Mindfulness

Elemental force

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This weekend we had another house-falling-down-around-us event. I kept my cool and did what needed to be done and mom and I got through the day just fine. The plumber is coming on Wednesday and I’ll hemorrhage some more money and then we’ll keep going on as before until the next house event or health event or whatever.

I feel like something deep within me changed, though. Something shifted, and the death grip I’ve had on the future and my belief that I will survive this experience with my mother and go on has loosened. I think in order to keep going now I have to let go of any idea of a positive outcome, including emerging at the end with my health intact – mental, physical, emotional and financial – or even of surviving at all.

Hope has gotten me this far – the hope that this too shall pass and I’ll go on – but I have to let go of that hope and just do what needs to be done, with no thought beyond today and today’s needs. This has been a long journey, but the end is no where in sight, and I have to marshal my remaining resources, few though I feel they are, and just keep going, one foot in front of the other. It’s a waste of energy to keep looking ahead, to hope that things will change, that I’ll be free to go on with my life.

I may never get there and thinking about it, hoping for it, and planning for it is simply counter-productive now. It saps vital resources from the limited supply available, and compromises my ability to take care of my mother’s needs. Also, my near constant pre-occupation and exhaustion puts us both in danger.

Before the water event Sunday I had a go at trying to burn the house down completely. I boiled water in the tea kettle for breakfast and after I poured the water, I put the kettle back on the (electric) burner and forgot to turn it off. I went upstairs to eat my breakfast and answer an email and it wasn’t long before the smell of something burning wafted up the stairs and into my awareness. I ran downstairs, plucked the kettle off the burner and turned it off.

The kettle was ruined and the kitchen smelled horrible, but beyond that, everything was okay. A bullet dodged. When my mother got up I debated whether to even tell her about it, but I did finally, and she razzed me a bit, and we went on with the day, both feeling grateful that it hadn’t been worse. Then the water thing happened and that was not so easily remedied and that’s when I could feel something in me shift.

Fire and water.

Elemental forces are working against me now, and this whole thing is starting to take on a fateful tone. I was already stressed to the max from a really crappy week, and had hoped the weekend would provide a chance to recover a bit, but nothing less than FIRE and WATER said no. No rest for you. 

Okay, so I’m not really so paranoid as to think that anything is out to get me. But I do believe in karma and I do believe in fate – in the role it plays in karma. For the last seven years I’ve seen myself as the hero on this journey and assumed that I would complete the quest and go on. Karma would be exhausted and I would live out my (many) remaining days enjoying life. Tra la la.

In seven years, I have never even entertained the idea of any other outcome.

Sunday night I realized that other outcomes are not only possible, but as time goes on, they become more likely. There is no guarantee that I will complete the quest or go on, and so my only recourse is to just let go and let whatever is going to happen, happen. It is the need to believe in a certain outcome that is sapping my strength, making me constantly stressed and on alert for trouble, and so completely pre-occupied all the time.

This change doesn’t make me sad or happy, or anything. I feel nothing about it in particular, I’ve just noted that it happened, and I’m not really sure what it’s going to mean going forward. I hope it makes me feel less desperate and stressed and I hope it makes me feel clearer and present in each moment. My mother deserves that and so do I.

Whatever happens it’ll just be what it is. I’m done papering over things to make them prettier or more comfortable. Whatever happens happens. I don’t know if what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, but I suppose that’s as likely to happen as anything else. We’ll see, won’t we?

All of us, trying to navigate our difficult lives and just trying to figure out a way to be okay; to not feel so bad and unwelcome and unworthy when we’re not at our best.

Somehow, we go on.

 

 

 

A new season

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The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Just when you think Winter has broken your heart, Spring asserts herself and repairs it with sunshine and warmth. Thank goodness! Spring completely turned my head yesterday and sent me spinning. My spirit was soaring all day. I wanted to hug the whole world and sing with the birds. I couldn’t bear to be inside, so I went for a long walk. The sidewalks have been icy the past few weeks, so I haven’t been out on my route for a while. I encountered several neigbors on the way and we were all just smiling, even while we were talking about the latest outrageous actions of our local government. The transformation has begun and I’m telling you: I’m smitten. We all are.

It`s only March though, and this is Michigan, so I had to remind myself not to lose my head completely, and though I was tempted, I didn’t put the snow shovel away just yet. We’ll most likely have at least one more major snow storm; last year we got two feet in April. Winter doesn’t give up easily here. We have a long way to go, but we’re headed in the right direction and that makes me giddy.

Friday I saw a robin building a nest in the juniper bush along the driveway and yesterday the buds on the magnolia tree down the street were standing proud on the branches. A local farm posted on Facebook this week that they have started sap collection, and soon they’ll be making luscious maple syrup for sale in the local shops. When I was a kid there were buckets on all the maple trees around town, and my friends and I could reach in and break off a hunk of the sweet ice inside and eat it like a popsicle.

The ice cream/burger stand opened for the season Friday and people stood in their parkas and boots and waited in line for their first delicious shake or cone since it closed last September. When I was out filling the bird feeders I saw skunk scat on the patio, and while Pepe Le Pew and his ilk are not my favorite neighbors, knowing that they’re out of hibernation makes my heart lighter. The flowers in the picture above came from the grocery store, but their cousins will be poking their green heads through the soil in my flowerbeds in 6 weeks or so.

I expect to see Clover, the bunny who lives under the big cedar in the backyard any day, and soon I might get a glimpse of this year’s babies. The lilac bushes in the backyard are sporting ever so tiny green leaf buds. The promise of new life is everywhere.

It’s back! Life. Color. Sound. I can’t get enough of it. It’s intoxicating! 

Many times in my life I’ve felt left out. I’ve lived a somewhat unconventional life, and I often have felt out of step with the current culture, even with my friends sometimes.

But I have always belonged with nature; with the wild things.

I fit in with the animals, who only want attention and love and don’t care who I am or what I have to offer other than a scratch under the neck or a nice long pet on their silky soft heads.

I fit in at the river, with the herons and the turtles. I fit in at the lake, on the sand and in the clean blue water, looking for shells and watching the sunset. I fit in anywhere there are trees. Or flowers. Or thunder. When I put seed in the feeders the chickadees say hello and thank you! They don’t need to know anything about me. They don’t care how I’ve lived my life. They take what I have to offer and it’s enough.

I love people – I have good friends and I enjoy their company. I need people – I wouldn’t make it as a hermit. Life with humans sometimes requires too much of me, though, so I take some time away and go to the lake, or the river, or the forest. I walk and breathe and hear the birds and see a bunny or a young deer, and my battered psyche and tender heart are instantly rejuvenated, restored. I smell the green leaves and the freshness of the wind off the lake and I’m renewed.

Winter, to me, is starvation. Six to seven months of drudgery and death. No color. No life. It’s prison. Deprivation. My soul is on life-support by March every year without the wild things to sustain me.

And then comes rebirth! It’s starting and it’ll be complete in a couple of months. I’m so grateful I could cry. But I’ll sing instead: a lively tune about life and color and renewal.

Welcome Spring. You got here just in time.

 

Lumping along

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Love is - Williamson

I’m just slogging through, trying not to do any damage today. My plan for the day is sloth and subterfuge. Yesterday was a long, mind-numbing adventure fraught with stress and emotion and today I’m still recovering and processing. I’m not the least bit interested in any of the tasks on my to-do list at work, so I’m just sort of a lump in a chair staring at a screen.

I feel snarly and slightly bruised so I think avoiding people is the best plan. I don’t want to piss anyone off and I don’t want to be pissed off, which is a very likely possibility in any human interaction today. I’m fortunate in that my office is pretty far-removed from my 80 co-workers, so with the exception of my officemate and the conversation we had this morning when he came in it’s fairly easy for me to go the whole day without speaking, at least at work.

I’ve perfected the art of dealing with my mother while experiencing any kind of mood, so the hour that I’m home making our lunch should be fairly straight-forward and then this afternoon, when my officemate is gone (part-timer) I can crank the tunes and continue my lumpish day. I think going to the gym after work will inject some vim into my brain and body, so that at least then maybe I’ll be a more animated lump.

There’s always hope. LOL!

Last night, after a very long day which had sort of already brought me to my knees, I had the opportunity to witness myself in action 25 years ago, made possible by a younger woman in my book group. She dominated the conversation cuz she was passionate about the subject and was rude without meaning to be to everyone who tried to challenge her position. She was judgmental and felt justified in being rude to people because they were wrong. She was sooooooo condescending it set my teeth on edge. It struck me half-way through the meeting that I was exactly like that when I was younger, and I was always stumped as to why I alienated so many people.

I felt such a deep level of compassion for her as she waded in deeper and deeper, oblivious to the effect she was having on the group. I know she didn’t mean to come across the way she did, and that it stemmed from her own harsh judgment of herself more than anything else. She’s still convinced utterly that there is RIGHT and WRONG and that all things and all people, including herself, fall within those boundaries. Her very survival depends on being RIGHT.

It made me really sad. She sets herself apart and doesn’t understand why she feels so alone. I wanted to kidnap her for the evening and shower her with my hard-fought wisdom, but I knew that was inappropriate and that really, there was nothing I could do for her. She’ll have to come into her own wisdom in time. She would never believe that I understand how much she hurts.

It was startling though, to see my own behavior and pain in her so clearly. I am grateful that I feel and act so much differently now, but my heart aches for her and all that she has gone through, and will continue to go through in the coming years until finally she surrenders the need to be RIGHT and gives in to the reality of simply being human; until she can feel compassion for herself, and in doing so, feel compassion for others.

It’s really something, this life, isn’t it? We are all challenged everyday to open our hearts and minds, to live life in its fullest measure, and to fulfill the potential of the human spirit.

And it’s just so, so, hard.

Transitions

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There is some spring-ish weather forecast for the end of the week — 52° F on Thursday, oh my! — but it’s snowing today, and I’ll have to shovel the driveway this afternoon so I can get out and go to work in the morning, in the dark, thanks to Daylight Savings Time.

Yee. Ha.

I love Spring, but the transition is hard, what with the industrial strength mud and ice and rain, rain, rain. Winter doesn’t give up easily, so I’m not too excited,,,yet. Last year the worst storm we had all season came in April — two feet of icy snow the consistency of sand that defied shoveling and nearly did me in.

So, though I feel almost desperate for Spring, as I do every year at this time, I know it ain’t over yet. It’ll take a while for all this snow and ice to melt, and it’ll be 2 months or more before the temperature will be above 50° with any regularity, at least 4 months, maybe 5, before I’ll be experiencing one of my favorite so-hot-I can’t-breathe-properly bike rides on the trail by the lake.

I’ll bundle up and get out for short rides on those 50° days, and I’ll enjoy them, but there will be a part of my brain, as always, that is cursing the cold, and asking myself why on earth I don’t live somewhere warmer. The answer to that question is simple – cuz my mother won’t leave this place and I won’t leave her.

Still I ask it, and 100 other questions over and over. They all start with Why, not who or what or how, cuz those are all “doing” words, and I’m limited — by many factors, not just my mother — in the amount I can do to change anything in my life right now, but I think about what I would change all the time.

I try not to — I want to be in the moment, accepting what is — but I forget, and before I know it my mind has fast-forwarded to 5 years from now and what I think I’ll be doing and where I think I’ll be doing it. That is, unfortunately, where I seem to be happiest lately — in the future.

This is an improvement over years past, when what I thought I wanted most was not to be somewhere else, or doing something else, but to be someone else. That is painful beyond measure, and I’m so grateful for the drugs, therapy and time that eased that burden finally.

I’m sitting here now, typing this, watching the snow fall out the window in the hall, and I realize that when I can just get back to the gratitude, that’s where all the answers to those why questions are. There is finally peace in just letting it all be, and allowing the gratitude and relief I feel for simply being able to experience life fully, on any terms, to fill my heart. It is in gratitude that I find happiness and contentedness with what is, and where I am and who I am.

Honestly, I find it hard to be grateful for snow, or winter in general, or losing an hour of sleep. If that’s the price of admission, though, I’ll pay it. If I can find happiness in shoveling the drive for the 50th time this winter, then, man, I’ve got it knocked! It’s there if I look hard enough: I am alive, and healthy enough to shovel my own driveway. I have a house and a car that necessitates a driveway, and a job that requires me to keep it clear of snow.

Not everyone is that lucky. Really, I don’t need to go much further that the first one, do I? I am alive. That in itself is a gift — this life — and I honor it by showing up and fully giving myself to every minute of it.

What more could I possibly need?

Still hoping Spring comes quickly, though! What does your forecast look like?

The real deal

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I’m tired. My heart hurts all the time lately, and I don’t know whether that’s anxiety or something more deadly, and it scares me, but I don’t know what to do about it. Most days my stress level is through the roof, and I’m sure my blood pressure is higher than my doctor would like it to be, but I don’t know what to do about that, either. I go to the gym, I get plenty of exercise, I watch what I eat, I do all I can to take care of myself. There just isn’t much time and there’s so much to do and to worry about. There is so much that is just not the way I would like it to be.

Stress at work, stress at home. Even the weather is stressful. Winter just won’t quit, and I’m worried about the snow on the roof, keeping the driveways at both houses open, and about possibly losing power this weekend in the predicted ice storm and what I’m going to do with my mom if that happens.

There is no time at which I feel on top of things; no time that I can take a deep breath and just be. I try so hard to embrace it all, to let it all be what it is and be okay with what it is; to keep my mind and my heart open and present in each moment. Sometimes, though, even that is stressful. I find myself thinking ahead or worrying about something in the future and I think Damn! I blew it!

Lately, it’s when I start feeling sorry for myself, and/or beating myself up for not being who I want to be in every moment, that the alarms start to go off. Thank goodness. I didn’t have those limits when I was younger; those red flags that tell me now that I’m headed for trouble, that I’m overwhelmed and sliding down the slope straight into the abysss.

Yesterday I heard the alarms, saw the red flags, and instead of ignoring it all and trying to soldier on, I said wait a minute. What do I need? I sat still and listened, and the answer was: TIME. So I took the afternoon off from work, and got a couple of big things done at home, and I felt better about the weekend and the resulting shorter list of things to do, and less overwhelmed in general, thanks to my decision to take a few hours’ vacation time.

I was not a wife or a mother when I was younger, so I get that I’ve been lucky that my time was mine mostly for the largest part of my adult life. I really try to avoid feeling sorry for myself or heeding the siren call of resentment telling me that it’s not fair that this is the way my life is now.

Of course it’s fair, and more than that, it simply is what is. Never in my life have I been clearer about what I was doing and why I was doing it. Living with and caring for my mother at the end of her life has been the hardest, but best part of my life in many ways. Despite the fact that much of the time lately it feels like it might be the end of my life, too, I know that it is the right thing to do, and the best use of my time and energy right now.

I hope it’s not the end of my life, but if it is, at least I know my life will not have been wasted. Major karma between me and my mom, and I feel confident that we’ve cleared that up, and beyond that, honestly, what else do I have to show for 57 years on this planet? Nada, zip, zilch, zero. I was too caught up in faulty brain chemistry to contribute much for most of my adult life. I was becoming who I needed to be now, I guess, and I take comfort in knowing that I made it. If nothing else I was able to take care of myself and stay alive long enough to be able to take care of someone else and for me, that’s enough.

So my challenge is just to maintain my health; manage the stress as best I can, continue to do the things I know I need to do – the gym, eating properly, getting as much sleep as possible – and just keep going. Keep listening for the alarms, and watch for the red flags. Put my needs first when I need to. Meditate. Practice mindfulness as much as I can remember to. Acknowledge my gratitude as often as I can remember to.

I’ve come across several articles and blogs this week about self-care. It’s on all of our minds, whatever path we’re currently on. But writing about it, reading about it, or talking about it is not the same as doing it. Taking the afternoon off yesterday was the real thing, and it made all the difference.

What do you need right now? Listen to your heart. What is it telling you?

Finding my way through, one step at a time

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Today I’ve had my own personal cloud following me around. I haven’t slept well the past couple of nights and I feel out of sorts today. Kind of owly and fragile and not really interested in anything except feeling better. Lack of sleep for sure, weather maybe, February probably.

Not much is the way I want it right now, and it’s been a challenge today to find the good in each moment. I’m not sure if I can’t see it because it’s not there, or because I’m just too caught up in the cloudiness of my thoughts and the lack of energy in my body. Maybe a little of both.

For me, there isn’t much good in February in northern Michigan. Today it’s very cold and gloomy and every walkway and parking lot is covered in ice from the big storm we got over the weekend, so even just walking to my car at lunchtime was an ordeal. I’m at an age now where I worry about falling and breaking a hip or something else, and about what would happen to my mother if I had to be hospitalized (or worse).

Work is challenging this week, and I’m not really in the mood to be challenged. I enjoy working less with each passing day, but I really have no choice but to stick with it until I retire in 5 years, cuz this is a really small town and there just aren’t that many jobs, especially for an “elder” worker like me.

I know, also, that my dissatisfaction/satisfaction meter fluctuates wildly most of the time – most days I love my job and Acme Health Services, so I know that my less than stellar feeling about being at work today is most likely fleeting, and that tomorrow I could feel completely differently, so I’m trying not to get too caught up in what is probably just a blip on the screen. This too shall pass.

I think overall the biggest contributor to my flagging spirits is simply waiting. It seems everything I want is just out of reach and I never seem to get there: retirement, Spring, freedom from my obligation to my mother, even the weekend. It’s all “out there” and today it seems so far away, and I wonder if I’ll ever get to those marks on the path ahead. I feel like I’m just plodding along (picking my way carefully across the ice), headed nowhere.

giphy

Fortunately I’m not so cloudy that I don’t know that the biggest share of my angst can be attributed to not staying in this moment, right now. Thinking about the future and wishing it was 5 years from now is not only a waste of time, it’s downright demoralizing. Wishing my life away, failing to recognize what’s here in this moment, in my present reality, is just not helpful.

I know better, of course. It’s hard, though, not to harken to the siren call of the future’s promise that everything will be great when… I’d have everything I want if only… The future is all potential, not reality, so it can be whatever my little brain thinks up. I can talk myself right into believing that it’s going to be better at some other time and in doing so, completely lose faith in whatever’s happening now. It’s not as exciting. It’s not as promising of good things.

It’s not as hard.

Meanwhile, life is passing me by, and that’s not what I want. Can’t enjoy life if I’m not truly experiencing it, can I? No siree, Bob. So what’s a girl to do?

Focus on being here now.

At work: Take a day off to enjoy all of the above! Or…wear warm clothes. Drink some of Chris’ nerve-jangling coffee to really wake up and get into the day, or make a cup of tea. Listen to favorite music with iPod and earbuds so as not to disturb officemate. Take frequent breaks and stretch or walk upstairs for no reason.

At home: Curl up with a good book in a room with soft light and some music playing and thoroughly enjoy indoor-ness. Revel in the soft warmth of wool, flannel and fleece. Conjure up a hot brew – coffee, tea, hot chocolate. Burn a flowery candle or some jasmine incense.

At the gym tonight: Walk on the treadmill and listen to an audiobook or podcast on the shiny new MP3 player I gave myself for my birthday. Row or ride to someplace warm.

Write down 5 things that aren’t wrong today. They’re there  – think hard. I’m alive. I have a job. I have a home. It’s not November. It’s not Monday.

Locate and reinstall sense of humor.

Remember: This too shall pass.

In the bleak mid-winter

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We’ve nearly reached the end of February, and with it the end of my patience regarding winter. A blizzard warning here today, and my reaction to that is simply:

NO. Just…no.

I’m ready for warmth and color and sunshine. I want to ride my bike. I want to go outside without first putting on 17 layers of clothing. I want to mow my lawn and smell fresh grass and see flowers blooming in my garden. I want to see Clover, the little bunny who lives under the big cedar in the backyard and know that she’s alright.

I’m sick to death of gray and white and day after day without a hint of sunshine. I’m sick of boots and gloves and having to brush off my car in the parking lot at work before I can return home. I’m sick of shoveling.

Before I could do laundry this morning, I had to wade through thigh-high snow to get to the place where the dryer vent on the side of the house was buried and dig out a trough to unblock it. When I came in I had to put my jeans and socks in the dryer cuz they were soaked through.

Throughout the entire 20-minute or so ordeal, I was thinking, “WHY am I doing this?” Other people do not live like this.

I’m winter-weary and just generally fed up.

The reality is, though, that we’re nowhere near the end of winter here in Michigan, and Mother Nature couldn’t care less about how I feel. She’s just doing her thing – same as every year – and she’s not ready to give up the cold and snow just yet.

So…I have to change my thinking. I can’t change how I feel about the weather, but I can change how I think about it. I wish I could say there were some things I appreciate about winter – that would go a long way toward thinking about it differently, but there isn’t even one thing I can think of that I like about it.

Let’s see…nope. I got nothin’.

So I’ll just have to work at acceptance, as I do with so many things in my life over which I have no power, and remind myself that it could be a lot worse. Yes, we have snow – so much snow – but we don’t have hurricanes or tornadoes. Also, most of the deadly little creatures on the planet – snakes and insects and other nasty critters – can’t live in the cold, so I have to worry less about meeting my death by inadvertently stepping on one of them than someone who is basking in sunshine and warmth right now.

So not all bad. I’m not likely to lose my house in the blizzard today – power maybe, but that will be temporary, if at all, and if I don’t freeze to death in my house without power, I’m golden!

How am I doing? A stretch, I know. Acceptance of the things I don’t like but can’t change is a toughie for me. Endurance is hard. I want change, and I want it now! I saw a quote yesterday that said, “You’re not a tree – MOVE!”

Sounds good, doesn’t it? And sometimes possible. Not for me, though, cuz the old lady is welded to this place and all its misery. Ah, the old lady – another thing I can’t change or control.

My challenge: Acceptance of life as it presents itself to me in the moment. Endurance ongoing.

Going on.

Yes, that’s it. Just keep going. Spring has never failed to come. Until it manifests itself in the outer world, I’ll have to nurture it within. Light and new growth.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus

 Only 3 1/2 months to go…

 

 

Simple, not easy

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“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

So Valentine’s Day was last week, and everyone’s feeling warm and fuzzy about romantic couple love, but I think just as important and maybe even more important, in that I don’t think you can really make a relationship work without it – is the love you show yourself.

It took me a long time to get this. Growing up, my mother and other important adults were critical of me so I got the message that I was unworthy of love, and that message stuck in my head for a long time. I got other messages, including those on TV and in magazines, and from other people throughout my life that reinforced the original message, so I had an idea about myself that I felt had been proven over and over again.

There is something wrong with me.

50 years later I look back and I see that nope, nothing wrong with me at all. Never was. I was different from other people, certainly, but only in the way that we are all different from each other in our particular ways of being in the world. Just being myself, walking my path, trying to figure life out just like everyone else. No more or less deserving of love and compassion than anyone else.

It’s a shame it took so long for me to get that, but I have now, and for that I’m grateful. I push myself to do things that mean something to me, including spending time with people who are important to me, but all the goals and ideas I had about what my life would be like – should be like – have been replaced by only one:

Appreciate and experience as fully as possible every single moment of my life, and offer the best of what I have within me to myself and others.

That’s it. Simple, but not easy, I assure you. It’s a process, and while I’m getting a little better at it over time, I’ll never be “finished.” Two things have helped a lot:

  • I’ve developed a mindfulness practice, including meditation, in the last few years that helps keep me grounded and appreciative of what’s here now.
  • I check in with myself and how I’m feeling – what my body is telling me – before agreeing to do anything outside of work or caring for my mother – some things I say “yes” to cuz they’re what I want to do or need to do to stay true to myself, and/or support my mental and physical well-being. Other things I say “no” to for the same reasons, or simply because I don’t have time or energy and I don’t do well when I’m overwhelmed.

Again: simple, but not easy. As a recovering people-pleaser, saying “no” is especially difficult. I think of it as a muscle I’m exercising and making stronger – just as I’m building muscle in the gym 3 times a week. It’s good for my health, and my longevity, and it’s worth it, even though sometimes it’s uncomfortable.

Throughout my life people have taken me for granted, taken advantage of my willingness to do almost anything or become almost anyone in order to be liked, and not really taken much notice of who I really am or what I want. That’s fine, really, as I didn’t always know, either, and that was more about them than it was me, anyway. Those people have exited my life now, most because they chose to, but some because I pushed them out the door and closed it.

I have a couple of really good friends now – folks who truly know me and like me – and I don’t worry about the rest anymore. Life is not a popularity contest. Further, I’ve come to realize that ultimately, the only person I really need in my life is me. I’m the only one who’s been there the whole time. No one knows me as well as I know myself. Therefore, no one can love me as well as I can love myself. All of me – the good, the bad, and the really unattractive – it’s all there for a reason, and it’s all deserving of love and compassion.

I’m still learning – I hope I will be until my last breath – and I’m still struggling. I probably always will be, cuz I’m less than perfect. (Pro tip: we all are.) I’m completely okay with that, though, cuz the alternative is really unpleasant – trying to be “perfect” and being stuck in people-pleasing, self-loathing hell as I was for so many years. In so many ways I feel reborn everyday lately, cuz so many things seem new and fascinating and wonderful to me, including myself.

What a joy it is to be alive and to experience all that this precious life has to offer for as long as we can! Nature impresses me. Art and poetry and music impress me. Laughter impresses me. Sometimes other people, but mostly not so much. We all have something to offer, me included. None better, none worse. All impressive, none impressive. Everybody just getting on as best they can. That’s enough.

It’s going to take all of us, giving our best, impressing ourselves, offering the best that’s within us, uniquely ours, to solve some of the problems we, as a global community, are faced with. It starts with me, and with you, and it’s not at all about who has the best stuff, or the best job, or the slimmest waist, perfect kids, how many things we can do at one time, or whatever. That’s not what’s impressive about any of us.

It’s what’s inside. Look there. See what you find.

Are you impressed?

Patti LaBelle’s got nothin’ on me

wsquared1 Comment

Capture

I’ve been making some changes. Internally mostly, but externally also. You may have noticed a new name for the blog, and if you access it via the web (not via WP reader), you’ll notice a new look.

I started this blog over 10 years ago, and I’m not the same person I was at all then. Frankly, I’m not the same person I was 2 months ago, or even two weeks ago, before the snow wall and a couple of other things that have happened recently. I still drink a lot of green tea, and I’m still grateful for my life and all that daily existence on this planet teaches me, but it’s time for a broader view.

The prompt for the 12 Short Stories challenge this month is “New Me” and I’ve been thinking a lot about what my short story is going to be about, and what my story is about: the story of me and my life and how I navigate my path through it.

Non-fiction.

Last week I wrote about my idealism and how it gets me in trouble now and again. I look for the best in people and I’m often disappointed. That has everything to do with me, and my expectations, and almost nothing to do with them, as they are just living their lives, walking their own path as they see fit, and none of that has anything to do with me. None of us knows what another is here to accomplish or learn; we’re all unique and we’re all alone on our particular journey.

There is common ground, certainly, but each of us has a perspective on life that no one else on this planet has. We can tell each other how we see things – about our experience of this life – and sometimes it resonates with someone else’s experience. But we can never really know what another person is thinking or feeling or what it’s really like to walk in their shoes.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Two sides of the same coin, as so many things of importance are.

I have a dual nature, in that my astrological sign, Aquarius, has two rulers, unlike most of the other signs in the zodiac – Saturn and Uranus. Saturn rules time and is the taskmaster, the stern schoolmaster teaching difficult lessons. Saturn is all about structure – creating and maintaining – at all costs.

Uranus is more volatile. Uranus is all about surprise and behaves unexpectedly, powerfully, bringing change and new possibility. Uranus crushes structure, if necessary, to free the higher mind and bring about a new era. Uranus is electric.

Saturn is conjunct my natal sun, which essentially means Saturn has been sitting on my head all my life, making sure I followed the rules, towed the line and behaved as expected, i.e. lived up to my responsibilities, of which I’ve had many in my life, from the time I was very young.

Uranus resides in my natal 5th house, hanging out there with my True Node (or North Star/True North in folklore), which lights the way to my soul’s highest purpose and desire in this life. The 5th house is the house of creativity and creative expression.

Boom.

So, I’ve been towing Saturn’s line all my life – reliable, serious, studious, disciplined. I think it’s time to give more attention to the other side of the coin. Now I’m going to try a little less reliability, or more appropriately, predictability, more creativity, and more FUN. I’ll still be reliable, especially where work and my mother are concerned, cuz that’s still very much who I am, but I’m also going to give free rein to some of the other parts of me that haven’t received much attention to this point.

There’s going to be more of what I want, and less of what others expect of me from now on. More going with the flow and reveling in it, rather than dreading it and fighting against it. I’m going to work with my electric nature instead of trying to tame it. Embrace the unexpected in myself and in my daily life, rather than letting it upset me.

More rule-questioning and less rule-following.

I’ve done the dance with Saturn. I’m tired of that old tune. Time to have a go with sexy Uranus. The bad boys are always more fun, if a bit dangerous. Time for a new song and a new step.

Time for a new me.