Tag: Courage

Some thoughts on gratitude

Grateful seems such a trite simplification of what it is that I feel these days. Upon searching for synonyms for the word, thankful, beholden, pleased, and indebted came across. Still, none of these feels like the right word… Appreciative, contented, happy, satisfied, charmed… that’s getting closer.

Regardless of the triviality of the words by which we are limited, I am indeed, overcome with deep gratitude for where things are in my life. Is daily life on this rock difficult? Sure thing. Do I get worn down by the daily grind? You betcha. Do I feel a constant stirring in my gut telling me that I’m on the right path, albeit restlessly? Absofuckinglutely. There is not a fiber of my being that is telling me I should be elsewhere, for maybe the first time in my life. I am currently creating the life I’ve always dreamed of, not necessarily where I thought I would, and certainly not with whom I ever thought possible. But that’s the fun of creating something you’ve never created before. The surprises. 

I am not one to be surprised by much, simply because I have seen and done many things that are stranger than fiction. However, once in a while, I am awestruck by the strangeness that my life has become. I have been driving to work in my car, and thought to myself, “How. The Hell. Did. I. Get. Here.” I say this to my partner several times a week, it seems. How did we get here? With all the twists and turns and shake-ups… we ended up here, in this space together. It’s very bizarre. But I am grateful. 

I’m overcome with gratitude when I pick up my daughter from my sister’s house every day after work. She comes running out the door, yelling “Mommy! Mommy! You’re back!” and I tell her, “Yes, baby. I will always come back for you.” Pure bliss is on her face, so excited to see me after a long day of playing with cousins she’s just recently met, and a loving family that have been too far away until we moved across the country for better opportunities. 

I am showered in gratitude, like waves in the ocean, the feeling of love and connectedness washes over me in these simple moments. Holding my kiddo, waking up with my partner, relaxing on the couch with the dogs and cats. All of these simple joys are what my soul has needed recently, after the months of anxiety and stress, the challenges I’ve recently had to face. After losing almost everything, I can only live in a place of love and gratitude. There’s no other place to inhabit. I have been blessed with exactly the life that I’m meant to have.

And by no means is this post meant to be braggadocious. Quite the opposite, actually. I firmly believe that if I am deserving of everything my heart has truly desired, a simple, beautiful life… it can be had be anyone. We ALL DESERVE to have a simple life, full of love, devotion, gratitude and grace. We just have to let it in, and let the bullshit wash off. Happiness is a choice. The Universe WANTS that for us. We just have to choose it. I choose happy every single day. You can too.

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Like a Phoenix

After being burnt to cinders, the Phoenix of lore, rises out of the ashes and soars with renewed grace and exuberance. However, in none of these stories do they say how long it takes. Nor do they mention, how many times, exactly, this can or will happen. Does the Phoenix have nine lives, like the cat? Or is this rebirth continual, until it learns some sort of lesson about the great beyond or life on this plane? These are the questions I ask myself in fleeting thoughts when thinking about my own story. As a Buddhist, I believe that rebirth happens, until we reach enlightenment. There are spiritual disagreements in the Buddhist world, about when that can or will happen, and by what means. But the overarching belief is that yes, we can be reborn. 

In this body, I have lived many lives. These former lives I’ve inhabited seem so long ago and hazy, like a lucid dream. But I know that I lived them. I take with me from these lives, the knowledge and experiences in which formed the adult that I’ve become and will help shape the woman I’m becoming every day. It’s strange to think that once I was a child, a rebellious teenager, a young adult, a wife- twice, and now I’m none of those things. But rather, I’m a survivor, a warrior, a mother, a partner, and an empath… just to rattle off a few things that I’ve turned into over the years. 

Much of my mental space has been occupied by manifesting the life I am meant to live, since for entirely too long, I lived a life that did not excite me. I created things that excited me, a business, a network of friends, a family, but I was stuck in the doldrum of a life without fire and passion. I cannot think of a slower, more exhausting path toward death. So, in my spiritual practice, I’ve decided to focus more on meditation. I’ve committed to meditating every day for 40 days. Spiritual leaders of multiple faiths have all come to this “40 day” thing, as a means of connecting with what I will call the Universe. Some people call this God/dess, or Source. Regardless of the choice in word we use to describe the same essential things, for some reason in many texts, 40 days is the sweet spot. Therefore, I’ve chosen that length of time for this initial phase of my practice. 

In addition to the meditation challenge that I’ve set out for myself, I’ve decided that I need to up my game. I have very much gotten lazy in a number of ways. Instead of taking the 40 days to just do a single challenge, I’m going to create my “Life Overhaul Bootcamp”. In this challenge, I’m not just going to meditate daily for at least 5 minutes. I’m also going to write at least 500 words a day (almost there right now). But wait, there’s more. Since I’m 100% a glutton for punishment, I’m also committing to do a little bit of exercise every day too. I’m short on time these days, because kiddo and work, and home, and life… but I’m committing to do all these things in like, 30-45 minutes a day. A quick workout, some meditation, and a little writing (blogging, in this case). 

I’m over feeling stagnant, like nothing is changing (despite quite literally everything changing recently). I want internal growth, maturing, and conditioning. Outwardly, I’ve got shit together. Everything’s coming up Millhouse (for all you Simpsons fans), but I’ve got a lot of things that I want to make better, and that starts with me. I want to feel calmer and more confident. I want to feel more secure in myself. I want to have better self-mastery. I want to hone my writing and develop my “brand” better. This will force me to do exactly that. I’m excited for this challenge, and I’m so grateful for where my life is at. My kiddo is happy and thriving. I’m challenged and successful doing what I’m doing. I can’t wait to see what’s coming up next.

Be sure to check in on my progress with not just the writing portion, but also the meditating and so on. I’ll be holding myself accountable here as well as celebrating my successes.

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Landlocked

There’s a song by Death Cab for Cutie titled Brothers on a Hotel Bed, with a line “even landlocked lovers yearn for the sea like navy men”. As someone who has been living in landlocked states for the majority of my life, I understand this with great clarity.

Listen to it here

There’s some scientific evidence about the health benefits of living near the coast (Article) that are wide ranging and in many ways, primal. I’ve heard benefits include negative ions in the air is similar to being surrounded 24/7 by a salt lamp, improving mood, sleep patterns, and more. During the brief time I lived in Southern California, I was still about an hour (without traffic) from the ocean. I highly doubt the benefits stretched quite that far, but I was close enough to eek out some of it, I’m sure.

Back to the Death Cab lyrics.

It’s partly about growing older, but I feel as though it’s also a relationship that’s reaching its end as well. “You may tire of me, as our December sun is setting, because I’m not who I used to be.”

I know so much about this. It’s hard not to change, and one of the great tragedies of life is that you’re not guaranteed to grow in the same direction, at the same pace, or even remotely in the same fashion as your romantic partners, friends, or family. It’s hard to have a lasting connection with someone who has grown to live on another planet.

But it’s with any relationship with another fallible human, you run the risk of being on different planes. It’s hard to find people who share the same wavelength, let alone for any amount of time. “Because now we say goodnight, from our own separate sides, like brothers on a hotel bed”

Sleeping in a bed with someone with whom you don’t connect, is weird and hard. I had a partner years ago, that didn’t like to be touched at night. I wasn’t able to rest my head or hands on him, let alone embrace. It was like there was a vast divide between us, lacking intimacy completely. I wasn’t allowed to even sleep close enough to feel his body heat. Previous to him, my first husband, near the end of our relationship we slept like burritos on opposite edges of a king size bed, in our own separate blankets. You easily could have snuck another full person and none of us would have touched.

It’s been like that more recently too, progressively getting further away. We slept in separate beds after a while, partly because we had a small child in ours with me who was still nursing, and partly because of good old fashioned stubbornness from us both. I had, for a long time, been wedged between him and her, scarcely occupying space at all. Just enough to slide in and out at bedtime or waking. But that’s what I’ve been conditioned to do.

Scarcely occupy space.

Not just in my romantic partnerships, but even as a child. I was watched by my grandfather, and he was old school. Rigid. Children are to be quiet, keep themselves busy without making a mess, or noise, or anything. We weren’t allowed outside, unless we were all outside. He couldn’t watch us, if he couldn’t see us. So for many many many hours growing up, I sat silent, not touching anything or anyone. That probably explains why I’m so outgoing now, and a hugger. Man, am I a hugger. My kid loves it (for now), but many adults think it’s weird, especially those in which I’m not particularly close or familiar.

I think physical connection makes people uncomfortable these days, in general. We are so accustomed to being totally isolated from physical contact, save for the strangely obligatory handshake. We often live in cubicles, our cars, small parts of large houses. Scarcely occupying space.

For me, this notion that we need to be isolated is totally nuts. I think it’s by and large a good chunk of why we are so miserable as a society. We simply aren’t wired to be separate. Granted, I dislike greatly strangers I do not invite to, touching me, I’ll shake hands with virtually anyone, and dish out shittons of hugs.

It just makes me truly sad that when we are disconnecting with someone, that one of the first, quiet signs, is that the gap between your physical space widens. I understand that you can’t spoon every night for decades, but we can be near, can’t we? I read somewhere that when relationships are near implosion, sex is still something that regularly happens, because as I’ve heard, needs. But KISSING stops long before the sex. It’s that intimate, face to face contact that falls away. “Like brothers on a hotel bed.”

Thanks for reading.

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Love is a choice

Life, like love, is messy and complicated, difficult and flat out hard. We want it to be fun and exciting, but things bog us down, make us heavy. The trick to love, is to fight through that hard and find the things that are beautiful.

There have been times where I’m at my heaviest, and I see something so simple, a glimmer in time, and it makes me feel weightless for just a moment. It’s the breadcrumb that keeps me going. The trail leading me to the next bend in the pathway.

My life has been particularly heavy as of late, and it’s got no chance of lifting in the near future. I’ve been seething with anger at people who could have chosen love. I’ve been shattered by words and deeds, crushed by apathy and indifference. Everything has been flipped upside down.

However, just like love, hate is a choice. I can choose to be angry, sad, and destructive toward myself and others. But what good would come of it? My child would see a mother who is consumed by loathing and frustration. A mother set on destruction- destroying the ones who hurt her, and all the bonds for both sides.

I choose love. Through the fear and anger, the betrayal and malice. I choose love. Letting the anger consume me isn’t doing anyone any favors, especially my kid. I need to be a whole person, one who models the life I want to teach. I need to find the grace in what is otherwise a heartbreaking situation. For me, for my daughter.

Am I still hurt? Sure. Pissed off? Yup. But am I going to waste another moment of my life hating someone? Nobody got time for for that.

Ironically, the year of forced growth has put some important things into perspective for me. The last several years have been a bizarre re-enactment of a previous chapter in my life, but instead of playing the “me” role, I’m the other person. I see now, with glaring clarity what I did to completely derail and sabotage my own life back then. It’s taken much longer than I’d like to admit for me to come to that conclusion, but I got here.

Not only do I now recognize my shortcomings in great detail, but I perfectly understand how they felt during that time. I’ve been beating myself up for more than a decade, because I didn’t completely understand both sides of the equation. But here we are. Lesson learned. Because life is messy and complicated, it couldn’t be quite so easy to extricate from as the first time, since, it took me so fucking long to learn it. However, I’m here now in the right place. It feels terrible in every way. Lesson learned. And through it all, I choose love. It’s all I’ve got left.

Thanks for reading.

Photo credit: wordporn

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You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake

As hopefully many of you, delightful readers will know, this is a line from the movie/book “Fight Club“.

This film and several of the contents/topics of it has come up a few times in the past week or so and I find it interesting that in completely separate instances it’s been mentioned. In one conversation, we were talking about a book that Ive begun reading about a man that was sick of over-consumption. The sheer amounts of stuff this man and his family collected was inhibiting his actual life. I’ve not gotten to this part yet, but apparently he offloaded most of his worldly possessions to regain some perspective. Of course the Fight Club reference is the scene where Ed Norton’s monologue is about his insomnia and goes on about infomercials and catalog browsing to buy the perfect life.

I find this particularly interesting because while I think things are fancy, nice and generally useful, there are very few things that I NEED in this world. In the spirit of honesty, I would like to confess however, that I am lusting after a set of black out curtains for this massive window in my bedroom because, let’s face it, I don’t want to wake up at dawn because my room is like a freaking spotlight. This “need”, is purely utilitarian, but the ones that I want will “have” to be stylish and match the other curtain in the room. Anyway, the notion of “need” in this society is entirely warped. I’m sorry, but absolutely nobody needs a $90 set of basic silverware from a high end retailer in a fancy, expensive mall. You eat with it. Pretty basic. 12 pieces of flatware are nowhere near that important. But the point to this is that somehow WHERE you get something is equally important to WHAT you get and WHO you’re showing off for.

That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Being able to say how much you spent at what disgustingly overpriced store? The only reason I stepped foot into that place was because I was given a gift card as a housewarming gift from my realtor. The amount, while exceptionally generous in my opinion, could literally only buy a few little trinkets. Anything useful, it wouldn’t even dent it. I mean, for a piece of actual furniture, is at minimum in the $1000 range.

My personal mantra about “stuff” is simple. If I don’t need it for some reason, whether it’s a serious need or a perceived one, I don’t buy it. While shopping I try to make lists so that I don’t get distracted and frequently, I’ll walk around the store for a while holding the possible purchase, only to decide that I don’t need it and put it back. I’m not a fan of stuff that doesn’t serve a real purpose, which is likely the reason the house is quite minimal. You’d never guess that it’s “minimal” if you saw my desk, but almost all that stuff is papers of some kind. (Mostly school stuff)

The other conversation I had was about the title of this blog, being a unique and beautiful snowflake. This, in my opinion, is a direct correlation to why the younger generation might be one of the most technically savvy in human history, they are also the most socially awkward and ill prepared for reality, that has ever existed. Because we have spent so many years showing kids that they are comfortable and focusing so much on their feelings and emotional development… we have lost the sense of responsibility to create mature, functioning adults.

What I mean by this is that kids feel “entitled” in this day and age. If they don’t get what they want on a silver platter without so much as being forced to get off the couch/ computer/ tv to get it, they throw a fit or have a complete emotional meltdown. I’m sorry but this doesn’t exactly scream “I’m ready for reality” in our youth. I come from a generation where we played outside, climbed trees, built forts, stepped on rusty nails, played baseball without the right equipment and survived. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve come close to death just being a kid… but I’ve noticed that this phrase isn’t even applicable anymore. “Being a kid” these days is really living indoors on some sort of technology, not using your imagination or being creative outside the parameters of your plastic toys.

This, coupled with the entitlement issues, makes for an inadequate population. Kids grow up without social skills needed to do things, like get a good job, make sacrifices necessary to get “ahead” in career/ life roles. Nobody, in general, understands that life is riddled with extreme sacrifices, requires massive amounts of dedication and hard work, and is rife with disappointment. You can let these obstacles break you or you can let them shape you into a better person. It’s your choice. And yes, it is absolutely a choice. Life is suffering, you can choose to roll over and die or you can embrace it and grow.

All of my sopaboxing above does have a point. It even pertains to happiness and Right Speech. If you cannot roll with the punches, and believe me, the hits just keep coming for most of us… you will be miserable. Happiness is not an outward state of consumption or coddling. It’s a state of being within your self. Your ability to be at peace with the world is directly linked to that internal happiness (you know, the happiness that “stuff” can’t buy) and your feelings of self worth. Having a healthy understanding of true happiness and reality will lead you to real satisfaction. And these things are all wound up in Right Speech because I find it incredibly difficult to hold my tongue, be encouraging and positive when I see people who cannot be useful humans. They need tough love, if for no other reason, because the world IS A TOUGH PLACE. It’s not getting easier. Stand up and be strong or wither away… the choice to be happy and productive is yours and yours alone.

(http://www.futurity.org/society-culture/a-little-adversity-goes-a-long-way/)

(http://www.arealchange.com/blog/adversity-affects-life-business)

(http://moviesandsongs365.blogspot.com/2011/06/movie-of-week-fight-club-1999.html)

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