Moving from experience to experience, fertilizing each moment with the lingering imprint from where I have been.
Carrying just enough with me to grow a place to land tomorrow.
Taking my time right here and now to nourish and enjoy myself is the only way to ensure that enough of this experience sticks to me fruitfully.
Life flowers fully before me when I linger where I am and carry only the good stuff with me.
Funny how you work so hard for something to be over and then when you are done there is a sense of sadness or loss.
Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of room for joy in letting go but the habit that developed is going to take some time to get over.
Maybe grief isn’t so much about doing without as much as it’s about breaking a habit and finding comfort in a new routine.
It’s not that I don’t suffer.
It’s just that I don’t choose for suffering to be my way of being.
Caught my finger briefly in the door.
Intense sensation.
Rush of pain.
Momentarily immobilized.
No blood, no mark, and yet I felt such an enormous affront.
Breath gradually returns.
Senses calm.
Back to OK.
Realizing how deceiving hurts can be on the outside…no way to know how the hurt is unfolding on the inside.
What seems like such a minor encounter could feel quite crushing on the inside.
Perhaps it would serve best to judge less and avoid assessing whether feeling hurt is appropriate and rather focus on finding the way back to OK.
How to be strong and vulnerable.
Look others in the eye.
Listen deeply.
Be Aware.
Allow.
Accept.
Fear less.
Laugh more.
Love.
Here I am, walking along, awareness softly tuned to my surroundings.
Without any warning, the easy state of awareness suddenly funnels with precision into the soul of my foot.
A slew of messages instantly travels light lightening through my body alerting me to intense sensation.
There is a pebble in my shoe.
With each step now, I have a choice.
Do I immediately freeze, paralyzed by this unanticipated happening, shutting down, urgently driven to remove the discomfort?
Do I pause, taking notice, receiving the sensations with curiosity and kindness, quietly ascertaining my next step?
Or do I continue walking, noticing, and finding unique learning in every step, even through the unsettledness and unease?
Can I cultivate gratitude for the ability to feel, to move, and motivate, to decide with every step?
Whatever I do, it should be with care, not reacting but receiving, even when unexpected and uncomfortable, a constant reminder of my free will.
Control creates the illusion of safety.
The more I seek control, the more insecure I become.
The more I allow myself to trust the not-knowing to result in wisdom, the uncertainty to to inspire clarity, and the gift of others’ feedback to grow my confidence, the less I approach life as a field of potential failures and instead find a river of opportunities.
The less I grapple with control, the more I understand how much there is to learn and realize how much I already know.
The deadline was met.
The difficulty has passed.
The challenge is complete.
Is there a way to just feel rest instead of collapsing into this state of completion?
Must dread and arduousness accompany the work?
Why have I created this belief that I need struggle in order to be worthy of the prize of rest?
Could I move instead from a place of ease in such a way that the work is joyful, the learning graceful?
Could challenge instead be reframed as delightful growth?
Yes, if I choose to make it that way.
How often I have longed for the confidence of another, the apparent success of others, and what seems the ease with which they live.
Then I remember I have my own gifts and talents.
These thriving others are likely not concerned with what I have or don’t have and rather are living within their own gifts and abilities.
It is in living within our gifts that brings ease to our existence, success in our challenges, and the knowing that each of us contributes a beautiful and very special piece to the tapestry of all.
Much like in painting, when the unique colors blend just at their edges they are often more vibrant than when they stand alone or try to take on characteristics of the others and simply become mud.
Today, I aspire to walk confidently and brightly in the shades and shadows of my own unique talents and abilities.
Grief…it’s not about the loss as much as creating and being able to access a little warm place in your heart where you hold that connection forever.
I used to think that grief was the act of severing ties and throwing away something special because it was lost.
But now I know that grief is a process of storing the memories of the specialness of every experience regardless of its labels, conditions, and how it came to be or not be.
Grief is experiencing the loss without getting lost.
Monday Mindfulness 