Archives for posts with tag: real life

Two Neat Columns

May 28, 2025 //
0

I’m sipping my morning coffee thinking about how ludicrous it is that we so often seek to make everything fit into an “either/or” sort of arrangement – two neat columns, pro and con, or two clear choices for or against. I don’t think our human experiences are so tidy and clearly on one side or another of some dividing line. Not at all. We are creatures capable of depth and nuance of both thought and emotion. Our choices are often not so easy, and the problems we face more subtle and complex than a clear “yes/no” decision can resolve. We cheat ourselves and each other when we default to false dichotomies and make believe dilemmas – we often have many more choices on the vast menu of life’s Strange Diner than we take the time to consider.

…I consider our weird two party political system in the United States to be symptomatic of this very human challenge (in addition to being the only likely mathematical outcome of our current election system, regardless how many parties we may attempt to put in the mix). Human beings don’t seem to like complicated decision making at all. What a shame – we have such beautifully well-suited brains for such things. Seems like a waste of our potential as beings.

How are you wasting your potential today? Maybe that’s worth giving a moment of thought to? It’s your life, of course, and I’m not telling you what to do, just saying – you’ve got so much potential as a creature! What are you doing with that? What are you practicing? Where does your path lead?

What love looks like.

I spent time this weekend lingering over love and games with my Traveling Partner, who has been patiently re-teaching me to play cribbage. I enjoy cribbage. I played it with my grandfather. I played it when I was in a warzone (preferring it over pinochle or dominoes). My TBI gives me an irritating cognitive quirk; I don’t easily remember certain sorts of things, and the rules of card games are one of these. If I am not playing a particular game every day, the recollection of the game play and the rules quickly extinguishes, and I’ve got to start all over again the next time I go to play. It had been years since I’ve played cribbage. My Traveling Partner made us a lovely cribbage board. We’ve been playing relatively regularly for the past few days, and I’m enjoying it greatly. Oh, sure, at least for now I still need help figuring the points in a hand – cribbage is a relatively complicated card game – but I’m enjoying the time with my partner, and he with me, and it’s time well-spent. I am grateful he is so patient with me as I relearn a game I once knew so well.

A rose blooming in my garden. A beautiful metaphor.

I spent time this weekend lingering in the garden, enjoying the roses that are blooming, and fussing over the plants the deer have nibbled on. I weeded, and I watered, and I sat in the sunshine. Also time well-spent.

62 soon. Life is significantly less complicated – and less “exciting” – than I once expected it would be (though it often still feels like a lot to manage), and I’m not at all disappointed by that. lol Like a lot of other things, “excitement” is somewhat over-rated (and things are generally complicated enough to feel bothersome), and I greatly prefer joyful contentment, sufficiency, and the kind of broad perspective that allows me room to understand and appreciate others. We’re each having our own experience, and I really don’t have the time to bother with being annoyed by everyone about everything or wallowing in made up drama. lol I do like things “easy”. These mortal moments are so finite and precious.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I’ve got a couple appointments today, and it’s a busy workday, and there are errands to run on the way home, and… when the hell would I also find time to enjoy “excitement”? Good grief, a pleasant generally routine life is plenty busy already, isn’t it? I sip my coffee and smile to myself. This is a nice moment right here. Good for self-reflection and new beginnings. Good for gratitude and love. Good for putting some thought into decisions to be made and things to be done. There’s no need to rush, or force everything through a filter that reduces it all to either/or, this-or-that, yes/no, pro or con… I have time to think things through thoroughly, to understand more of my life more deeply, in spite of that ticking clock. I have time for myself before I begin again.

There’s time to pause for flowers, to water our gardens, to chase our dreams.
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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being, turning 60

All That Planning, Then…

October 17, 2017 //
2

Real life happens. It shreds my planning pretty regularly. Yours, too? I imagine so. 🙂

I sip my coffee, groggy, reluctant to fully wake, and wistfully contemplating my still-warm bed just there, in the other room… Had this morning gone according to plan, I’d already be at work right now. I’m quite content to be sipping my coffee on a more ordinary morning than that. The long work day, and late-ish evening, and the difficulty getting sufficiently relaxed soon enough to find sleep just mean I’m groggy. Tired. Still disoriented and kind of stupid. I keep sipping my coffee – rather more aggressively than most mornings. I’ll certainly have another. lol

Change is a thing. I knew that “before I knew that”, I mean, those words all have meanings I understood. At this point, I sometimes wonder why I fought it so hard, so often? I chuckle remembering the first time (I think, from my perspective now) that I heard the phrase “embrace change” – it was in the context of work, and seemed… amusing, more than inspiring or motivating. My cynicism at that time definitely got in the way of my personal progress. Also a thing. I had to make a point of learning to be open to change, even learning to be open to growth, to success, to love. It was hardest when it turned out some of those things weren’t at all what I thought they were. lol I also had to learn to be open to discovery, generally, because often things were not what they seemed, when I began to explore them more deeply.  At some point, it became easier to ask “what does this even mean, really?” in the face of change, rather than fight it, or struggle with a fading reality, clinging to something that is slipping away.

I am rambling. Still groggy. Bits and pieces of consciousness a bit like a large box of unsorted photographs of distant relatives and long-past vacations, spilling out, tumbling down in disarray, becoming words on a page, lacking theme or direction, or (possibly) coherence. lol I drink coffee. I write words. It is too early on too little sleep to do also do it very well. 🙂

The end of the work day seems quite far away. My Traveling Partner seems nearer, somehow, although he is quite a way away, yet, he is nearer than yesterday at this time. 😀 Will I see him tonight? Maybe. Maybe tomorrow after I get my hair done. Definitely Thursday for the concert. Damn I am so tired, right now, already. I remind myself that each day ends with a night, and I yearn for night to come so I can sleep some more. lol

Coffee’s gone. I’ll need another. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being

No Sign of Perfection

January 5, 2016 //
3

This morning I woke from a deep sleep to the strident beeping of the alarm. It was some seconds before I puzzled out what that rather irritating sound actually was. I got up. Did some yoga. Showered. Dressed. Brain still sort of fuzzy, sort of foggy… I sat down at my desk, feeling half-aware ‘something is missing’ and uncertain what that might be…

For awhile I sat here, at my desk, browser open, sort of ‘wandering around the internet’ without purpose or intent. After some while it finally seeps through my consciousness… coffee. I had somehow entirely overlooked making coffee! I started that process and managed to complete it without hysterical laughter – or maddening frustration – and also managed to make very nearly every possible mistake along the way toward the singularly worst cup of coffee I have ever made for myself, possibly in a lifetime (no, that’s an exaggeration – I’ve made coffee that was much worse). This cup of coffee is somewhat bitter, and both somehow too strong and also somewhat insipid – ‘thin’ tasting. Did I remember to empty the hot water from rinsing the paper filter and warming the mug? I suspect not. I definitely ground too many beans – no idea how I managed that, and since I suspected about half what was ground may have been left from yesterday (?), I started over…but didn’t start with a new filter, also… I mean – seriously? Have I ever made coffee before this?

I start completely fresh, once more, and the result is an acceptable cup of coffee, and a clean pair of jeans. Wait – what? Yeah. This is a better cup of coffee, but while I took the first couple sips I was thinking over the earlier attempt(s), and started giggling…which I attempted to stifle, causing me to somehow… sneeze coffee into my lap (avoiding sneezing it into my keyboard). I stop to look at the calendar and wonder ‘how is this not a Monday?’. Followed quickly by some amusement that human beings can take themselves at all seriously, ever.

I consider myself pretty decent at making a cup of coffee…and yet…today. I smile at how messy being human can be, just about the same time I notice I’ve left the burner on… (I find myself wondering how it is no one has designed a safety feature for stoves that shuts off a burner if there is no weight on it for longer than x seconds or minutes… that would be pretty convenient.) What I’m not enduring this morning is any additional stress coming from me, myself, directed at me in frustration or annoyance over this morning’s… challenges. Self-directed ire over such small things doesn’t have much positive value – it doesn’t improve the situation, or effectively cope with it, and tends to complicate matters by putting my heightened potential for frustration or anger between me and any other human being I may interact with later.  Giving myself a break and having a little humor about such things seems so much less likely to push me in the direction of having a crappy experience for an entire day. Bad cup of coffee? That’s just one cup of coffee, one moment of many, and such a small thing that it is literally possible to ‘do it over’ – what would be the point of becoming irate over it? Who would that serve?

More than an hour after waking, my brain finally seems to be coming on-line. I am beginning to feel alert – and it isn’t really the coffee. A few sips of coffee are not really so magical as to provide instant alertness, awareness, and presence – it’s just taking me awhile to wake up completely this morning, most probably due in part to changes in how I manage my medication and my pain on work days. Effective self-care is a complicated puzzle, and timing matters. Change is a thing, and it may take me a couple of groggy mornings to get back to a comfortable work routine. I take a minute to be patient with myself, and to consider the morning; are there steps I can take to be more comfortable, sooner? Is it a matter of patience, and practice? Are there some tweaks to my timing on pain medication that will prevent me being so groggy first thing?

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

Being human has its complicated bits and challenging moments. I’m not fighting it or looking for shortcuts. This isn’t a bad morning and, aside from a bad cup of coffee already replaced with a better cup of coffee, the day begins well. I will approach the rest of it one task at a time, one moment at a time, and enjoy the journey – the journey is going to happen either way, enjoying it just makes sense.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words