Dear Benny

Benny:

Your writing always brings joy to my life, even when about the very real challenges we face.  

  

I could write you about my struggles, for sure.  Life doesn't feel full of ease at the moment.  

But you asked for what is good.  

And life does have moments of beauty, so many moments, that I gloss over as if they are inconsequential. I am working hard to pull them out from the darker narrative that seems so easy to tell and fret over.  It's in our biology to dwell on perceived threats.  We have to be alert to protect ourselves.  Life, plus big screen media-projected life, gives us endless material.  And it is all true.  

 My work is to highlight and celebrate the moments my mind has made small.  I made that choice, to shrink them, so I'm consciously choosing to make them big.

Like when I watched my coworker Erika, a beautiful Puerto Rican woman, marry the love of her life, a gentle giant of a Moroccan man.  Or when she told me the wedding present I gave her, a painting she had said she really liked in a photograph, made her cry.  Or when Xaq, a newer friend, stopped me on the street yesterday to tell me he liked my blog, and wanted some advice for keeping a practice going. Or when two boys from last year's class 8th grade class, who struggled hard the whole year, came back today to school to give us teachers all hugs.  Ninth grade boys returned to their old middle school.  For hugs.  How amazing to receive such feedback and have proof our spheres of influence are real and powerful for others.   How amazing to have such golden moments.  They are so easy to bury underneath the trauma and tragedy of the world.

And what of the BIG work that people are doing to address the ills they see in the world?  Those who rally against climate change?  The shifting landscape towards small scale farming?  Tiny house communities?  The sudden national momentum towards marriage equality?  It could be easy to dismiss these as simply moves addressing wrongs.  But  is it also not possible to acknowledge that they are the light?

I am probably just as, if not more, pessimistic and distraught about what I perceive as our direction than you, and many in our country.  So I MUST celebrate these moments. They are just as real as the craters in Siberia.  As the Israeli-Palestine conflict.  As my breakup.  And they are so important.  Why diminish them?  Why call them but small flickering lights in the darkness?  

Tell me what you see that you've made small.  Celebrate it.  You and I, we cannot afford be lazy and fall into the all too familiar mournful story.  We MUST see and feel the good, both to save ourselves, and to be honest about all the world is.

With deep admiration,

Erica

One vacation, twice lived.

It is my last night in Costa Rica, and I am lying alone in my room at the Hilton across from the airport.  Between the bland yet expensive nature of this arrangement, and my enduring it solo, it had the potential to bring some, shall we say, "unproductive" trains of thought to mind.  And while I was kicking myself for ordering a $16.00 pizza for lunch, it seemed I was fated to meet this churning in mi cabeza.

I recently heard about a study in which people chose to shock themselves rather than be alone with their thoughts.  And while I recently completed a silent retreat, the prospect of being alone at a pricey blah hotel where everyone else was interacting (many in a coupley vacationy kind of way)  seemed like it would lead me to that place.  The space wasn't set up to do meditative zombie walks and sit silently with 90 others, the way my retreat had been.  That experience made me feel like I was doing some noble act by enduring my psyche alone.  Instead, it is arranged to have FUN and RELAX.  This seemed daunting.  And at first, it was.  

My favorite self-abasing thoughts often stem from my single status, and what a great opportunity to entertain them!  So much so that suddenly they hijacked my whole experience of Costa Rica.  The trip was defined by how much I wished I had a partner to share that awesome sunset, or walk the terrifying dark crab gauntlet to get to the next strip over in the evening, or laugh with at falling off my surf board for the millionth time.  It turned out, because I was single, I had a terrible time on my trip.  

As I went to tell my journal this was so, I found myself staring blankly at the page, momentarily disinterested in indulging the pity that was eager to jump from my pen only moments before.  

Instead, I dragged my single ass to the pool.  I swam with a group of high school kids jumping hormonally all over one  another.  I played my uke under the umbrella.  I threw on my gym clothes and worked out, and then jumped back in the pool and swam languidly as the sun set.  Did some flips and handstands.  When I got back to the room, I ate the rest of my pizza.  In bed.  And I liked it.  

Physically shaking things up gave me some space to chose my next thoughts, and I decided to make them gratitudes.  Back in the journal, I recorded the geckos falls from the ceiling, the crabs scuttling away and burying themselves in the mud, the feeling of catching a wave (even the tiniest one), the energetic solo dance performance, the hippy smoothies.  I re-remembered the trip.  It turned out, it didn't suck at all.  

It's truly mind-boggling how powerful our thoughts are, and how they can completely shade our memories of past experiences.  They say eye witness accounts are not reliable sources of data, as they were once thought to be, because people actually don't accurately remember what they saw.  Every time we think back we recreate that moment in our head, and that moment is clouded by everything that had happened since then and where we are emotionally when remembering.  

It was so clear today that I am not always a reliable eye witness to my own life.  I came up with two versions for one very recent history, in a matter of hours.  One sad and lonely, the other invigorated and beautiful.  In truth, I'm sure I had the whole spectrum of emotions throughout the week, as I have witnessed on even an hourly basis today.  And that's cool.

Those who are truly mindful can notice these shifts as they happen. They know to treat the darkness gently, and keep in mind that a change will inevitably come.  They don't get completely lost in their own story, but see it come and, with gentle amusement, allow it its time.  Then, when good humor returns, they rejoice in that too, and support it, because they know it too is fleeting.  

I still find myself swept away.  But it seems worth keeping up with the practice to one day have more freedom.  To cuddle the scared sad thoughts kindly.   To jump out of the story with intention even sooner.  

Being content is hard work.  Even in vacation, I do have to try.  It is not my goal to be endlessly delighted by life, but certainly to cultivate more of that awe while being gentle with my grumpy self.  I am grateful for this.