoy being around, at my best, at my worst, when I’m ill, when I’m feeling restless; this is a human being with whom I fully enjoy living life. Perfection isn’t a thing – it’s more about how complementary our individual challenges are. We understand and respect each other. We have shared values. We lift each other up. We demand our best from each other – so gently and with such kindness that it doesn’t feel like a demand, at all. It’s nice. I sit and sip my coffee thinking about how fortunate I am to enjoy this relationship, with this person. No particular reason to mention any of it; I’m just sipping coffee and feeling loved. 🙂 It’s a pleasant start to the morning, after a rather emotionally rude awakening. 🙂

Working, living.

The work experience is interesting. I am an engine, firing on all cylinders, accelerating from a definite starting point, with a destination in mind. How long will that last? Sleep and self-care are important. So important. Sometimes love and life feel like a distraction from the energy needed to fuel the work. It’s odd that this is so; don’t I also need the sleep and the self-care? Rhetorical. I know I do.

We make strange mistakes in our thinking, as human creatures. We try to run from our emotions by taking drugs or practicing all many of escape tactics, even though our emotions indisputably go everywhere with us. We conflate satisfaction with our professional lives with enjoying our actual lives. We confuse marriage with love. We adopt convictions and beliefs without examining their basis in fact, then cling to them as if they are going to save us, even when we are shown clear evidence that they are bunk. What strange creatures we are!

I sip my coffee. I think about work. I think about love. I think about life. Then I notice I am thinking, and set my thinking aside to simply drink coffee for a moment, just being. The cup, mostly empty now, is still quite warm in my hands. I feel the subtle warmth rise from the contents within, though it has cooled too much for steam to rise. I taste the dark warm liquid; earthy, with hints of chocolate, of forest, of morning. I breathe. Relax.

My waking moment was difficult, and disorienting. In spite of that, the morning goes well. It feels like a gift to be so easily able to bounce back. It is, more accurately, the win that follows commitment to self-care, a reliable meditation practice, and the result of rather a lot of work specifically done to get this (or similar) result… and a lot of restarts, do-overs, and new beginnings. 🙂 Worth it.

My coffee is gone. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Tending the Garden

March 23, 2019 //
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It’s definitely Spring. Small sprigs of new growth are turning up everywhere. Flowers beginning to bloom, though generally only those that bloom earliest, not minding the remaining handful of chilly rainy days to come. There’s a metaphor here.

Leaves unfolding, welcoming Spring.

I looked out onto the deck yesterday, early in the morning, and made a decision to begin readying the container garden for Spring. I let go of grieving roses lost to summer heat and succulents lost to winter cold, and looked on the garden with new eyes, vision no longer obscured by tears. There is so much promise in a Spring garden. More metaphors. I sat down with seed catalogs and thoughtfully considered what to replace, what to move on from, and what new opportunities are in front of me, now. I made careful choices based on a lifetime of experience, which now includes the heart-wrenching woes of the past year, and also, the extraordinary joy I’ve found, and so often. I made a tender sentimental choice to replace just one of the lost roses, with another of the same variety. I took time to appreciate that it will be “the same rose”. I made mental notes of some things I’ve learned from caring for that particular rose for nearly 3 decades, in a pot, and some things I can do more skillfully this time around. I made an exciting choice to add a long-gone favorite I’d had to leave behind many years ago, and somehow never replaced, in spite of how much I loved it. I’m eager to see it thrive here, in this more wholesome place. I added a rose that has a tiny bit of baggage to it, too, unconcerned with any of that, and trusting that the here and now will allow me to let all that go; it’s not my baggage, and it wasn’t my rose. I picked out a new one that so beautifully complements the others that it just seemed to be a necessary thing. (Are you keeping track of the metaphors, here?)

The Spring garden is about more than roses. I like to grow some vegetables, too. I also happen to be a tad whimsical, a bit careless, possibly with a tendency to be a bit lazy… and… yeah. I’m the gardener I’ve got. I do better each year, and learn more about making the most of what, and who, I am. This year I made the choice to pick out a handful of veggies I’ve done very well with, that don’t seem to require much of me, and just one thing that tends to insist I am attentive to a lot of higher-maintenance details. Ease, balanced with challenges. That’s the goal, anyway. So, this year it’s carrots, beets, various salad greens, Swiss chard, ground cherries, and tiny alpine strawberries. I’m fairly terrible with growing peppers, so why bother with that? Tomatoes? Well, I grow pretty awesome tomatoes, pretty easily, but they don’t agree with me so much these days, and I don’t generally eat them. lol There are more metaphors here. Are you listening?

Ready for Spring.

I’m not trying to tell anyone else how to tend their garden. I can’t even make skillful recommendations; I don’t know the lay of the land out your way, or what the soil conditions are like, or whether you are an urban gardener, or someone with a hobby farm, and I certainly don’t know what food you like to eat, or whether you have a fondness for beetles, or… you see, it’s all very personal and subjective. I just know that when I tend my garden, I need to show up, to really be there – or the roses die in the summer heat, the vegetables bolt or whither, and the succulents die in the cold. I’m just saying, my garden is a deeply useful metaphor for a great many things going on in my life, rich with lessons to teach me as I reflect on my experience, fingers in soil, birdsong in my ears, and gentle breezes kissing my cheek.

It’s time to begin again. I finish my coffee, smiling, and thinking of Spring. It’s a metaphor.

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

Enjoying What’s Good

March 18, 2019 //
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I woke to the sound of a phone ringing. At 4:00 a.m., that’s alarming. In the case of waking me on a Monday morning, literally so, since I then turned off the alarm and got up to start the day, after a few moments of considering the sound, silently, in the darkness. I couldn’t go back to sleep; who phones at 4:00 a.m.?

As it turned out, there was no phone call. No ringing phone. Just a sound in my dreams. lol

It was a lovely weekend. It ends with some dangling loose ends, like laundry “finished” – but not actually folded and put away. I woke aware of it, but without any particular sensation of anxiety, disappointment, or frustration.

I spent some of the day, yesterday, out in the sunshine, in my container garden. I took stock of roses that died during summer heat, and succulents that died during winter cold. I moved containers away from the warmer locations against the wall of the house, into the sunshine. I planted early seeds. I weeded. I swept. It felt productive, and celebratory. I felt productive, and celebratory.

…I just now remembered, again, annoyingly enough, it was also “St Patrick’s Day”. Omg. So over it. Americans who love to drink, drinking to excess on the excuse of… of what, exactly? Exactly what is “St Patrick’s Day” celebrating if you are neither Catholic, nor Irish? I’m asking, because I still don’t find an obvious connection between the narrative of the saint, himself, and the celebration of enthusiastic over-consumption of alcohol to which green coloring has been added. So, to be clear? My own celebratory moment in the sunshine was nothing to do with “St Patrick’s Day”, and everything to do with Spring, itself. lol

A good day. A good weekend. Another work week begins – and, potentially, with it, a whole cascade of new beginnings. I don’t know how the week will unfold. There are no promises that every day will be a garden in the sunshine, or a shared moment with a loved one. I’ve got this moment, here, with which to craft a lifetime of experiences. I choose a lot of what that feels like, and in some cases, quite willfully. Those choices are huge. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a dream, clinging to an outcome that is not yet, and may never be, and lose sight of all the precious opportunities in this “now” moment, just as it is. I sip my coffee and contemplate the day ahead. I make a point of letting go of attachment to a variety of imagined outcomes to imagined scenarios (“what if…”), and breathe in the now. It’s enough, just as it is.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

“Finding Yourself”

March 9, 2019 //
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I remember a conversation I had with my Mother, many years ago. I struggled to communicate to her, at that time, my lack of “sense of self”, and waxed poetic on that topic, attempting to make sense of my experience of adolescence. She was amused, a bit patronizing, and dismissive. Another such conversation, years later, sometime in my early twenties, shortly before a long period of time during which I was estranged from my family (by choice), she was blunt, and frank about her thoughts on that. “Don’t talk to me about “finding yourself”, that’s all bullshit; you’re already all you will ever be.” I felt frustrated, unheard… and crushed.

…Could I seriously not ever be more than the heaping pile of disappointment, ugliness, heartbreak, and wreckage, that I perceived myself to be?? Fuck…

For years afterward, that conversation rang in my thoughts, an echo of being dismissed, and I did try my very hardest to crush my own spirit, to squash any “radical notions” into a very small box, labeled “normal”, with little success…but enough to push myself farther and farther from any deep understanding of who I was – or could become. Not helpful, long-term, honestly. I could have done much better by the woman in the mirror.

I mention it because the result was mostly a lot of wasted time. It’s not time that we’re required to waste, and given the chance to explore the matter of self, over a longer time, I certainly could have, perhaps, learned more sooner, about this human being I am, as I stand here now, and who she could become, given the solid foundation of wise self-reflection, considerate decision-making, and skillful selection of practices to be practiced over time. I learned much, regardless… but… it could have been a different journey. Very different.

Okay, now that’s said, I’ll also say that there’s little time, now, to further waste on spiraling ruminations of what I did not do, or failed to choose, or any of all the things that are now entirely and wholly behind me. I’m done with all of that, and the outcomes are now part of my experience – nothing more. Experience is good for what it is, but it also isn’t “everything”. “Then”, as it turns out, isn’t part of “now”.

Beginning again isn’t an empty suggestion, or just words on a page, it’s intended as an encouragement, as a rallying cry for change, and as a moment to break firmly from the past – however recent, however distant – and start fresh. New thinking. Self-reflection. Improved decision-making. Wiser choices. Heading for a future self, someone who is much more like that self I would most like to be. I mention it because it’s a lovely day for self-reflection, and for taking a moment to pause, and see just exactly where I am on this path – and where I want to go from here. It’s a moment. One of many. The only thing that holds me back from forward progress in becoming the person I most want to be is my own decision-making about whether to do so, and the actions I take that follow up on my thinking.

Are you the person you most want to be? Have you “found yourself”? Do you even have a clear understand of what “finding yourself” could mean?

It’s a good day to begin again. 🙂

Who are you?

Where are you going?

Start with a question. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being

Adapt, Adjust, and Change

March 7, 2019 //
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I’m still getting used to living with my Traveling Partner again. I apparently forget to write… a lot. LOL Well… there’s some good writing archived here, in older posts, and a lovely reading list… I figure we’re good here, and the occasional miss isn’t likely to cause me (or, realistically, you) any real harm. 😉 I’m still adapting old routines into new routines. Still adjusting to small changes and differences in my day-to-day experience that are part of the new normal. Change is still a thing, and amusingly, remains a constant I can count on. 😀

Most mornings on which I leave for work without writing, I do so promising myself I’ll maybe write on my lunch break, or perhaps after work… then I work through my “lunch break”, head home, and spend a lovely intimate connected evening of partnership, love, and joy, and forget all about it. I wake, notice I didn’t write, and overlook it again. lol I smirk at myself and sip my coffee; it takes me some time.

The city. The snow falling.

I left work early, yesterday, and finished the day from home. It was snowing pretty steadily.

The view from home, still snowing.

It snowed yesterday, all day and into the evening. It didn’t start sticking until later in the afternoon, and although it snowed rather a lot, and the flakes stuck, some, there’s very little cause for concern this morning, and the road in front of my house is only wet, not icy or covered in snow. I could work from home… but it doesn’t seem necessary at all. I sip my coffee and consider which makes more sense today… It’s very nice to have that choice. I take a moment to appreciate that, and seek to begin the day with gratitude.

Ups, downs, complicated plot twists, choices, actions, consequences, circumstances; all of it seems to require the same things of me. All of it requires that I adapt, that I adjust, and that I change – or make changes. Living life is very much about the verbs; there is effort involved, even in refraining from making an effort. There are choices involved, even in refusing to choose. We change, whether we choose change, or whether change chooses us.

I pause my writing, finish my coffee, and meditate. I return to the writing.

I woke ahead of the alarm, and got up expecting it to be a work from home day, but… it doesn’t really look like that’s necessary at all. 🙂 I like the downtown location of my new job, and enjoying a couple hours surrounded by the urban buzz of downtown activity is still enjoyable, for now. The views from the 9th floor windows are still enticing. The convenience of the location still exciting. Besides… the views! Yesterday I began taking advantage of close-to-work parking on the other side of the river (less costly, still provides the convenience of having a shorter commute, puts a lovely walk into my commute) by walking from the parking location, over the bridge, and through the downtown business blocks to the office. It’s not a long walk, less than a mile, actually, and quite pleasant. The distance isn’t a goal, or a limitation, it’s only an observation. 🙂 I find myself noticing I am eager to repeat that experience, and hopeful that the walkway across the bridge is not icy. Eagerness? Huh…

…Eagerness, specifically, is one of the first things I lose in life, when I am depressed, or unhappy, or stricken with anhedonia or ennui, and even when I am stressed out, or overwhelmed, or feeling weighed down with obligations, deadlines, and responsibilities. Eagerness may be a signpost of emotional wellness, for me… I had not previously considered that… had I? I sit with that for a few moments, and decide to make the commute into the office, for the pleasure of enjoying the walk. 🙂 The morning feels mild, when I step outside to reality check my notion against the real-life feel of the morning.

I’m eager to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being
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