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It’s Just a Suggestion

February 2, 2014 //
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It has been a lovely quiet Sunday. I’m enjoying it without reservations and finding it satisfying and tranquil. There have been opportunities to make choices that could take me in a very different direction. Choices and verbs. We have will, we have intentions, we make choices, we act… Or we don’t actually act, then wonder why our will is ineffective, our intentions lack value, and our choices don’t take us where we expected or hoped they would. There is no arguing with a verb.

The air plant on my desk at work, a metaphor for thriving under difficult circumstances. :-)

The air plant on my desk at work, a metaphor for thriving under difficult circumstances. 

 

Thinking about that, this morning, I wondered what I would say to myself, if I’d asked me ever so long ago, what I could be doing differently…to be ‘happy’? If I could have written myself a note, sent it back a couple of years, a few, or even decades, what would I have suggested I do, or change, to get here sooner? Something like this, maybe?

  • Please take care of you. I’d say more, but in the end the choices and will are yours.
  • Please also consider others, not because they do or don’t deserve that from you, and not out of obligation. Please consider others as a mark of your own good character, and because it has every day value in your experience.
  • Please be kind. Kindness isn’t weak, kindness isn’t costly, and however cynical you’ve grown over the years, you’re likely able to see that ‘kind’ feels better than ‘callous’ or ‘cruel’, so what harm is there in being kind? The harm in callousness and cruelty is easy to spot.
  • Please take a moment to pause in stillness and consider how unlikely it is just to have this one precious moment…
  • Please do your best. It’s not about competition, there’s no winner’s circle at the end of life, and the person most damaged by a half-assed effort on your part will generally be you. Your best may not be ‘good enough’ by someone else’s standard. It may not set records, or net huge bonuses or cash windfalls. Your best may not achieve all you hoped to achieve. Your best may not be what you expected it to be. Your best, though, is every bit of all that you can do…and that is enough. Always enough. There’s still a verb implied there… and… the bad news is that you don’t fool yourself if you do less than  your best, while insisting to someone else that you did do your best. Maybe there will be times when your very best effort turns out to be the humble admission that you didn’t do your best, when you could have, when it mattered, when someone is counting on you? Are you that strong? (Please, do your best.)
  • I’m not ‘telling you what to do’. It’s not about that. I’m learning some wonderful things about living a rich and pleasant experience, and it feels good – and I really want to share that.  It has taken so long to get this far. It’s been hard, more than ‘sometimes’. I’ve failed a lot. I expect to fail plenty more – I learn pretty fast that way, myself.  I’m pretty sure that more than one friend made some of these suggestions to me, along the way, and I wasn’t ready to hear them.  I am grateful that when I found myself ready, the words and ideas and experiences that have helped me find my way in the darkness were still there. So. I’m passing them along. In case you are ready. 
  • Good luck with your journey; there is no map, drink plenty of water.

So hey… Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing.  Thank you for being. Good luck with your journey.

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

A Quiet Morning, A Serene Heart

January 31, 2014 //
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I woke in a good place. Meditation lingered gently endless minutes and quiet breaths longer than usual. I am unconcerned.

Last night was sweet and quiet, and the painful conversations of the evening prior carried only positive value into  last night’s emotional space. It’s nice to feel heard, understood, and comforted.

There’s so much more to growing and learning than the bits that feel good. Sometimes it is the very small gestures, the subtle pleasures, that mean the most.

Small things matter.

Small things matter.

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Categories Healthy Living, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

The Strange Commute

January 29, 2014 //
2

Monday I drove the car to work. I don’t drive to work as a rule, it’s so rare that I managed to learn something new about perspective – and myself, and what I value in my experience – when I drove to and from work on Monday. I had planned, prior to the drive on Monday, to take the car on Tuesday and Wednesday as well, to arrive much earlier than usual for some meetings. Yesterday, I did not drive, and I won’t be driving today. I found another way.

It’s not a long commute in distance, about 11 miles. On the 1/2 pedestrian, 1/2 transit commute it takes me a bit more than an hour, one way, most days. Monday morning took about 40 minutes, in light traffic, and really didn’t seem bad. The drive home was very different. It took 45 minutes just to cover half the distance (the remaining half was easily managed in another 20 minutes), and apparently most folks behind the wheel of a car during commuter hours in my community are… total dicks. Yep. That sounds pretty judgmental, but I’m not sure what else to say about what I saw in the decision-making all around me. It wasn’t simply slow-moving rush hour traffic; people were driving with real aggression and hostility, making sudden lane changes that put themselves and other drivers at risk, ignoring emergency vehicles, cross walks, driving in the bike lanes – I’m not exaggerating, people were aggressively and carelessly putting each other at risk. Scary. I’m a skilled driver, and I’ve been doing it a long time. I’m not yet losing any significant amount of my reaction time to aging. I was disappointed in my fellow-man, and in a couple of instances genuinely afraid for my own safety. I took every possible step to ensure I did not have to drive to/from work again this week.

Funny, I don’t mind ‘commuter traffic’ when I’m not specifically commuting, and I generally find driving at rush hour just fine – I don’t mind being slowed down, I just relax and take my time. This felt so different. The only clearly identifiable difference was that I, myself, was commuting, too. I got into the car just wanting to go home. It really changes things, doesn’t it?

Once I did get home, and thankfully safely, it took me more than an hour to get my blood pressure back down, to really relax and start to unwind, to feel kind and human again – are we all going through that? If we are, why are we choosing it? How much domestic strife and bullshit spill over into our lives and loves because we’re cross about how shitty everyone – including ourselves – behaves on the rush hour roadways? Ick. Ick and blech. I’m making a different choice. I’m clearly not yet emotionally resilient enough, and firm enough in my own emotional boundaries to resist the volume of hate and nastiness on the road if I am, myself, commuting behind the wheel of my own car.  I’ll ride mass transit, and deal with grumpy strangers who are not guiding fast-moving killing machines.  It’s not just safer, it saves me so much time – once I count how much time is wasted getting my sanity and calm back after the drive time!

Yesterday was a lovely work day. Productive. Fun. I got home, feeling good and content and joyful… something went wrong. Not horrifically so, I suppose, but I ended up choosing a solitary evening of meditation over chill time with the family, because… I just couldn’t manage being with other people.  I felt cross, I felt disconnected, and trying to connect just seemed to result in new opportunities to feel dismissed, devalued, or ignored. It wasn’t them. It was clearly me, and it was a constant struggle not to take things personally, or overreact to small stuff. More than anything I just wanted to be touched, to be held – and I couldn’t get past how annoying the sound of voices seemed, and I would feel anger start to surge over and over again in response to things I know damned well I am not angry about, or over, or in response to at other times.

My attempts at self-compassion were largely received (by me) with more anger. <sigh> One of my loves commented with nothing but sympathy in his eyes ‘it sounds like hormones…’ followed by ‘I’m so sorry.’  Nothing he can do for that, of course. Me either. I’m advancing on The ‘Pause quite efficiently, and issues with hormones are rarer all the time, but when they do occur, I am no longer sure of what I’m going through, and perspective bounces between ‘totally have a grip on that’ and ‘what the fuck is going on with me now?’ I went to bed early, and mostly slept well – but my brain never really shut itself down. I had strange dreams all night, and kept thinking I was awake listening to voices,  only to wake for real and hear nothing but quiet. At least I slept. I woke to a new morning, a new perspective, and feeling pretty good. Calm, balanced. Ready for work. I’m even going in early today…

I won’t be taking the car. I have a commute I enjoy, and it doesn’t require me to drive in rush hour traffic, or see humanity – and my coworkers – at their worst. I’ll make the choice to enjoy that, and I guess I won’t be bitching about the inconvenience of riding the bus/light rail anymore, apparently I prefer it. 🙂

I'll just take the train, and walk from there.

I’ll just take the train, and walk from there.

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Turning 50, Words

Running in Place

January 26, 2014 //
0

I woke with a strange thought in my head. I imagined that growth and progress were a journey – it’s a common enough metaphor – and found myself contemplating the thought of ‘running in place’. A lot of people walk or run for exercise. A lot of the people who do, don’t actually do it; they head to the gym, or home fitness equipment, and get on a treadmill or an elliptical machine. Convenient, I suppose, although that approach has always been puzzling for me… I mean… walking. Right? The ‘equipment’ is literally everywhere. My brain doesn’t always ‘play nicely’ first thing in the morning, and so although it’s a thought I am thinking, and it seems to hold some value for perspective and understanding, I am, myself, unsure what the thought leads to. Perhaps it is a metaphor that got lost, wandered from its destination, and found me instead. lol.

Are you ‘running in place’ when you could choose to go somewhere? Have you eschewed a ‘path’ in favor of repeating the same actions again and again and going nowhere? It’s easy to understand, I guess; change is scary, and hey – who wants to walk outside in freezing weather, or when it is raining, after all? (Well, okay, I do – but it’s highly doubtful that you are me.)

I’m definitely in favor of walking a path over running in place.

Where will my path take me today?

Where will my path take me today?

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Words

A Beginner’s Mind

January 25, 2014 //
0

Strange, beautiful, wonderful day; sights and tastes and conversations with strangers, and after all of it, I find myself at home, secure and comfortable, safe from the world – and from myself, which is a new thing to explore.

It’s been building for a couple of days, this strange juxtaposition of new learning and new experiences, this willingness to let go and allow life to unfold, fearlessly. I am unconcerned with whether it ‘is real’ or if it will last longer than now. It’s now. I am here, in this precious lovely moment, after this delightful day, and it feels so effortless to contemplate the quiet of evening ahead. This is nice. I hope to repeat it (the feeling, in general, I mean – the moment has been enough on its own, and unrepeatable).

Today I awoke at an odd time, later than usual, but ahead of the alarm – itself set for an out of the ordinary time of morning. My routine was in tatters before I ever woke, and knowing that when I descended into sleep the night before, I woke unconcerned about it.  I made two lattes, and enjoyed a morning of intimate, gentle conversation with a partner already awake for the day, and left with a smile near to the time I needed to, imprecise and free from chronological bondage, to catch the train to an appointment. A hair cut, and a manicure later, I headed for my last errand, thoroughly enjoying the day and feeling very pampered.

Today the world felt filled with possibilities.

Today the world felt filled with possibilities.

What made today so rare, so extraordinary? Well, for one thing, the sun shined like …well… something brilliant and without adequate words. I enjoyed all manner of odd experiences along the path of my day-that-routine-forgot. My morning was unscripted. My haircut is different – on a whim. I got my nails done somewhere I’d never been. I had a bite of breakfast at an odd little stand-up cafe wedged among the food carts; it was very early and I munched my breakfast sandwich standing alongside a small throng of ‘the unwashed masses’ panhandling for a shot at a sandwich. It was a very good sandwich, and the conversation wasn’t bad, either.   I had a maple cinnamon latte at a cafe obviously frequented by artists – I’d never been there, but the conversations swirling around me in the background were a giveaway. Later, as I headed home, I saw a SuperHero cross the street, quite properly, at the cross walk and head into a small pharmacy. I wasn’t surprised, which did surprise me. A block or two along the way, I spotted another, then another SuperHero – tights, spandex, cape, all of it.  I don’t always think to question the extraordinary. This was definitely one of those times. It was many miles and minutes later before I thought to wonder – SuperHeroes? Why were there SuperHeroes?

I was offered an earnest moment of self-awareness and perspective, along with the fun of the day.  To reach my last destination, I walked across the Burnside bridge.

The least interesting view of the Burnside bridge.

The least interesting view of the Burnside bridge.

To do so, I had to carefully make my way through huddled groups, tribes, clans, of homeless people finding what comfort they can, where they are permitted to do so. Years ago, I’d have felt invisible passing between and around them, camouflaged by my own indifference to their privation, and mine. More recently, I might have averted my eyes, instead, hoping to avoid interaction, and allow what little dignity I had to offer through my lack of observation. Today I felt humbled; aware that I’d just had my hair and nails done, a recent shower in a safe and secure home of my own, an exceptional cup of coffee and a nutritious breakfast, and very aware of what a privilege that actually is.

Not generally SuperHeroes, but mathematically likely they may be, sometimes.

Not generally SuperHeroes, but mathematically likely they may be, sometimes.

On the train home, I continued my reading (Buddha’s Brain). The books about mindfulness are piling up. Some take a practical perspective. Some take a poetic tone. Some are quite spiritual, but striving to distance themselves from religion. Others are about the science. I am still a student, of life, of love – of mindfulness. I still have PTSD. I am still a survivor of trauma, and of a brain injury. I’m still headed for menopause.  While those things are parts of my experience I’m willing to identify as ‘facts’, I am also no longer utterly dominated by them. I’m learning. I’m studying. Bit by bit, I seem to be gaining on real wellness and balance. I hope I never find myself taking them for granted when I have them – and it does look like ‘when’ now, more than ‘if’. I wish I could share it. It’s all in print, in every one of these books. Each book telling the tale in a slightly different way, with different words, and different authors of different traditions and styles of communication. It’s all there, though. Mindfulness. Meditation. Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

Practice.

It’s not about ‘practice makes perfect’. There is no perfect. No need of perfect. There is only practice. A bit at a time I am catching on to the idea that the journey itself is the thing to attend to.

Along the way, more practice.

Along the way, more practice.

Today, I face the world with a beginner’s mind. Today I am compassionate. Today I am tender. Today I am changing the world.  Here it comes.

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