2. KIND bars, especially cranberry & almond, and dark chocolate nuts & sea salt.
3. Schlumbergera, more commonly known as Christmas Cactus, but mine bloom closer to Thanksgiving, and right now the two in my office are covered in blooms that are about to burst, ready to pop.
4. Cooking dinner. I don’t do it that often. I used to do it all the time when Eric and I were first married, but then when I went to graduate school he took over, and he liked it whereas for me it was a chore so he kept doing it, but lately I’ve been trying some new things, some that have worked out and others not so much, and it feels good.
5. Reconnecting with a friend. At a certain point when you haven’t talked or seen each other in a long time, you start to think, “are we fighting? did we break up?” but then yesterday, I forwarded an email that I thought might be of interest, and finally, finally just said it, “how are you? I miss you. are we okay?” and found out that she felt the same way, was also wondering what had happened.
Bonus Joy: Hugging Eric in the kitchen first thing in the morning when neither one of us is really awake yet, when Sam has already eaten breakfast and is back in bed.
Not acting on our habitual patterns is only the first step toward not harming others or ourselves. The transformative process begins at a deeper level when we contact the rawness we’re left with whenever we refrain. As a way of working with our aggressive tendencies, Dzigar Kongtrül teaches the nonviolent practice of simmering. He says that rather than “boil in our aggression like a piece of meat cooking in a soup,” we simmer in it. We allow ourselves to wait, to sit patiently with the urge to act or speak in our usual ways and feel the full force of that urge without turning away or giving in. Neither repressing nor rejecting, we stay in the middle between the two extremes, in the middle between yes and no, right and wrong, true and false. This is the journey of developing a kindhearted and courageous tolerance for our pain.
What is yours is the way you meet the turbulence as it arrives: with grace or terror, with gratitude or anger, with openness or clenched fists, with focus or distraction. Your life will find you, no matter what you plan. Be here then. Be of this wild, brilliant new day. Respond as truly as you can, and know this life is made both of your breath, and of the wind you breathe.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
30. Charlie the Dog Is the World’s Worst Recycler on Jezebel. An empty plastic water bottle really is one of the best puppy toys ever. Reminds me of Sam when he was a puppy, and I’d hide a ball under a tupperware bowl and he’d try to get it out. (P.S. Dexter was the best big brother).
Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow.
I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.
When you stop warring with yourself, when you end the shaming and judging and blaming, when you stop the pushing and pulling and feeding the desire to be someone else with a different life, the war with food ends as well. Maybe not all at once, but soon. It couldn’t be any other way.
“If I’m depressed, everybody’s depressed, I don’t think those feelings are that different from what everybody’s feeling. Most people just don’t tell everybody. I was just tired of telling people I was tired. It felt like every day someone would ask, ‘What’s wrong. Are you OK?’ “And I would say, ‘I’m tired, I’m tired.’ I didn’t want to do that anymore. I guess sometimes not telling the truth is just as bad as telling a lie.”
1. Fall weather, cool but sunny, my favorite.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 