No Crazier than Yesterday

I need to hang some more mental laundry out to dry.  It hit me yesterday, solidly in the face, that I've spent the past two months alternating between being in motion and running in place.  My mind has been running amok, and all the while I have wished I still was.   I'm reminded of this quote, though I don't know where it came from:  "You're not any crazier than yesterday; you just didn't notice." The nice thing is, when you notice the crazy, you can also notice the reality. In reality,  I am grateful for the tears that well up when I ride the BART through the east bay and see the poverty that surrounds me;  I can't just look away.  I am grateful for the compassion and the fury that I feel when I see people jostling for power in subtle ways because they can't find it other places in their lives.  I am grateful because I remember I'm not numb to all of this.

And now that I've noticed the simple truths in my reality again,  it's time to release myself from this crazy captivity I've allowed myself to fester in of late.  You know you're in trouble when you've been hanging out a bit too much with "the imagined me" and forget who "me" is.  This is what happens  when I spend a little too much time grasping and trying to figure out how to get what I want (in the future) and too little appreciating what I have (in the present).

I've moved through these five mental states that are definite hindrances:
1)  The wanting mind; 2) Aversion:  I can't be happy until X; 3) Restlessness and agitation (usually associated with worry about future); 4)  Sloth and torpor; 5) Doubt.
Turn these on repeat and you've got a really fun time.  My mental state has made my mind a place to avoid, one that Anne Lamott describes as:  "a bad neighborhood that I try not to go into alone."

Noticing seems to provide an antidote to the crazy, and I am sitting still with some pretty basic truths, yet again:  impermanence and change are all there is...if you hold on you will suffer...and all thoughts arise and disappear on their own.  (And my mind goes "bla bla bla, Lisa, you've already circled back to this a million times over."  And I reply, "Yes, I think that's the routine...forever." And then I think, "Well, shit.")  And I am grateful for this process, even though it makes me feel hugely un-enlightened.     It allows me to feel grateful for silence when I find it, for green, for the ocean's presence, and grateful that I know these spaces. It makes me grateful for dinner and conversation and dancing and movement. I am grateful to be someone who is not trapped by fear, though I feel it regularly, and it holds me snugly in its embrace at times.  I am grateful for daffodils blooming in February.  I am grateful for my wanderer life because it brings me closer to truth even when it takes me further from comfort.  And I am grateful for hope.

My life is a path of steps and missteps (but I can't view them that way, really), and I can't imagine a reality that didn't include them all.  I might trade a few, if pressed, but I wonder what the trade off would be.

Direct Correlations

There are all of these time-killing online quizzes going around:  "Which level of Dante's inferno are you going to?"  "Which fairy tale princess are you?"  Today, after completing the "Which Disney villain are you?" quiz (it's Friday; a momentary diversion was a good thing), we were tangentially talking about the movie Frozen, and my co-workers couldn't believe I hadn't liked it.  Deadpan, I explained that it was really disturbing to realize that you had been less insightful in real life than a princess in a Disney film.  [If you haven't seen the film, do not worry, this allusion is best encapsulated by the moment in the film when the plucky princess needs someone who loves her to save her, and the  prince, whom she thought she was going to marry, said, "Well, it's too bad there's no one who loves you here."  The audience gasped as he tried to kill her, even though we all saw it coming].  We laughed pretty hard over this one, and, in truth, the movie was lovely, and I've never had anyone actually try to kill me.  Disney villains aside, the moral of the movie was that true love, given freely, is what frees us, and what makes the world pretty damn beautiful (or, in the case of the movie, un-frozen).  And this is what makes any story line move from "tragedy" to "comedy."  And it's what makes me grateful for my own storyline.

I wrote out a series of Valentine's notes to people I love last night. By the time I was finished, I was absolutely floored by how much gratitude and love I have for so many, and how truly amazing that feeling is.  Tonight I reveled in the routine of a Friday night yoga class with a friend, and the pure joy in the connection.  I reveled in the reminder by the yoga instructor that we practice in community, and there are no levels or borders in this community.

And, I am reminded, as I revel in all of this, of Brian Andreas' story "Love Match," which reads:  "I want to be loved for who I am, she said, because being loved for who I'm not just stresses me out."  Ahhh...  yes.  Direct correlation between being loved for who we are (including by ourselves) and our ability to lean into life and love and joy.   I'm enjoying these findings.

Astrological Inspirations and a New Year

Whether we believe in the power of the stars or not, this seems to be a pretty potent time for astrological portents.  The new year is emerging as a time to act and not ponder; this latest Venus retrograde cycle has offered up both challenges to be answered, confusions to sort through, and conditions to shed.  Whether these are helpful explanations or simply ideas to ponder as we consider where we fit in the grand scheme of things, I think they're worth taking into consideration.

This tiny painting sits across the living room from me.  When I asked the artist (Dalbo Suarimbawa) the story behind it, he said, "You know, when you're feeling like you're..." and when he gave up on trying to find the word in English,  he leaned to the left to demonstrate lack of balance.  I knew I had to bring the image home.

There has been a lot of leaning to the left in my world of late--for a variety of reasons--and I'm not the only one (I shouldn't feel solace in this, but I do).  At yoga last week, when the instructor mentioned that we were still in the throes of a Venus retrograde cycle, the room erupted in knowing groans of understanding.  She followed this with, "You woke up this morning.  That's a lot to be grateful for." (I've been repeating this statement each morning since I heard it).  At dinner afterward, a conversation with a beautiful friend indicated that we were both struggling to find ourselves upright and clear headed of late.   I don't think that these moments of being on the edge are inherently bad, but I do know that these moments are inherently challenging.  

This seems as good a time as any to ask some tough questions.  This seems to be as good a time as any to refine where we put our love and time and energy.  Fortunately or unfortunately, these types of refinements require that we face our ego monsters, that we release some attachment to how we expected things to be, face what is, and smile at this awareness.

I have been facing my ego monster as I face what is... quite possibly my least favorite part of myself.  How easily bruised, how fragile, how utterly ridiculous it is...yet, to find compassion for this part of myself?  To be generous and accepting?  Well, that's some work.  I'm seeking out new possibilities in the world, which brings with it a feeling of being "judged" and questioning whether I'm "worthy" and when I'm not centered, these feelings can lead to defensiveness or fear, and they manage to gather up all of the fear and judgment I've ever conjured surrounding missteps of the past as they come barreling toward me.  Whoa.

And last week I phoned a friend.  I said, "I need to say all of this out loud so that I hear how ridiculous it is..."  And that's a gift.  I woke up this morning.  I have quieted my ego.  The stars are aligning in ways that might just be a tad more fortuitous than they have been in a while.  I'm ready for the shift in the motion.  Bring it Year of the Horse.

Lost in the Finding

I almost titled this "'Figuring it out' and other such impossibilities."  I'm not sure when it is that we decide that there's an "it" and when we decide that "it" can be "figured out."  I think we generally use this statement to refer to "life"--as if life were an indeterminate pronoun whose referent could be easily identified.  I think that life may be more appropriately considered as a series of events in which we lose and find ourselves, and in which this series of events is repeated...forever...

It's taken me a while to realize that feeling lost or feeling as if we've found our way are equally fine.

"Everybody talked about finding themselves, but maybe you had to get lost first."  --Elizabeth Eaves, Wanderlust

There are lots of ways to get lost.  And often we end up back where we started, but armed with all sorts of new experiences that make it ultimately impossible to ever actually define any place as a start or any point an end, in and of itself.  I often feel like a tourist in my own life (I am aware that I cultivate this as a practice), and recently I was afforded an opportunity to move about the world (writ a bit more large than usual), as a more traditionally defined tourist--no home, no job commitments--only moving through space and interactions as me, with a fabulous partner in crime, taking it all in...and it had been a while since I felt this level of freedom of movement.  And, in the same space, there I was--lost and found--at once a surreal and real state of being.  And I began to think of the role of the drishti as a point of focus not only in yoga or meditation practice, but any time we need to keep our gaze outward, but also need to lessen the judgment and attachment we feel to our surroundings.  It's not dismissal or hiding, but a way of staying in touch with who we are as we move through.  I'm not speaking literally, as if I think the tip of my nose should be my point of focus as I walk through city streets, but a willingness to keep my focus on where I am at any given moment.   And one that helps me keep my gaze soft.  And when we have that, we may be able to stay in a place where we acknowledge we are lost, but are safe in that recognition.

I don't mean this to sound all navel-gaze-y.  I'm recognizing (and celebrating) the futility of navel gazing, actually.  [NOTE:  Navel as drishti= not probably our goal.]

I've been swimming in a sea of uncertainty in the past years (I've been a bit underwater at times too), and I finally realize I always have been,  AND, well, we all are.  I think this recognition can make us a little bit kinder with one another, and a little gentler with ourselves.  The water's nice, come on in; let's go for a swim.  Every once in a while I might be treading water and trying to see over the horizon, and every once in a while I might be swimming swiftly back to shore.  

In Flight Entertainment and Plentiful Realities

When I am in flight, I read.  I should be doing other things (most likely work related), but I read.  I read to escape close confines and too-close seat mates.  I read because it feels indulgent.  And I read because I love to enter and exit a multitude of worlds, even when I'm moving between and among multitudes of worlds. If there has been one constant in my life, it is this.  On my latest series of trips (Four destinations in ten days), I read through a series of memoirs that took me out of my space and into lives of others.

[These books included:  Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman; Let's Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson--which, truth be told, should not be read in public as I laughed out loud so many times that I am certain I disturbed my fellow travelers-- and Chanel Bonfire, by Wendy Lawless--which made me alternately cringe and sigh.  I started the journey with The Circle by Dave Eggers (not a memoir)...but surreal, too close to possible reality, and a fun head game.  I would love to have the energy to share my favorite lines from these, but...suffice to say that each is worth the read.]

So, in the midst of my own journey, I engage in all of these lived experiences of others, combined with the lived experiences of those around me.  It's a strange amalgam of humanity--reality, fiction, fiction based on reality...and creates some interesting spaces to inhabit.  And these are just the "in-between" experiences, but they're all part of my own trajectory.

The tag on my cup of tea tonight read:  "The beauty of life is to experience yourself."  I am positive I agree with this, but with the addendum that the beauty of life is to experience it as a shared experience with others.  I am all down with knowing myself and being able to stand in my own skin, but I've been rocked to the core by the power of connections with the people I love of late.  I've shared cozy spaces with beautiful friends and family; I've cried as I said goodbye; I've walked forward knowing that these spaces and these tears make the moments of movement bearable.  And in the interim, I've connected in other ways with people I don't know--through shared story and unique experience, or by having to share an armrest or a space in line.

And tomorrow night, I'll experience myself in flight to a destination halfway around the world to meet up with a place I've never met before, but, thankfully, to meet a dear friend who I look forward to seeing again.  And it is all of this, place and space and time and love, which allows me to fully experience myself, in whatever form I take...all the while knowing that this form (whether it's apparent from the outside or not) shifts and changes at any given moment.

Hopscotch: Bouncing Between Realities

I have been grounded (read:  on the ground, not in flight) since last Sunday, but I have been struggling to get my mind and body back in the same place all week.  I told my meditation teacher this last week, and she said, "well, you're in the right place."  I knew what she meant (that coming to class was a step in the right direction), but I thought, hmmm... maybe I am in the "right" place--maybe, sometimes, the present is an act of straddling many different spaces and knowing yourself well enough to know that these disparate spaces are where you are in the moment, and that you will re-align when you can.  And that you will find moments of presence even though.

For now my mind is hopscotching ahead of me across the country.   And in the spirit of randomness, and flitting between different realities, here are some things that have hopscotched across my mind in the last while:

[And I think the formatting weirdnesses below add to the theme, so...am going to just ask patience with these as you read.  :)]

I read a post on huffingtonpost.com by Katelyn Klug:  "30 Lessons You Learned After 20"--why I insist on reading through these lists, I have no idea beyond the fact that they are ubiquitous ("five ways to become happier"/ "ten things you should never do"/ "seventeen ways to escape orangutans" --note:  this one hasn't been written yet, but I'm certain it will be...) but I digress.  There were three items on Klug's list that I thought were worth sharing (and noting that these lessons will be re-learned as you enter your 40s and so on and so on and so on):
     a.  #4= "A person who often misinterprets good intentions probably doesn't have many good
          intentions of their own."
          [This one made me laugh out loud and realize that this pretty much summed up some confusing 
          interactions I've had in my life.]

     b.  #20= "Women who claim to get along better with men are trouble."
          [There are two exceptions to this rule that I know of, but that's it.]

     c.  #9="Absence makes the heart grow independent."
          [I have nothing pithy for this, but I do think there's something good here.]

I've just finished a book entitled Swimming at Night by Lucy Clarke.  I checked it out from the library on a whim because keyword "Bali" came up with the title, and...it was an interesting journey.

Two quotes that struck me:
     a.  "Sometimes when people give you their opinions, they can end up becoming your own.  I didn't
           want that" (p. 50).
          [I am still working on making sure that the voices in my head are truly mine.]

     b.  "People go traveling for two reasons:  because they are searching for something, or because they
           are running from something.  For me, it's both"  (p. 22).
           [For me?  It's letting go.  It's leaning into possibility and into the recognition that there is not 
           much that we truly control.  And, maybe, it is searching and running.  Maybe that's fine too.]

There is a graffiti artist in town who has been stenciling "You will die." in various places along my walking routes.  I was caught off guard for a moment by these, but realized that my immediate reaction yesterday when I read yet another of the postings, was to look up, to look around, and to appreciate how gorgeous the day was.  If this response was not the artist's intent, I don't want to know.

I have a sense, though I may be wrong, that I will be more grounded once I'm back in motion for this next round of travel flurry.  It's hard to overlook the fact that I have a bag packed full of black and grey outfits for four different climates and four different tasks,  color-coded folders telling me what each of my different destinations requires, and that maybe, just maybe, when I land, my body and mind will join forces.  Here's hoping.  Bring on the plastic key cards and the moving walkways nearing their end. Game on.

When Things Get Gritty

In the past few days, I've had a series of events occur that are concrete reminders that "grit" pays off.  However, I realized that what I'm proudest of this year is not the pride in the outcomes,  but that I have learned (and re-learned) how to be present and to believe in myself even when I don't know whether or not the outcomes of my efforts are going to be what I hope for.  It is this that has taken more strength than I've ever been able to conjure before in my life.  And I breathe into this realization.  I had a dissertation committee member who told me last year that I would be finished with my dissertation when I had learned all I needed to learn from the process.  That idea caused a lot of anxiety for me for a while, but I think this applies to a lot of the things we do.  When we learn how to move through the waves of emotion, without attaching our identity to a particular timeline or an outcome that is supposedly going to be a result of what we're doing, then we are able to learn what we need from the process.

In her TEDx talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8], Angela Lee Duckworth defines "grit" as passion and perseverance for long term goals.  I've thought a lot about this idea as a teacher:  Duckworth cites Carol Dweck's research on "growth mindset" as an inspiration for her own thinking, and Dweck's research has informed how I communicate ideas to students--that the ability to learn is not fixed.  In my experience, it is clear that students who are willing to fail, yet who don't believe that failure is a permanent condition, are the ones who will see continued growth and success.   This is not a new story, but a difficult one to internalize.  The only limitations that I regularly see are students who limit themselves and the risks they take because they are afraid of failure.  I'm pretty sure that risk-taking should be a core component of every curriculum at every grade level.

These same limitations follow us into adulthood.  I look around me and see people paralyzed by fear of change, fear of failure, and fear of the unknown--a willingness, conscious or not, to settle into the status quo.  I sure as hell suffer from paralysis on occasion--we all do.  I think we can skip the facade of perfection and the fear of failure.  It's time to keep it realer than most and get grittier.