Archives for posts with tag: walking my own path
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On the Brink of Global War, Still Human

April 7, 2017 //
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I could say more about war, about warfare, about the toll it takes, about the very high cost of the very lavish profits for the very wealthy few, and maybe there will be time for all that, some other day.

This morning, I am focused on peace, on sipping this good cup of coffee, of being right here, right now – calm, contented, rested. If I allow war, the fear of war, the anxiety caused by war, to consume my consciousness then I live every moment at war, without any opportunity to feel the full scope of my emotions, or to experience the entirety of my experience, fully. Seems a waste, really (and it is), the waste that is a collateral cost of war; the waste that is the loss of this singular lovely moment right here, in exchange for contemplation of war. No, thank you, not this morning. 🙂

I sip my coffee and simply exist, right in this present moment, quietly. I breathe deeply and calmly, feeling the chill of the room. It is before dawn. I hear the commuter train some distance away, sounding the horn as it pulls in to the platform, and again as it pulls away. I yawn and stretch, letting my gaze wander the room. I smile, surrounded by my own art. I could only love this space more if it were truly my own. No breeze this morning; I don’t hear the wind chime, and I do hear the traffic on the busy street beyond the community and the park. I notice that it is not raining, at least for now.

Again and again I find my mind wanting to wander to things and moments that are not now. I gently pull it back to this space, this moment. Why borrow troubles from moments that are not now? Seriously. My own well-being definitely requires that I get at least some time in, every day, that is firmly in this ‘here, now’ space, undistracted by the future or the past or what is not yet or what is not here. I’ve been astonished more than once by how much chill I now have, and how much more perspective, when at other points in my day, I am faced with… circumstances. Trials. Challenges. Stressors. Aggravating moments. Frustrating situations. Complications. Emotions. I’ll have any one of those things, or some mixed up handful, reliably without any effort to select for them. I don’t have to jump ahead to get there sooner… and it’s rather nice to face them a bit more prepared, and a bit more resilient. So, every day, I take time to meditate, to exist very mindfully in this space, in this moment – wherever that happens to be, at whatever time I choose. My mind, of course, wanders. I pull it back. It wanders again, and again, I pull it back. It’s a gentle tug of war, without frustration or internal criticism; I am challenging the habits of my monkey mind. It takes practice. Surely I expect to begin again. 🙂

This morning I pull my monkey mind back to meditation, I begin again, and I enjoy thoughts of far away friends, feeling grateful for each step on the journey illuminated by loving words, perspective, the wisdom of experience, and shared moments. I allow my senses to fill up on the feeling of being valued, of being loved, and of loving. I smile and sip my coffee. My smile deepens when my Traveling Partner crosses my mind. My sister, my niece, my friends next door… my recollections are filled with smiles, and this too is my own doing; there are verbs involved. These days I spend far more time recalling smiles, and moments of delight, than I do rehashing conflict or preserving moments of discord in my memory. It has proven to matter a great deal whether I spend my time thinking over past pain or past joy; our implicit biases are built on what we spend our time contemplating. The choices we make about “re-runs” in our thinking are actually quite important.

Thoughts of love make lovely re-runs.

I notice the time and become more aware of the moment with some specificity. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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

Sleeping and Waking

April 6, 2017 //
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I crashed hard, early, last night. It wasn’t even 8 pm. The alarm woke me, with some persistence. I’ve no recollection of waking at any point during the night. I slept, nearly motionless, for a continuous 7.5 hours, according to my fitness tracker. I woke feeling rested, according to my subjective experience of self. I’ve frittered away nearly an hour over my first coffee, reading this and that, catching up on email, making a list of things I need to get done this weekend. It’s a nice morning, so far, preceding what I anticipate will be a pleasant, if busy, work day.

It’s spring. I enjoy spring. I get my camera out more when it isn’t raining. It’s been raining a lot. It’s raining this morning. I am thinking about bluer skies.

Evening walks home under blue skies…

…vibrant sunrises and the promise of sunshine later…

…brilliant shades of azure and cerulean blues, tiny green leaves unfolding, shades of pink and mauve and creamy white blossoms everywhere.

Each morning I look forward to my walk in to the office, through the city. Each morning I pause and look back, across the river, at this city I’ve enjoyed now for 19 years. I’m glad I came here. 🙂

I’m glad it’s spring.

Today is a good day to begin again.

 

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

Happy Gaslighting Day?

April 1, 2017 //
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I lost my taste for gaslighting after I lived with it for years. I gave up on April Fool’s Day entirely as a result. I mean, think about this “celebration” with great care… Is it kind to willfully mislead people about the nature of their reality? Who does that? Even as a prank, it’s a dick move. So… I stopped doing that shit because it isn’t actually funny. Just as with humor based on Schadenfreude; it isn’t funny for the person having the experience. Our amusement over it? If it’s based on cruelty, it’s cruel. Tit for tat? Not funny. It’s a dick move. We’re very fancy primates… which means our animal nature is not above that sort of bullshit, and, sadly, some of us actually go for wallowing in our worst potential.  We are too easily entertained by the human equivalent of throwing poo.

Am I being curmudgeonly? Perhaps. I just don’t care for people treating people poorly, (I definitely don’t want to be the person doing it) and in an era of serious challenges with bullshit and lies being passed off as news and truth, we’re all fighting for our sanity as it is. Don’t be a dick today. Consider that other person and what it means to be treated poorly solely for the amusement of others, and this just because the calendar turned over by one day. April Fools are the people playing the pranks, not the pranks themselves. Can you not pass up the chance to be foolish? Really? Is this the best of who you are?

You do you, though. It’s not my call. I’ll be over here, enjoying a lovely Saturday on the first day of April, staying away from social media, and treating people as well as I am able to do. 🙂 I’m not saying I’m any better than you, or even different – I’m just walking my own path. There are verbs involved, and I live within the confines of my own perspective. I have to face this woman in the mirror, a woman who knows what being gaslighted feels like, who understand how cruel practical jokes are for the person on the receiving end, and for whom frustration is real kryptonite. Gnothi seauton… eventually. 🙂

Is it clear I didn’t start here?  …I did have to begin again. It has been a journey, with missteps, and choices, and things to consider further. I’ve fought and resisted a commonly enjoyed cultural practice. That’s okay. I’ve made progress over time, and that’s enough. I awoke to the understanding that this practice of pranking people is cruel, and my understanding changed my choices and my behavior. That’s sort of how the whole growth thing works, actually, and it’s a very singular personal journey for each of us.  🙂 Today is a good day to grow and to choose. It’s a good day to take another look at the day and ask myself “why this?” and “why today” and “who might this hurt?”. It’s a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Free Will, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5

A Day for Me

March 29, 2017 //
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I took today off. I didn’t plan to be sick, I just planned to take the day off for my annual physical and some downtime. I scheduled a hair appointment (to have the wild lavender and pink and green that it is now refreshed before an upcoming concert). Later, I unscheduled the hair appointment, remembering to be frugal while I house hunt; the funds will be needed, more than likely. I re-planned the day to do some “go sees” of new listings in the afternoon. Yesterday, I canceled that too. I’m sick. I will just go get my physical, and come home and sip tea and read, I suppose…

…Nope. My plans are over-turned by the rental management here in the community. It is, apparently, “inspection time” again. (Please imagine me rolling my eyes irritably at this point right here.) I don’t have much to do to be ready, but I have canvases out in my studio, and I’ll just fret about the stupid inspection if I don’t spend an hour tidying up a bit, regardless. So. I guess I’m getting my physical and coming home to housework. The inspections are on Thursday. I won’t be home. I’ll have already taken today off from work, and can’t cut into my work hours further without putting time-sensitive work at risk of not being completed. It makes me uncomfortable to have anyone in my space when I’m not home, these days (other than my Traveling Partner), and the last time my landlady was in my apartment on a day I wasn’t at home? Yeah, I was burglarized. I’ve lost trust, and feel anxious about having her in my apartment in my absence. Work from home? I wish. The work I’ll specifically be doing is much more handily done with the vast acreage of widescreen dual monitors connected to the network directly than it can be at home on a laptop screen connected through VPN. I’m just going to have to adult this one. I’m annoyed by that, but not unprepared. I managed to avoid letting it keep me awake last night… mostly. I got 4 and a half hours of sleep. :-\

I woke mostly clear-headed, head still stuffy, lungs not yet congested (yay!), and still willing to embrace life as a goodness. That’s something. Today is  not the day I planned. (It often isn’t.) It is, however, a day out of the office, with a little more than typical looseness to it. I remind myself that this irritant (the inspection) is just one of the many small things driving me so urgently to find my own place – really my own, as in “homeowner”.  The inspection (for me) is a nothing event, anyway; I live a tidy, quiet, gentle life, and take good care of this space. The inspection never amounts to more than a casual walk-through, I just won’t be here, which really creeps me out. So. I’m inconvenienced and uncomfortable. I’ll get over it.

I am my own cartographer on life’s journey. There is no rule book, no map, no user’s guide for being human. We are each having our own experience. The map is not the world. The day… is not the plan. I’m still okay right now. 🙂

 

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Bit of Human

March 28, 2017 //
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I got through most of the work day pretty well, yesterday. By noon I was fading fast, losing cognitive efficiency and clarity of thought quickly, with a viral-seeming sort of headache plaguing me quite continuously. I “called it” at 3:30 pm and headed for home a bit earlier than I typically would. I arrived home, stood in a hot shower for a while. Figured chicken soup would work for dinner. Couldn’t eat. Just had no appetite, and didn’t care. I went to bed about an hour or so after I got home, expecting to have a restless night, or be up again sometime later unable to sleep.

I woke to the alarm, at the usual time. Headache is gone. I feel alert, and generally okay. My head is a little stuffy, but not unmanageably so. I sit down with my coffee wondering how long this will take to fully run its course, pleased that it isn’t worse than it is, and glad that I took a Benadryl last night – it gets some credit for the long night of relatively deep sleep.

I scroll through my Facebook feed and then back out of that. There is a lot of anger in the world, and justifiably so in the face of new heights of government cruelty and societal bullshit. Is it really new, though? Nope. It’s really got our attention, now, though. People are really objecting to it, and are no longer willing to shrug it off, disappointed, disillusioned, and exhausted by lack of change. Social change that happens slowly over time often goes mostly unnoticed. Social change through protest, dissent, and private emotion in public places – “wearing our anger out loud” – is change through upheaval, and it definitely gets noticed. It creates a grand “conversation” between groups. It gets heated. Families get torn apart. Tribes are formed. Friendships end. Friendships are forged. It’s a time of change. From my own perspective, my best possible choice through it all is simply to be who I authentically am, on this personal journey to be that person most skillfully, most honestly, and with my choices and my will focused on my Big 5 (respect, consideration, reciprocity, compassion, and openness). It’s less about being right than it is about listening deeply and learning more… about being. If I can be a better person tomorrow than I am today, I am content that I am making progress toward being the person I most want to be, over time. If we were each committed to being the best possible human being we have the ability to be, it would be a good start on a peaceful world… right?

Right?

Right? Nah. Probably not. Most people already think they are “one of the good guys” with no further self-reflection at all, never considering the consequences of their actions on others. Tons of people are hung up on their own righteous ideology, their own opinions-as-fact, their own take on the world. We’re fancy primates; we don’t give up easily on our own bullshit.

Today is a good day to really listen to “the other side” of a discussion – however many other sides there are. Today is a good day to listen deeply, to consider other ideas than my own, and to make room in my awareness to understand the thinking of others. Today is a good day to accept the premise that we are each “doing our best”, generally, as we understand it ourselves. Today is a good day to ask illuminating questions – not to “win” an argument, but to truly illuminate my own thinking, and inform my understanding of the world more broadly, with greater wisdom and perspective. Today is a good day to maintain an awareness that we are each having our own experience. There is more to learn.

Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words
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