The morning is quiet. I sit here content, quiet, calm, and aware of the small knot of distant anxiety nestled just below my diaphragm. The last couple pleasant mornings have skidded sideways like a luxury car speeding down an icy highway; feeling good right until it was out of control, leaving me shaking and confused although things turned out well enough in the end. I’m not wishing the anxiety away, or fighting it; it simply is, there in the background, and I am aware of the potential it holds. Still, I am content now, and I feel still and calm now, and now is okay with me. I am enjoying the moment.

Between the cold weather, the rainy weather, and being bundled up and warm in the face of either or both, I haven’t taken many new pictures lately. I’m not sure whether that choice is about taking care with my camera (phone) or that I just don’t want to be colder or wetter. There’s a nice byproduct to that choice, though. I see so much as I walk, undistracted by the eagerness to capture some one thing I am seeing. I see more. Walking meditation suits me well, too, and is more difficult if constantly interrupted with photography. There’s something to think about buried in these observations…something about mindfully enjoying what I enjoy and being fully present…and the power of interruptions, that are also things I enjoy. I’m not sure where to take it, but I bet I would do well to consider this one further…

The lack of predictable, lasting calm in my experience concerns me. I have come so far that I can fairly easily see an Achilles heel I missed before; I am easily provoked by someone else’s intense emotional experience, however calm and content I am in the moment. It’s problematic for me – I’m human, and I live with other human beings. Intense emotions are part of that experience. However calmly I may be enjoying the day, the potential remains for someone to provoke me into reacting to their experience with such immediacy, and emotional force, that I lose my way, lose my moment, lose my joy… and suffer.  This seems like something worth addressing… I would like to reach a point where the irritation experienced by someone else does not put me on the defensive, frighten me, or cause me to try to ‘fix things’. I’d like to reach a point where another person’s anger isn’t terrifying, or able to override my own decision-making about what is good for me, or what action I take. I would like to reach a point where I can comfortably provide emotional support to someone in the face of their rage, hysteria, irritability, sorrow, or despair, without feeling sucked in, blamed, or thrown off course, myself. I’m not there, yet. This is not a journey that reaches a resting point with a sign ‘You Are Here’ to conveniently identify that I have reached my destination. It’s more like a walk in a strange wood – beautiful, sometimes, and other times feeling peculiarly endless, and a bit scary. I walk on.

Taking my journey on my own terms, making my own way.

Today is a good day to blaze a trail through the unknown. Today is a good day to fearlessly explore the world within – a world that is largely of my own making, under my own control (where’s that damn manual…map…user’s guide…?). Today is a good day to be kind to myself, and to others, however little appreciation there is for the effort – not because anyone ‘deserves’ it, not because it is their ‘due’, and not because I am obligated to do so, but because this is who I am. (How do I know that? Because I choose to be.) Today is a good day to choose to change the world.