Settling In

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. ~An Ideal Husband (courtesy of my childhood chum Jane -- thanks, Jane!)


This afternoon at work, my head started to feel swimmy and sounded echoey. By the time I got home I knew my evening plans were best canceled and my biggest priorities were a bath, dinner, and bed...in precisely that order.

It's been a long time since I've been sick and while it isn't anything full-blown at this point, I'm pleasantly surprised by it.

Wha?

I know...it sounds weird. What I mean is: This may just be the first time in my forty-one years that I've started getting sick and haven't even remotely begun to...

1. Calculate exactly what I did or didn't do that "made" me sick and use that to berate and bully myself for inviting the illness,

2. Calculate exactly what I should or shouldn't do to hold it off, sure that if I do every single one of these things -- and only then -- I'll be fine,

3. Fight back with the energy of, well...fighting.

I'm pleasantly surprised because I am experiencing a complete lack of resistance. Trying to control this is simply not in my current thought process. Unbeknownst to me, it seems my old story has been cast aside and my long-held fear of being sick -- and being singly responsible for it -- has dissipated.

Who knew?

So this afternoon, instead of blaming myself for what I did or didn't do this time to make myself sick, a new, crystal clear idea presented itself...even strong, healthy bodies get sick sometimes and it is a completely natural process.

Whoa!

To take it further, I feel in my gut that my one and only job in this scenario is to respond to my needs in this moment and let the rest take care of itself. I'm finding that I'm completely confident that my choices tonight are made out of love and sincere caring for myself...not in an effort to control some outcome.

Huh.

Because maybe I'm not in control of whether or not I get sick, after all. I mean, not really.

Just maybe, in all the years that I thought I had -- or should have had -- control over whether or not I get sick, and set out to wage war against the illness, I've really just been waging war against myself.

There are so many ways we allow our thoughts, and our attachments to them, to wreak havoc with our world -- both inner and outer. The negative energy associated with fighting something with resistance -- by actively pushing away what we don't want to have happen out of fear -- simply sets up a scenario that puts us at war with ourselves. This resistance announces to us and to the world that our experience isn't true...that it isn't valid. By denying our experience and fighting to make it different, we're saying it's wrong...that we're wrong. That our life is wrong.

Meditation and learning to work with our mind, rather than against it, allows us to develop enough space to hear the wisdom of our experience. Creating space through developing the skill of quieting the mind opens the door to let our intuition in...before we can hop right back into the old groove where we tell ourselves that we did something wrong and now it's our job to fight what's happening to us and make it go away.

What if the only way out really is through? What if we trust the experiences we're having and find the strength to let go and ride the wave?

Surrender is a tricky thing. It gets mixed up into something that sounds like giving up, being ambivalent or uncaring. When in fact, it's completely the opposite. It's a softening, an easing in, an honoring of our experience, and a way to develop a complete trust with ourselves -- a trust that says, no matter what we encounter, I'm in.

Sounds a little like marriage vows.

It's the ultimate commitment we can make to any other human being. And is the most loving commitment we can make in our relationship with ourselves.

What if instead of berating ourselves for having done something wrong, we can crawl into the safe cocoon of ourselves and whisper -- it's OK. Everything is as it should be and it's OK. There's nothing else to do but simply...be...here.

When we're not focused on the past or the present, neither of which we can do anything about, we are free to Be wherever we are...and feel in every fiber of our being the peace of being perfectly in our imperfection.

As I settled into the hottest, sweetest smelling bath I could create for myself, I felt exactly that -- a peaceful welcoming in. I felt strongly that whatever my body and I are experiencing is perfect and necessary for no other reason than that I'm experiencing it. I don't have to change it, fight it, or try to make it anything other than what it is.

It doesn't mean it's going to be all fun and games -- let's face it, being sick sucks on any number of levels -- but it doesn't mean it's the enemy either.

Miraculously then, neither am I.//

In the End

You don't choose a life.  You live one. ~Emilio Estevez as Daniel Avery in The Way

Last evening, we had a date night...complete with a rush hour traffic drive all the way to Eden Prairie (!) to the only theater in town that seems to be showing The Way, the independent film from Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen.  Both of whom, I love!

(a little hard to get a clear picture of the screen in the movie theater!!!)

Add this movie to my list of loves.

It's the story of a father (Sheen) whose semi-estranged son (Estevez) dies while on the pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago...and the father's adventures after he decides to walk the path for him.  Funny, poignant, clever, this movie fueled my passion for travel, for self-exploration, compassion and, in the end, self acceptance.

The beautiful part of this movie for me is it resonates so much with my life -- my philosophy and the way I want to live.  After becoming an exchange student to Finland when I was 17, I was hooked on the experience of different places, different people, new adventures.  In my twenties, I never stayed too long in one place because there was too much of life to witness, to explore, to live.

The crux of my life seems to be having the free spirit of an adventurer and a heart that craves home.

So no matter where I was pulled to, the pull home was stronger and in 1998, I finally gave in.  It is here where I met my now husband, and here where we have built our life together.  And my spirit still wanders.

As we were driving home, T asked me what I got from the movie...I said that through the movie I found a peace in accepting who we are, our own imperfections, our own humanness and the humanness of others. We walk the same road and have our own unique, individual experiences...but we're never alone if we open and allow for the possibility that we are all one.

I asked him what he took away from it...he said that we always think the gesture needs to be big -- walk 800km on a pilgrimage journey to make big changes -- but really, it doesn't have to be about the bigness at all.

I agree.  For many years, I thought it had to be about the grand gesture. Teach English in the Czech Republic, go on a three week long backpacking trip, bike 500 miles to Chicago.  I wanted to make space for big changes in myself by accomplishing great things.  I wanted big stories to tell of adventure and experience.  And I did.  I got all of it.  But in some ways, I think I was more tied to the thing than to the inner experience that doing that thing allowed.  In the end, I had accomplished much, but I was still me. Where were the big changes?  It didn't feel like a failure by any stretch, but it did feel like I started feeding this ego need that said I had to do more in order to be more.  That being me and pursuing cool experiences wasn't enough.

For many years, I missed the point.

I think the grand gesture is sometimes about the wish to outrun ourselves. The changes we wish to make are about the feeling that we aren't good enough fueled by any number of things, but for certain, a culture and society that constantly feeds us messages about where we fall short...about our being anything but perfect.

Well, what's perfect, anyway?

It reminds me of an analogy I once heard about how a sculptor must chip away at the stone, at what the statue is not in order to discover it.  The sculptor is not so much creating a sculpture, but is uncovering it by chipping away at what is unessential to the finished product.

This is a lot like our journey through life, and speaks to me about the adventures I still crave.  Any new experience, any time we challenge our comfortable edge, any time we question our habits, reactions or long-held beliefs, we chip away at what is unessential in us so that we can become, not someone different or better or more perfect, but become more of who we are. More authentically ourselves. More able to live our own life.

Sometimes it takes a grand gesture -- I'd be lying if I said I'm not secretly planning my trip to the Camino de Santiago believing that it would leave some part of me transformed for the undertaking.  But really, it could be as simple as taking a hike in a different park, trying a new recipe, a new yoga class, or pursuing that one thing you gave up years ago but still adore...like dance, or piano, or painting.

Life is for living fully.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  ~Mary Oliver

What's For Dinner Tonight?
Tonight, we go watch a Kung Fu recital/display of sorts and have dinner with friends -- their son is the first degree black belt.  I'm so excited to see him in his element!

Last night's dinner, however, was a quick bite at Biaggi's before the movie.

Being Friday and date night and all, I decided to treat myself to a Cosmopolitan before dinner...

I have to say it was one of the absolute best cosmos I've had in a restaurant in some time.  Worth every cent, though it was a lot of cents! Which is why we call it a "treat". : )

Not wanting to be too stuffed for the movie, we decided to share an appetizer and an entree.

Fried ravioli for the appetizer...spinach ricotta ravioli lightly fried served with a tomato basil bruschetta topping in a light shallot cream sauce.  The texture was different than I expected, more chewy, but it was really good.

Our entree was a shrimp and crab seafood cannelloni in a lobster tomato cream sauce.  Holy moly was this rich!  I barely ate my half and ended up I was pretty full for the movie.

No harm, no foul though...except I couldn't get any popcorn and it smelled so good!  This is the number one problem with the dinner-and-a-movie scenario in my book.

Ah, next time!

Week One - A Tale of Woe and Connection

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt


One week down...39 to go??

Actually, it's been a good week...and thirty-nine more of them doesn't seem too big a bite to have taken. Unless I remember that forty weeks will essentially take me until next July. Ooof! Then it sounds positively over-the-top. Especially for one who craves flexibility and freedom the way I do!

Surprisingly, showing up to the cushion every day has been a relief. Turning down the lights, lighting a candle, the incense, pulling the down blanket up over my shoulders as I settle in cross-legged on the edge of my meditation cushion. Deep breath in, deep breath out. In, out. Connect the breath in the belly. Still the mind. It's been welcome...a bit like coming home. Even if my mind is unruly and racing, even if it shows no signs of calming down. I wonder if maybe I'm not working hard enough to reign it in. If maybe I've almost fallen asleep way too many times to count as having shown up. Or maybe none of that matters and the concentration will come in time. With practice. With experience.

Isn't this true for all things? We don't step in as an expert. We need to allow ourselves time and space to flounder, to explore, to grow and sometimes to fail. And we must also allow ourselves the opportunity to succeed.

My meditation Sunday night was especially peaceful...which I am happy to count as a small victory. But along with that success came greater challenge because as it was, I had settled in deeply enough to actually hear my inner voice tell me something. It went a bit like this...

"Well, if you're really going to treat this like a true pregnancy, don't drink for nine months."

Pardon me?! Has my heart forgotten that my husband is a wine distributor??

My eyes popped open and my mind started calculating all the possible loopholes that would enable me to pretend that I didn't hear what I heard. Except that I did. Every shocking last word. The kicker was that I realized that if I was really serious about this, if I truly wanted to develop this relationship with my higher self like I've said I do, then I need to honor what was being asked of me. Even this (sniff, sniff).

It could be that this ends up being the hardest thing I ever do...and I've done a lot of hard things over the course of my 40 years. But then I think, really? Women have been getting pregnant and not drinking for nine months at a time forever and it doesn't kill them -- or at least I've never heard of any casualties. It doesn't make it any less hard, but at least I have leagues of women who have forged a path before me showing me it's possible.

Granted, I'm not pregnant which brings up issues all its own. "Why should I?" my small self cries. But if this were truly another life I was fostering and growing within me, I would treat my body as the true temple it is and would surely make room for this aspect of the overall experience. Why should my life be worth any less? We're so used to sacrificing for others, especially as women, and we've been taught -- wittingly or not -- that to focus on ourselves is selfish. Maybe this is my heart's way of getting me to clear out the distractions so I can open up to all the next eight months and three weeks have to offer me. Perhaps I'm simply being asked to sacrifice for my Self.

I might not like the idea of giving up my favorite vice, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief in the spirit of exploration and discovery. In the spirit of connection. It's as if my heart has reached out and made the first attempt at contact. The least I can do is pick up my end of the line and say "hello".

With one week down, big adventures are already brewing, fermenting, gestating...in the way that in all process we are shown how much time and attention it takes to create something magnificent. Like a life. Someone else's or my own, I guess is irrelevent. And so I keep holding the space...//

Getting Out of the Way

I've been thinking a lot about my book project lately. It is out for an initial review and I have honestly no idea what the response will be. Strangely, for the large part, this feels OK. Will I be told it's crap? That it has potential? I don't know that it matters. There's something here that I fear is ambivalence which actually feels like freedom. As if I have some degree of non-attachment to the whole thing, which isn't because I don't care or don't want to finish a completed, polished manuscript or that I don't know the woman reviewing my work, therefore I'm not invested in her comments.

Is it a knowing, perhaps? That I'm on to something, even if I don't know exactly what it is? Or how it will turn out?

I recognize it now as my style to have pieced together my first draft, regardless of how shabby, to then be able to reshape and re-vision and spiff it up from there. Like roughing in the framing of a remodeled room, I can now sit back with the parameters set and imagine the possibilities. It's a, "what do I have to work with here" mentality that lends itself perhaps not to endless options, but to more options than I could ever want or need as long as I remain open to what's available.

It's a bit unnerving to be here, in this place I've never been. But exciting, too. Each successive step in the book-writing process is its own animal, yielding rewards and complications and wonders unique to the moment...that I will come to know each time, for the first time.

That's what living in the now is all about, isn't it? For evolutionary purposes, we have been designed to retain all our old information: what happened here or there, where are the potential pitfalls. We needed this to survive, to anticipate what would happen before it actually occurred. I would argue that in this age of relative ease and convenience, the same rules do not apply -- at least not in the same way. Suspending our preconceived ideas and expectations of what we think something will be or even should be allows us the freedom to imagine what they could be. Or at the very least, appreciate them for what they are.

All experience is just a microcosm informing something deeper -- our personal process for living our own lives. Experience is a tool by which we can witness how we view the world, either as another dragon to slay or as an unfolding of possibility, each moment flush with its own potential.

Working on this book project, for me, is such a tool. What I've recognized is: we are the now. Each of us is this present moment, ripe with the potential and possibility just waiting for us to get out of our own way to see what -- or who -- will arise.//