happiness

SUFFERING THE GUILT

It’s snowing again, big fluffy flakes floating down. Looks like winter is here to stay. I don’t mind. I’m not going anywhere. I’m warm and well fed. I have all the comforts right here at home. I can just hunker down and wait for spring. In the meantime, I can enjoy my cup of tea, a somewhat dried though good cinnamon bun and a bit of cheese. I’ll see if I can tap out 500 words again. Was yesterday just a fluke?

Ah, Sheba is starting again – barking. She’s like an alarm clock. I’ve made her do a ‘down’ but it lasted only a minute. At least she’s quiet. Now if she would stop nuzzling me for her food. We still have half an hour to go. I will see how strong my will is versus hers. Will – that has been a problem for me. I give in too easily. I give in to the guilt of being responsible for everyone’s happiness. I’ve been told that I am not that powerful, that I can’t make everyone happy. Nevertheless, it is difficult to shrug off. I’ve worn that duty call for a long time.

It has been too long wearing that cloak. It’s heavy and weighing me down. I am starting to ask, Hey what about me? It helps. It reminds me that I have been standing and living alone for many years. I have been my own keeper and comforter. Not that I am complaining. It has made me strong and resourceful, seeking my own solutions, finding my own way. I’ve listened to others while seldom heeding my own cries. I feel that I am that one hand that is clapping. And not a sound can be heard.

That is why I love the tap, tap of my keyboard. I can hear myself talking as I watch the letters and words march across the screen. My sorrows and joys are heard. They resound in that heartspace, as Mattie Stepanek would call it. I am listening to me. I am heard. I do matter. I am that stone sending ripples through oceans and the universe – as you are, too.

It is 3:00 pm, that bewitching supper hour for Sheba. I do have the will. Sheba does, too. I have overcome the guilt that I’m making her suffer by waiting. She is not suffering. She can wait. She is a Lab. She always want to eat if I let her. Now that she’s fed, she’s noisily squeaking her rubber chicken and fussing for her walk.

We’ve been for our walk and back. It’s good to move, change my posture, change my space and be in nature. Much easier to go earlier than later. Do the hard stuff first. Then there is no guilt in putting my feet up. The day is done. We’ve trudged through heavy wet snow and shovelled the same. My must-dos along with a few may-dos are crossed out on the to do list.

  • Get up, dress up and show up
  • Post for Navigating Through November on Instagram
  • Draw
  • Write
  • Make yogurt

The rest of the evening is gravy as they say. Wine, anyone?

 

 

IN THE MEANTIME

I knew as soon as I woke up today could be one of those achy, breaky days.  It was grey and gloomy.  The wind was blowing fierce.  I did not want to get out of bed!  But I knew that was no solution.  It would take me back into the doldrums and I didn’t want to go.

What should a girl do?  I  have to get up, dress up and show up.  From there, the day would take on a life of its own.  That’s what I have learned from experience.  The hardest part is the getting up.  Why is that?  Don’t you just sit up and swing your feet out and put them on the floor?  It’s the same thing with hanging up your coat, putting away things and picking up things you drop.  Sometimes I feel such inertia and I CAN’T or WON’T do it.

It is a good thing I AM committed to challenging myself this month.  I will not fail on the 9th day in.  That will be so embarrassing.  That will be so, so.  My words will mean nothing if I give up.  The show must go on.

While I am waiting for the sun to show and the wind to subside, I will go on and do the best I can.  I am running out of bread.  It’s perfect weather for baking.  The mixing and stirring is soothing.  And while the dough is rising, I put on a pot of water and threw IMG_4894some soup bones in to make bone broth.  It will build me up!

My spirit is lifting, my head is more clear.  I think about my goals.  What is it that I want?  How is it and what is it to be happy?  I have been trying to make a regular practice of meditation but it hasn’t happened.  I haven’t been successful at sitting and being alert and doing nothing.  Maybe I need another way – a ‘doing’ meditation of being in the moment.

I focus on doing one thing at a time, not rushing.  I feel the dough as I am kneading it, its softness and smoothness.  I concentrate on not being so rigid about making the IMG_3392loaves so exactly in equal size.  What does it matter if one is a little bigger than the others?  Why have I been so neurotic about things like that when it really doesn’t matter?  I try to ask myself that question every time I’m in a similar situation.  WHAT DOES IT MATTER?

It does snap me out of it and I can move on.  It is time I stop wasting precious energy on bad habits and bad emotions.  It is time I start to really get into living.  Even when the going is tough and slow, you can still do a lot in the meantime.

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SHIFTING THROUGH LENT

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I’ve lost track of how many days we are into Lent.  I haven’t read my daily messages from A Course in Miracles.  I feel I have lost so much time shifting through my nights at work.  I’m feeling as if I am in my own separate bubble, divorced from the whole wide world.  My cries echo silently in my tiny bubble.

All I feel is my physical discomfort – the thousand aches in my body, my breathlessness, the heaviness of my fatigue.  I would like to be inert forever, but that is also a discomfort unto its own.  So, with effort and the help of Sheba’s insistent barking, I rise out of bed in the morning.  We do the breakfast habit and somehow find ourselves at the park and on the trail between the trees.

Sheba runs this way and that way, happy to be free out in the world again.  I trudge along, my steps easing and lengthening as we went along.  I take a breath in and breathe out through the opening in my heart and felt my aches melting with each breath.  Oh, sweet relief!

Life is a struggle sometimes.  But where would we be without those struggles?  There would be no need to find solutions to problems, no experimenting, no puzzles to solve.   Through these days in Lent, I have abandoned my pursuit of happiness and perfection.  I think we have been sold a false set of goods by the media of what a good life is – the perfect house, the car, the money, the job, the stuff…..

Instead, through my time in the desert, I will learn to live, in this moment as I am.  I will be impeccable with my works.  I will not take anything personally.  I will make no assumptions.  I may fail and fall down, but I will get up and try again.  I will do my best. That is all that anyone can do, their best.

HELLO TO HAPPINESS

I’m sitting here, wishing that I could get rid of the day…the excess baggage from work that often comes home with me.  And so I read and write, re-channeling my energy to a more positive outcome.  Looking at the pumped arms of the motorcyclists in the photo above guides me in a better direction. …hello to happiness, goodbye to sorrow!  Ridding my sorrows can be as easy as that.  Stop thinking.  Put in periods.   Do something else.

I came across someone’s blog tonight about bucket lists, travels and adventures.  I found myself wishing that I could be like that.  To myself, I sounded quite whiny, not an attractive trait at my mature age.  I had to do a quick inventory of my life instantly.  I did not want to feel lacking, wishing for this and wishing for that.   I needed to kick myself and tell a different story.

My life is no small story!  My bucket list is full of travels and adventures of the spirit as well as landscapes:

  1. I was born in China.  Lived in Hong Kong between 6-8 years old.
  2.  Moved to Canada at 8.
  3.  Went to university, business college, took a nursing course
  4.  Travels include NYC, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, revisited parts of China, Europe, Ghana…
  5. Been a waitress, secretary, cashier, nurse
  6. Am a daughter, sister, aunt, lover, mother to my dog

Isn’t that quite impressive?  And I am still kicking, fighting and laughing.