Today I got up early and took myself to the library as a special treat. On the way, I listened to my hand-picked happyish songs, and mused, as I am wont to do. Some lyrics that stood out, from Natasha Beddingfield's song Happy:
Got my dreams, got my life, got my love
Got my friends got the sunshine above
Why am I making this hard on myself
When there’s so many beautiful reasons I have to be happy
At the library I picked out the book Learning from the Heart, by His Wiseness Dan Gottlieb, Philly's favorite therapist-author-columnist-radio personality-quadriplegic. One section that stood out is about wanting. How we human beans are so good at it - the arrival fallacy, the belief that if we can just bark up the right tree then finally...fill in the blank. Finally we will be OK, be secure, be happy, etc.
And of course, sometimes we get what we want, and sometimes (often) we don't. And even when we do, sneakily, the wanting doesn't go away. It just affixes itself to something new, like a virus settling into a new host.
Dan Gottlieb is very mature and zen-like on this topic, and doesn't come up with a tidy take-home point with respect to our wantyness. He basically just says, yup, we often want things, sometimes really badly. Comes with the territory. And with desire frequently comes disappointment, and you're still there, and then what?
He encourages us to loosen our grasp a little bit. And that's where I'm trying, with reasonable success, today, to be.
It goes deeper than just counting your blessings, although whenever I do get around to it the results are always encouraging. It includes, but is not limited to, appreciation for a roof and regular meals and enough money to live on and loved ones intact for now. It also includes accepting that your life, today, is not different than it is. It's not what it was at some point in the past, and it's not the way it might be if all your wants were satisfied, it just is the way it is right now. These are the materials you have to work with... so let's see what you can create.
So if there is some philosophy of happyish, which I'm not sure there is, I think it includes the good (enough) life. An outlook that acknowledges wanting and wishing and desire that may or may not be vanquished with Siddhartha-like discipline; as well as how much you already have that, if you didn't have it, you would want. You can say thank you, or not; you can appreciate it, or not; you can enjoy it, or not. But if you are at a party, and they're serving hors d'oeuvres that you like reasonably well, why not eat up, instead of hoping for a different kind of party that may or may not materialize and may or may not, in fact, be better or even exist?
And for that matter, why aren't you out there on the dance floor?
Showing posts with label clarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clarity. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
To the Progress-Toward
It's graduation season, parents are out in full force, cameras in hand, students are in dresses and collared shirts, the sun is shining, the tents are up.
Here is a link to a commencement address given by Her Wiseness, Oprah. I like the way she lays it out. Basically, her secrets to living are:
1)Follow your feelings. Check your gut. If it doesn't feel right don't do it.
2)The biggest lessons in life come dressed as detours, obstacles, or full-blown crises. Ask every failture, every crisis, every difficult time: what is this here to teach me?
3)To move forward, you have to give back.
I also liked this advice: When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.
And I also really dug this: "Difficulties come when you don't listen to life's whisper. If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream."
That pretty much sums up a good half of my troubles of the year 2009.
A year ago I was in a place that didn't feel right, working with people who, contrary to Oprah's advice, did not trust or cherish or treasure me, or vice versa. And I was about to take a job that felt not right at all, (ignored the whisper) and I took it and I was right, it wasn't right, and I got the scream. (It came out my butthole in the form of ulcerative colitis.) It screamed, "Girlfriend, your life ain't right!"
So maybe, just maybe the lesson I can learn is to listen to myself better, and do what I know to do. This year for "graduation" I want to move closer to where I'm supposed to be. I want to get my life right. And I want to be BFFS with Oprah.
Here is a link to a commencement address given by Her Wiseness, Oprah. I like the way she lays it out. Basically, her secrets to living are:
1)Follow your feelings. Check your gut. If it doesn't feel right don't do it.
2)The biggest lessons in life come dressed as detours, obstacles, or full-blown crises. Ask every failture, every crisis, every difficult time: what is this here to teach me?
3)To move forward, you have to give back.
I also liked this advice: When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.
And I also really dug this: "Difficulties come when you don't listen to life's whisper. If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream."
That pretty much sums up a good half of my troubles of the year 2009.
A year ago I was in a place that didn't feel right, working with people who, contrary to Oprah's advice, did not trust or cherish or treasure me, or vice versa. And I was about to take a job that felt not right at all, (ignored the whisper) and I took it and I was right, it wasn't right, and I got the scream. (It came out my butthole in the form of ulcerative colitis.) It screamed, "Girlfriend, your life ain't right!"
So maybe, just maybe the lesson I can learn is to listen to myself better, and do what I know to do. This year for "graduation" I want to move closer to where I'm supposed to be. I want to get my life right. And I want to be BFFS with Oprah.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hitting the Reset Button
So the shitstorm is a-wailin' at the Parent Company, and I am like the foolhardy TV reporter clinging to the sideways palm tree.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
On Seeing Clearly
I’ve been thinking about windshield wipers lately, in no small part because nephew Edbear got "The Wheels on the Bus” stuck in my head. It’s currently the # 1 hit in Edbearsville, especially the wipers-on-the-bus part. Each rendition he sings (and he is generous with the renditions), begins and ends with that verse, with special emphasis on the "Swish swish swish”.
And frankly I think it’s time wipers got their day. I was reminded of their great utility while driving in the recent snows here. They are the unsung heroes of inclement weather. You don’t have to think about it, but dependably, as raindrops plop, the wipers clear. Yet without them how far could you really get? I remember vividly from childhood the time the driver’s side wiper of my parents’ car gave out during a thunderous storm, my dad driving with his head hanging out the the driver’s side window, getting soaked to the shoulders.
What I’ve been thinking is that sometimes life itself could use a good wipe. I walk around in a haze so much of the time, running from one thing to the next, trying to see between splotches and streaks on the windshield, a continual to-do list falling like fat raindrops from the sky and scattering across my field of vision.
But every now and again I’m aware of a feeling of clearness, like my feet are planted firmly on the ground and I’m awake, I see and understand the road ahead. When I am, however briefly, smarter than my everyday self. I’m all: yes, I am one with the universe! I understand the deep yin and yang of it all! I hold within me with great delicacy all the paradox and pain and deep goodness of the fragile and tantalizingly brief moments we spend spinning around on this precious blue marble! I become like Walt Whitman: all this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well. Her Wiseness Anne Lamott has described this feeling as a veil lifting.
I try to interpolate the graph, to understand which things I do (or stop doing) that lead to this feeling of calmness and solidity.
Sitting for a while with my thoughts helps. It doesn't really help while I’m sitting – a few beats after I close my eyes and tune in to my breath like you’re supposed to, I become privy to the deafening cyclone that is the inside of my brain. The whole operation sounds a lot like these cartoon viking kittens plundering the seas to Led Zeppelin, if the sound were piped through subwoofers and garbled with static and scattered sentence fragments and loops of conversations in which my part of the dialogue becomes increasingly witty and self-righteous with each repeat.
Sometimes I wonder how I manage to function at all.
The clarity part usually happens when I open my eyes and realize I’m back where I began, and the room is stunningly silent and still compared to the white water rapids I’ve been cruising down in my mind.
And the afterglow from that is that I tend to feel a little less like an unstable isotope, always whipping my electrons around me at maximum speed, unable to land anywhere to rest happily, slowly decaying into other things. I feel a little more like I live inside my body, and my body doesn’t stretch a block before and after my mind like it usually does. It’s like in the cartoon Peter Pan when he finally catches that hyperactive shadow and reattaches it to himself, where it belongs. It feels like I turned the windshield wipers on.
Another thing that helps me turn the wipers on is remembering a phrase I read in a book by Charlotte Kasl: what is, is. Here's what she says about it:
It’s kind of a reality check. It helps you identify and accept whatever’s going on in your life at that very moment. It puts the horrible and the sublime in perspective. Keeps you from sensationalizing. Helps you get a firmer grasp on reality.
Our eyes are flawed and we forget to see with them. It’s nice to put on a pair of glasses now and then, and see the sharpness and detail you’ve been missing. It's nice to get the high-def channels once in a while.
And frankly I think it’s time wipers got their day. I was reminded of their great utility while driving in the recent snows here. They are the unsung heroes of inclement weather. You don’t have to think about it, but dependably, as raindrops plop, the wipers clear. Yet without them how far could you really get? I remember vividly from childhood the time the driver’s side wiper of my parents’ car gave out during a thunderous storm, my dad driving with his head hanging out the the driver’s side window, getting soaked to the shoulders.
What I’ve been thinking is that sometimes life itself could use a good wipe. I walk around in a haze so much of the time, running from one thing to the next, trying to see between splotches and streaks on the windshield, a continual to-do list falling like fat raindrops from the sky and scattering across my field of vision.
But every now and again I’m aware of a feeling of clearness, like my feet are planted firmly on the ground and I’m awake, I see and understand the road ahead. When I am, however briefly, smarter than my everyday self. I’m all: yes, I am one with the universe! I understand the deep yin and yang of it all! I hold within me with great delicacy all the paradox and pain and deep goodness of the fragile and tantalizingly brief moments we spend spinning around on this precious blue marble! I become like Walt Whitman: all this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well. Her Wiseness Anne Lamott has described this feeling as a veil lifting.
I try to interpolate the graph, to understand which things I do (or stop doing) that lead to this feeling of calmness and solidity.
Sitting for a while with my thoughts helps. It doesn't really help while I’m sitting – a few beats after I close my eyes and tune in to my breath like you’re supposed to, I become privy to the deafening cyclone that is the inside of my brain. The whole operation sounds a lot like these cartoon viking kittens plundering the seas to Led Zeppelin, if the sound were piped through subwoofers and garbled with static and scattered sentence fragments and loops of conversations in which my part of the dialogue becomes increasingly witty and self-righteous with each repeat.
Sometimes I wonder how I manage to function at all.
The clarity part usually happens when I open my eyes and realize I’m back where I began, and the room is stunningly silent and still compared to the white water rapids I’ve been cruising down in my mind.
And the afterglow from that is that I tend to feel a little less like an unstable isotope, always whipping my electrons around me at maximum speed, unable to land anywhere to rest happily, slowly decaying into other things. I feel a little more like I live inside my body, and my body doesn’t stretch a block before and after my mind like it usually does. It’s like in the cartoon Peter Pan when he finally catches that hyperactive shadow and reattaches it to himself, where it belongs. It feels like I turned the windshield wipers on.
Another thing that helps me turn the wipers on is remembering a phrase I read in a book by Charlotte Kasl: what is, is. Here's what she says about it:
It helped me accept the moment and stop fighting with myself...It’s just what is. It’s the truth, it’s where my life is right this moment. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just what’s happening at the moment. Saying what is, is helps us stop demanding that situations and people be different. It also allows us to drop into our feelings, which connects us to our inner wisdom.
It’s kind of a reality check. It helps you identify and accept whatever’s going on in your life at that very moment. It puts the horrible and the sublime in perspective. Keeps you from sensationalizing. Helps you get a firmer grasp on reality.
Our eyes are flawed and we forget to see with them. It’s nice to put on a pair of glasses now and then, and see the sharpness and detail you’ve been missing. It's nice to get the high-def channels once in a while.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)