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Well, i moped like a mad moper, like moping was the solution to all my problems. Can i *not* mope any more?
Yes, life conspires. Yesterday's sense of being sluggish and uncertainty kept me from Meeting. Lack of eggs kept me from making bread. As i chatted with mom and she recited her litany of how hard the past few moths have been, i reflected on the truth that it is always so. Yes, the surgery (from my brother in law, then my sister, now my dad, and then my sister again) is new and different, but there was a similar litany this past summer, before my brother in law's surgery.
I remember finding the aphorism, "The only constant is change," as a teen. It appears to be a concept with a early recording by Heraclitus some five centuries before the common era. What my mother could stand to learn and i could stand to remember is that if we are attached to our ideas of the future, whether it's plans and achievements or simply a vision of how things should be, we must stand in the tide of flowing change and spend energy on that.
I hesitate as i write, thinking about all the self help, getting things done gurus, all the preachers of achievement. I wonder if it's a difference of priorities, and also a difference in "luck." When one's priorities are in alignment with the flow of life, one succeeds.
And i suppose that is what i am pondering. To talk about my mother (because everything is in clear contrast while the beam in my own eye is hard to see), her priority is family, yet she is attached to a certain vision of how family should be situated in the home. Instead of seeing the past months as triumph and success, as their home has hosted all their children and the grandchildren, as she has provided comfort to my sister's family as they went through their surgeries, she is attached to the vision of a Magazine Photo-shoot Ready environment. Life has actually supplied her with the situations in which she can engage in her priorities. She's not been abandoned by family.
So, engagement without attachment.
What am i attached to?
Residual vision of the magazine photoshoot ready home.
Vision of "health."
I don't know if i'm *attached* to it, but i wrestle with how to communicate care for others. There is something in that which is a ... barrier? I could lay the blame for my dissatisfaction with this weekend in that i did not scribble off some new years notes and thanks to friends and family. Perhaps i'm attached to the idea of being a reliable friend? [Again, i can't stay engaged with the question and my brain skuttles off to some other distraction] Reliable is the wrong word. Laugh: engaged friend? What is it about connecting with others that raises itself in my mind as a SHOULD, which creates a long list of things to do?
I know one of my biggest priorities is mental well being, and i know there's something that connects me to joy in exploring ideas and researching.
Ach, time has passed and i must move on with my day. But there's an itch here. I am attached to some illusion about friendship, about relationships, and i am blocked.
***
I've been looking up things about vampire rabbits, vampire bunnies in preparation form my colleague's retirement. That led me to the band Happy Anarchy (on Amazon) and their album Reset. It delights me in the same way as The Society of Rockets. I bought it promptly with the last of the Amazon MP3 certificates from before D's wedding. I don't listen to music often, probably not enough. Maybe that's a change that would benefit me in some way. (I covet my thinking time, like this morning journaling.)
Yes, life conspires. Yesterday's sense of being sluggish and uncertainty kept me from Meeting. Lack of eggs kept me from making bread. As i chatted with mom and she recited her litany of how hard the past few moths have been, i reflected on the truth that it is always so. Yes, the surgery (from my brother in law, then my sister, now my dad, and then my sister again) is new and different, but there was a similar litany this past summer, before my brother in law's surgery.
I remember finding the aphorism, "The only constant is change," as a teen. It appears to be a concept with a early recording by Heraclitus some five centuries before the common era. What my mother could stand to learn and i could stand to remember is that if we are attached to our ideas of the future, whether it's plans and achievements or simply a vision of how things should be, we must stand in the tide of flowing change and spend energy on that.
I hesitate as i write, thinking about all the self help, getting things done gurus, all the preachers of achievement. I wonder if it's a difference of priorities, and also a difference in "luck." When one's priorities are in alignment with the flow of life, one succeeds.
And i suppose that is what i am pondering. To talk about my mother (because everything is in clear contrast while the beam in my own eye is hard to see), her priority is family, yet she is attached to a certain vision of how family should be situated in the home. Instead of seeing the past months as triumph and success, as their home has hosted all their children and the grandchildren, as she has provided comfort to my sister's family as they went through their surgeries, she is attached to the vision of a Magazine Photo-shoot Ready environment. Life has actually supplied her with the situations in which she can engage in her priorities. She's not been abandoned by family.
So, engagement without attachment.
What am i attached to?
Residual vision of the magazine photoshoot ready home.
Vision of "health."
I don't know if i'm *attached* to it, but i wrestle with how to communicate care for others. There is something in that which is a ... barrier? I could lay the blame for my dissatisfaction with this weekend in that i did not scribble off some new years notes and thanks to friends and family. Perhaps i'm attached to the idea of being a reliable friend? [Again, i can't stay engaged with the question and my brain skuttles off to some other distraction] Reliable is the wrong word. Laugh: engaged friend? What is it about connecting with others that raises itself in my mind as a SHOULD, which creates a long list of things to do?
I know one of my biggest priorities is mental well being, and i know there's something that connects me to joy in exploring ideas and researching.
Ach, time has passed and i must move on with my day. But there's an itch here. I am attached to some illusion about friendship, about relationships, and i am blocked.
***
I've been looking up things about vampire rabbits, vampire bunnies in preparation form my colleague's retirement. That led me to the band Happy Anarchy (on Amazon) and their album Reset. It delights me in the same way as The Society of Rockets. I bought it promptly with the last of the Amazon MP3 certificates from before D's wedding. I don't listen to music often, probably not enough. Maybe that's a change that would benefit me in some way. (I covet my thinking time, like this morning journaling.)
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