Archives for posts with tag: metaphors
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Today

October 15, 2013 //
2

It’s still dark outside, the day has barely begun.  It will unfold soon enough, in pink and lavender, and a hint of orange along the horizon. What sort of day will it be? Mostly, it will be the sort of day I choose, the sort of day I make it become through my actions, my circumstances, my decision-making – and my perspective.

Dawn, effort, and progress; my morning skyline as a metaphor.

Dawn, effort, and progress; my morning skyline as a metaphor.

When I take a mindful and observing approach, so many details are revealed that the landscape of my day, and my experience are altered (usually for the better).

There is more to see than what is obvious.

There is more to see than what is obvious.

Today is a good day to choose well, to make choices that are compassionate, choices that are kind, and choices that recognize that we are each more similar than different – and that both our differences and our similarities are worthy of acknowledgement, respect, and kind humor. “Good-natured” is a characteristic I would like to associate with myself.  Today is a good day to cultivate that quality.

Choose a path.

Choose a path.

Choices upon choices – it is no wonder so many opportunities arise when the easier course of action seems to be inaction, or that the easier choice is to refrain from choosing and allow events to unfold ‘as they will’.  I consider for a moment that events unfolding ‘as they will’ – how clearly that spells out that the will of others is involved, and that a lack of will on my part doesn’t really get me off the hook on the matter of choice – or will; someone has chosen something at some point that becomes an element of my own experience.  Being involved in my own experiences seems a wise choice.

Today is a good day to be kind.  It is a good day to show compassion for myself, and for others. It is a good day to coach with praise more often than with criticism, and to offer encouragement over frustration. Today is a good day for hugs, and a good day for smiles.  Today is a good day to let go of fearful assumptions, and reading sub text into the words of others.  Today is a good day to be open to the possibilities – known and unknown. Today is a good day to be who I am, wrapped in this fragile vessel that is my body, on this roller coaster ride that is my experience.  Today is a good day to accept struggle, and acknowledge challenges, without being cowed by them. Today is a good day to remember that feelings like despair, futility, apathy, and frustration are parts of my experience now and then – along with joy, delight, hope, excitement, enthusiasm, contentment, confidence, and love.  Today is a good day to remember that everyone’s pain hurts – and nearly always hurts them more than any other pain they might be aware exists, because it is their own.  Today we are each having our own experience.

Today I am kind, I am content, and I am compassionate.  Today I am hopeful and enthusiastic about life. Today I love, and I am worthy of love in return. Today there is more about me that is whole than is broken. Today I choose, and in my choices hope to thrive and treat myself and others well.

Today I will change the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Turning 50, women, Words

Tension Tamer

September 26, 2013 //
2

I’m sitting here with a nasty headache (not unusual) and a feeling of anxiety that just isn’t entirely going away, but also isn’t attached to anything specific in my right-now experience.  I pause now and again, practice mindfulness, meditate for a few minutes, do some yoga. I ‘feel okay’ in the sense that life isn’t bad, even my mood is mostly quite nice, but I have a clear sense that there is commitment to practice and effort involved.  I’m not troubled by that, today, it seems rather obvious that a desired change would take actual effort; a verb.

Here are two photos taken within a few seconds of each other. Take a moment to consider this:

What we see often depends a great deal on...

What we see often depends a great deal on…

...what we are looking at and what we want to see.

…what we are looking at (and what we want to see).

So, there’s that.  So much is really a matter of (wait for it…) perspective. (Why does that delight me so? Why does it seem to offer so much hope?)  Yeah, I’m still meditating on perspective. It remains a worthy concept for contemplation, always fresh, always adding some twist on something, and not once have I had an experience where having more perspective was a disadvantage. Not even once.

Somehow, my musings on perspective brought me around to considering that archetypal question of childhood – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  (How many times is any one of us asked that question? Who ever has an answer at that age? Hell, I’m still fucking working on that one!)  I found myself imagining that I had taken on first one career/calling, then another… and when I got to ‘lion tamer’ my creative thinking brain threw ‘tension tamer’ into the conversation! Suddenly, I was imagining making taming my stress some kind of vocation, a calling, a role – dressed for the circus big top, with a whip or a riding crop, making my anxiety do my bidding.  LOL! I delight myself with the image and imagine further a whole circus or carnival cast – with my anxiety somehow ‘The Main Attraction”.  Metaphors dancing with allegories in my busy imagination playground.  My in-the-moment stress and anxiety faded away, for the moment.  (Nice one, Brain, that was fun.) 😀

(I wonder if I can call upon my Tension Tamer any time I want to? Is this a new tool, or was it an experience?)

Mindfulness is making so much difference for me. Being a student of life and love is providing me with an education of such immense value that it could never be measured in grades, or student loan debt.  More questions than answers seems to be a way of approaching my experience that pays off in a lot more good days than bad, fewer sleepless nights, and less bitter rumination and emotional pain.  Finding security and contentment in ambiguity and uncertainty is an unexpected outcome, but here I am. More content. Healing. Finding more peace in my heart and more comfort with my experience. This is a good place to be, and in spite of the headache, and the arthritis pain, this is a good day [for me].

There’s this one thing that bums me out though… I can only share words about this experience.  I don’t know how to convey how utterly necessary it seems now, how helpful, how lovely.  Well, at least I do have words, and I can share those.  (I’ll count on you to read them, and take from them what is meaningful for you.)   🙂

Mindfulness sees the unexpected heron in a field along a busy road.

Mindfulness sees the unexpected heron in a field along a busy road.

There is still so much to learn.

Tags , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress

A Tear or Two

May 8, 2013 //
0

Impermanence

Like a soap-bubble frozen in glass
deep blue in the sun
sometimes a shimmer or a shadow
a change in perspective
suddenly silver like a child’s drawing of the moon
on white paper
a simple blue glass gazing ball
old-fashioned novelty
garden accent
a fragile blue glass bead big enough
for a grown up.

Is it the way of things
to leave?
to be broken?
to be cast aside no longer valued?
no longer remembered?
The best things in life seem so fragile.

I will not see this blue ball again in my garden.
A replacement for another broken ball.
Tears falling.
Each one a precious something
or other
remembered for a fleeting moment of sorrow
to be replaced by another.
Or forgotten.

Another tear.
Another glass gazing ball.
Another sorrow.
Another “I’m sorry”.
Another moment.
Another celebration.
Another memorial.
Another love.
Another life.
Another garden.
…If only my memory were not also impermanent.

The gazing ball, a gift of love, that was broken today.

The gazing ball, a gift of love, that was broken today.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, gardening, grief, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Roses, Spring, Words

Excuse Me, Where Am I Going?

April 10, 2013 //
1
Sometimes the path is clear.

Sometimes the path is clear.

I had an interesting dream last night.  I found myself before a big ornate door, dark and imposing, and I felt a sense of uncertainty about where I was, and where I was heading.  I knocked on the door and as it opened felt I was standing before ‘the heart of the universe’.  A woman answered the door; a woman of uncommon beauty and serenity, with laugh lines rather than wrinkles, and of an indeterminate age that only seemed ‘not young’. She radiated calm, compassion, and wisdom.  She smiled and sunshine broke through clouds I hadn’t even seen.  She wore my face, but seemed somehow unknown to me in the course of my own experience of life.  I felt her inquire in a questioning way, but wordlessly, and what I thought I heard was more an assurance than a question “I can help you with this.”  I replied simply “Where am I going?” and felt we were truly somehow saying the same thing – as though questions and answers are entirely interchangeable.

I was suddenly in a sunny meadow walking alone, only remembering her, and her words and a big map, with a convenient ‘You Are Here’ arrow. “If your focus is on just one element of the journey, how will you find your way?  Consider the method, the map, and the destination, or be lost aging, not growing.”  She pointed to the map, “You Are Here is where you are, not where you are going.  We don’t choose where we start, we start where we are – and choose our destination.”  I had wanted to ask her again, ‘Where am I going?’, but her compassionate smile stopped me.  She held the door for me then, gesturing to the world on the horizon, “I can’t be you, now, you are not here, yet.  Soon enough, if you follow your path…”   I shaded my eyes from the sun as I stepped into the bright light of day… and woke suddenly, in my dark room to the eager beeping of my alarm clock, and a new day.

It lingers with me even now… “We don’t choose where we start…”

Spring flowers along the way

Spring flowers along the way

I wonder what the journey will be like…who I will become over time… how life will change me… how I will change life around me… now where is that damned map… 😉

Tags , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Roses, Spring, women, Words

The Parable of Poison

March 18, 2013 //
9

A Person comes to a Friend bereft because a Loved One offered poison to drink, and having consumed it, this Person was in terrible pain and agony. The Person and the Friend commiserate at length the nature of the crime, the motive to offer poison, the sort of poison it was and how agonizing the pain. For days they spoke and there was no relief from the agony. The Person and the Friend went to the Law to address this grievance, and the Law spoke at length on the punishment suitable to the crime, depending on the sort of crime it could be determined to be. For days the Law spoke and there was no relief from the agony. The Person went far and wide with the pain and the agony, speaking at length with other persons, looking for agreement that a crime had been committed. The Person railed at and against the Loved One, demanding redress, acknowledgement, change and even vengeance, and shared the anger and pain and terrible agony far and wide with many other Persons.

One day, the Person met a Wiser Person and related the tale and the pain and agony of having been given poison by a Loved One. The Wiser Person listened carefully, and asked “Why did you drink it?”

Hmm…

I read something recently that gave me some clarity around the emotion of anger, but differentiating clearly between the emotional experience (‘the feeling’) of anger, and how it moves us to behave (‘the expression’) being called hostility, instead of also calling that anger. Nice wordsmithing, actually, because that actually gave me a foothold on greater understanding of a complicated piece of my experience.  Anger isn’t pleasant, but the emotional experience is pretty personal, and limited to the individual experiencing it – until they share it with another, in the form of hostility, and it isn’t all that different from offering someone poison… but if I am offered poison, in theory, I don’t have to drink it. 😀

Yesterday I woke in a good mood, but considerably sicker than the day before, and drained, exhausted, and suffering a pretty horrible headache, too. The morning went sideways when my limited emotional reserves met real-life unexpectedly – and it really was as if someone I love had walked right up and handed me a cup saying ‘here’s this poison, I made it myself, have some?’ and sure enough – I drank it right down. lol. Learning compassion and practicing mindfulness haven’t put me beyond the realm of human experience, for sure, and I not only took the whole mess quite personally, I over-reacted more than a little. As sick as I was, my supply of good decision-making was also diminished and I found myself out in the world, walking and crying like a madwoman, and under-dressed for the weather, which was a dumb choice since I was already ill. All too human, right? lol. I sort of ‘forced myself’ to make some better choices; to go home, to have some calories, to rest, to let the small stuff go, and sure enough things sorted themselves out – because it wasn’t my experience that had me wound around the axles in the first place, and I didn’t really have to drink that poison.  I am hoping to learn how to politely say ‘thank you, no’ when I find myself ‘offered poison’ in the form of someone else’s anger being directed into my experience as hostility…

Other ‘cups of poison’ being handed round recently include a variety of news articles about rape and rapists, after the news about the Steubenville rapists being convicted.  Another blogger really ‘gets it’; being sympathetic to the convicted rapists rather than to the victim is more than inappropriate, it is offensive. They said it better than I would have, and it’s definitely a share-worthy message.  I’m glad I’m not reading/watching media news right now – the heinous insensitivity of the talking heads on parade could easily have triggered my PTSD for weeks, and I just don’t need it.

It’s a good Monday, in spite of being sick, and I am eager to be well and able to enjoy spring.

Tags , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, women
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »