I woke ahead of the alarm by minutes, feeling rested, and not particularly groggy. The morning has proceeded with logical elegance from task to task, and my coffee is hot, tasty, and welcome. I have nothing much to say. In a life so rich with words much of the time, I guess that’s okay, too. 🙂

The week begins well, and that’s enough. I could use more time in my day, but the new work environment is one in which I thrive, and feel appreciated. I can’t complain about that – and the commute is not the longest one I’ve endured since moving to the area. My longest was the original commute I traveled daily for some 13 years without questioning it. Moving closer to work didn’t feel possible; my (ex) partner was unwilling to travel to and from school, and the result was having to choose between what I needed, and what she demanded. When she’d finished earning her degree, the expected shift in priorities “didn’t happen”. I did not yet understand that I would have to take care of me. I allowed life to go on, without choosing change, and did so for a very long time. Resentful, exhausted, neglected and unhappy, I trudged along in life surviving on wishful thinking and daydreams of a future that wasn’t likely – since I wasn’t building that. We become what we practice – and I was practicing some very different things then, than I do now.

My choices, even then, were vast and assorted, and had many potential outcomes. I didn’t see the whole of the menu, as though refusing to turn it over and see the rest of it, limiting myself to just “today’s specials” – which, as it happened, weren’t that damned special. I’m not bitching, I’m just making a point of pointing out that I carefully crafted the experience I was mired in, by refusing to choose a different one. My choices mattered greatly – and yes, I’ll go ahead and say so sooner than later, when I did start making different choices, some of my relationships were changed, and some ended (including a partnership of 15 years, and a job with a company I’d worked for, for 13 of those). Choices have consequences. Remember reality? Yeah – reality doesn’t care what we think we’re choosing. We are each having our own experience, each filtering that through our own perspective – reality doesn’t care about that, either.  😉

What it appears to be does not change what it is.

Choice and change and verbs and perspective… it’s busy in here. I find myself pondering the “meaning of life”. It’s that sort of morning. A good morning for meditation as the sun rises, and a leisurely 2nd and 3rd coffee…and it’s also a work morning. I’ll watch the sun rise on foot, as I walk through downtown to the office. I’ll see it reflected, perhaps, on the city from the other side of the river, where I stop each morning to reflect on life, and take a picture. It is a moment of perspective with lasting value.

Giving myself time to reflect…

…allows my perspective to deepen…

…and change with experience.

We are each having our own experience. We choose a lot of it. We carefully craft a lot more of it within our thoughts, even sometimes avoiding confronting what differs from our so carefully crafted narrative. Expectations and assumptions can be built on accumulated experience of reality – but they don’t have to be, and often aren’t. I set myself up for failure when I build my expectations and assumptions on my internal narrative, without checking in with reality. Funny thing (maybe) that reality seems so much more variable than expectations and assumptions…

My mind wanders. I’m enjoying the morning over my coffee, listening to a freight train roar past on the other side of the park. I think of my traveling partner, and life and love and time; perhaps I shall see him this evening? Perhaps not until tomorrow. We have evening plans for Thursday, and I “know” I will see him then – is that an expectation? An assumption? Is it reality? Certainly it is planned…

A wordless moment of clarity… a picture as a metaphor.

Today is a good day to be present in this moment, here. I think I’ll go do that. (Your results may vary…)