The Joy of Ordinary

I’m waiting for the wintry onslaught with a fresh pot of strong coffee. It’s almost an espresso roast that could walk on its own; just the strength I love. I got all my work done yesterday so that I can enjoy Winter’s blast in lazy comfort today; reading, listening to music, working on some art, meditating, and a napping.

For a while now I’ve been feeling this wonderful sense of “settled” growing in me. It's not a “give up” settled, but more a contentedness. An almost cosmic sense of having exactly what I need and not longing for anything more. If I had to put it into a statement it would be, “I am here, right now in this very moment, with everything I need and I don’t want for more.” I’m not rich, not famous, not powerful or even “worldly” to much of a degree. There are places I’d love to go I know I’ll never get to. Things I’d like to see in person I know I won’t. Good people in the world I will never meet. Sometimes I eat too much, have one Old Fashioned too many, stay up later than I should, sleep later than I intended, and sometimes don’t get everything done in the day I’d hoped to. Strangely enough that gives me a profound sense of comfort; that everything is okay. It’s a deeper sense of happiness and contentedness sprinkled with a dusting of a profound confidence as their product. The ordinariness of my life, the joy of the every day and the sense of comfort and place that accompanies it is absolutely delicious.

Cosmic Confidence

I’m having a fascinating morning. I haven’t had the TV on or music playing. Just pure silence today. It’s been snowing all morning and everything is white and grey outside. A few times in this now I’ve glimpsed briefly through life’s complications to the simplicity of “solutions” beyond them. I can’t explain it any better than to call it a sort of “cosmic confidence.” A sense of seeing our everyday complications as mere distractions that keep us from feeling that deeper simplicity which feels like not THE answer but AN answer. A doorway through which I can feel contentedness, a very deep harmony or serenity waiting to be accepted. Everything for that brief moment falls into place where it all makes sense and I can feel accomplishment and fulfilment. Friendships, the act of not caring what others think, turning away from unconstructive thinking, etc, etc, etc all just seems to “fit” and I can understand the much larger picture in a forest for the trees way. It’s all right there in front of all of us. We just need to learn how to look.

A Poverty of Stimulus

Yesterday and last night I was having cell phone trouble. I was able text intermittently but was unable to access the internet or use any of my internet-based apps and unable to make or receive phone calls. Oddly this happened only at home. When I was out and about the phone worked fine. To make the long story short, and after over TWO HOURS trying to fix the problem with my phone's cell service company, it seems the problem is external. They suspect there is something wrong with one of the towers in my area. That would explain why phone calls to and from my home location don’t work.

After that two-hour call I was frustrated. As the evening progressed that frustration began to grow. Not being able to have my drug, to get my fix, having my compulsion denied me started to become anger. There was a point where I literally had no idea what to do with myself. In that moment the realization of my dependence hit me. I'm an addict! A strange feeling of being severed from some sort of hive mind washed over me. All the “other voices” I had come to depend on to entertain and distract me; the apps, the games, the social media; random googling, losing myself down the YouTube rabbit hole had been suddenly silenced. A poverty of stimulus. I felt an odd sense of punishment. I'd been a bad boy somehow and Karma or the Cosmos had banned me from the amusement park. In short, I was jonesing.

It was an odd and very creepy sensation that sense of helplessness. The moment I realized I was in panic-anger-jonesing mode I also realized the moment was an opportunity. I backed away from it and got into my mindfulness mode. The place where I get quiet and recenter. "Removing" myself from the situation and turning inside to those places that calm me. I allowed myself to "return to the breath" as the saying goes. "I'm here. In this place. Right now. I have no say over what is external. I do have a say in how I react. Breathe in. Breathe out. I am here. I am now." This is how I put myself to sleep last night. "Your phone is a thing. It is external. It only affects me if I allow it to. Breathe in. Breathe out." I woke up this morning with a better understanding of my drug use. The choice is mine. I will be controlled only as much as I allow myself to be. I made the promise to myself and the commitment to devote more of my time to the things that give me more genuine pleasure and satisfaction; reading, walking, working out, cooking, time with my dog, etc. 

These are things that matter.

Idle Sunday Morning

I had a great morning walk with my dog, Rufus. The leaves were rustling in the breeze and I could hear Fall approaching. We came back inside and played some. Rufus was really into it this morning; dropping his favorite toy in front of me then trying to play keep away when I went to grab it. He ate breakfast and laid back down for a kingly snooze. I putzed in the kitchen with a recipe I've been wanting to make, Thai sticky coconut chicken rice. The apartment smells of delicious red curry, coconut, and chicken. As I puttered in the kitchen with the recipe I had some great jazz playing and John Coltrane’s My Little Brown Book came on. Perfect Idle Sunday Morning music! The point to all this? This has all given me an incredibly centered and present sense this morning. It's a delicious mindfulness to be immersed in today. 

The Speed of Life

Making coffee this morning I realized more than likely I have less years to live than years I've lived in my current city. That’s not some fatalistic, depressive thinking. It’s just a realization about how temporary and quick it all is. I really felt it in that way that a reality hits you some days. You find yourself so deeply anchored in the revelation of the moment. You are here and now in this thought.

We think seventy or eighty years is a long time but it’s not. This is why we must be so careful in how and what we fill our thinking with, how we spend our time and who we spend it with.

Nothing terrifies me more than getting to the final scene of Act 3 and be holding an empty bag.