PROCCESSING LIFE

     We need a certain amount of time to process our experiences. We need to allow for reflection and consideration. We need to make sense of things, and to decide what we are going to make of them, and how we will integrate the new into our already full lives. What spin will we use on the adventure, the meeting, the person, the day? Will we learn lessons, cop resentments, be self-critical and blaming, be resistant, or be grateful?
     Somehow or other, we have to settle what's happened before we can move on. We have to take the time to make our peace.

I allow for the time I need to absorb and integrate the experiences of my life, and do not rush frantically from one thing to the next.

SWEET AND SEEDY

     In life, there's sweet, and then there's seedy. There's savory and unsavory, in food, in the human character, and in the way we choose to live. What we create and surround ourselves with becomes our experience. If we are wholesome, we attract wholesome, and live wholesome, and the same goes for seedy. And if we are one, and encounter the other, it can't help but rattle us a bit. When wholesome encounters seedy, there is a creepy darkness that spills over one way, and an unfamiliar, perhaps even detestable freshness, that spills over the other.
     In cities of all kinds, both things live side by side, and a certain immunity develops, but if we pluck anyone from the comfort zone they regularly inhabit, and place them in the opposite environment, they will squirm. It's good to know where we live, but be able to float amongst the other side on occasion, with our compassion and our curiosity leading the way, instead of our judgment. The earth, with her great generosity, carries and sustains us all.
    

I extend my love and compassion to all people who are different from me, even if their choices of lifestyle make me squirm. No matter who I encounter, I can choose to be kind.

TOO MUCH

     I value my solitude, but I can spend only so much time by myself before it starts to become unhealthy. My mind is busy, and noisy, and not always friendly. It tells me things... Just so, I value leisure time, but can do it for only so long. I feel the lack of productivity. Too much relaxation makes me restless, and I look forward to getting back to work. But too much work depletes me...
     Everything in balance is the rule, and everything in moderation. I can only sleep so much, work so much, play so much, talk so much, listen so much, and cry so much. Too much of anything is simply too much.

I discover where there is too much of something in my life, and tip it a bit in the opposite direction to restore balance.

VACATIONS

     Vacations are hard work. We plan them and rearrange our lives. Then we pack and travel. Once arrived and settled, we search out our best food choices, and adjust the best we can to unfamiliar beds and pillows, and the reality of our experience as it stands up against our expectations. The weather, traffic, sickness, the wrong clothes, the attitudes of our traveling companions: all of these things are wild cards.
     And then, when it's all over, we have to travel home... and unpack, and do loads of laundry, and re-group. We have to prepare to return to our lives, and work, and the next thing, and the next, with our trip now behind us. And what's interesting, and never ceases to amaze me, is the simple reality that no matter what kind of time we had, it becomes nostalgic. The adventure becomes a "classic" in our lives, even if it was nothing but hardship. And we smile every time we remember it... just knowing that we made it through.

Let's live our lives like we live our vacations, with a willingness to experience whatever comes, knowing that whatever happens, or doesn't happen, it will grow us in the end.

    

ASSUMPTIONS

      We make assumptions about the way people are, and the way they feel about us, based on our impressions, and thoughts, and our history. Frequently, we are wrong, and discover that others are equally wrong about us. They think we are mad when we are only quiet and tired; that we are intimidating when we are actually more like friendly pups.
      If we want to know how someone feels about something, let's ask them! Let's lay down our assumptions and take up our listening skills. And let's be willing to share our own truth as well, and talk about the way we feel. Communication is the key to clarity. It is the best possible tool to dispel misunderstandings.

I needn't speculate and second-guess the world. If I want to know what someone thinks, I ask them! And then I believe what they tell me.

THE TWINKLE OF OLD AGE

     In general, when people reach a certain age of maturity, there is a kind of purity about them. Older folks who are in decent physical and mental health are positively twinkly. They are beyond the rush and fret of youth, beyond anxiety, beyond resistance, and largely beyond fear. They seem easily and naturally settled into present moment awareness, and they have learned how to take their time. They are easy-does-it and good humor; amused at all of our youthful follies and self-imposed urgencies. They inspire us. They seem to have learned that in life, as in nature, everything is accomplished in its own sweet time.

I learn from my bright-eyed elders. Life may not be as arduous as it sometimes seems.

LABOR DAY

     Every ending is a beginning, and every beginning is also an ending. They are inextricably linked. Life is full of deaths and births and evolution. It's never-ending and non-stop. It is steady and trickling and crashing all around. It is all things connected.
     Summer ends and fall begins. We welcome cooler weather but remember the heat. It has become a part of us. Each summer of our lives accumulates to make us the bundle of experiences that we are. And we embody all of it, just like the earth. We grow and grow through seasons like the trees.

I express my gratitude for the summer that has passed, and I welcome the coming fall.