Relax, Refresh

I woke early this morning and was getting up to come write, coming to enjoy the morning, but somehow I ended up closing my eyes briefly and falling back to sleep. Somehow when I woke again it was 9:30. Late by my standards. It always makes me feel off kilter to wake later than normal. I feel somehow rushed throughout the remainder of the day – which is interesting, because sleeping late when you have no destination or no agenda for the new day is supposed to be good, to allow you to just drift and do what you want to do when you want. It is supposed to be relaxing. Instead, for me, I feel like I am late, like I have missed out on some vital key to life; that life is rushing past me and I cannot catch up. It is on late sleeping days that I feel like I have missed a bus, missed a chance; missed an opportunity somehow. It is unsettling. The tone of the day ends up being off. I need to work on that right now, set the tone of my day back in sync with the rest of my brain.

I woke to an odd dream, which is often the case when oversleeping. Because my mind immediately jumped into gear – oh my God I’m late – I cannot remember what it was. Again; vaguely unsettling. It seemed so vital at the time, so lucid, so earth-shattering. I wonder what it is that life is trying to give us at those moments. Some clue to what waits for us when we leave this realm? Some glimpse at an alternate reality? It makes me think of the movie Contact – the book written by Carl Sagan. We are allowed just a glimpse of what is out there only brief moments in time before the door is shut again because we are not ready for that knowledge.

So I am a bit off right now, not quite awake, yet fully so. I feel almost impatient, and yet there is nothing pressing I needed or wanted to do today; the beauty of being home after a trip, still on vacation. I have no pressing home chores to do – no yard to mow, no heavy cleaning to be done, just one small load of laundry. I don’t need groceries or to go buy more “things”. I have a vague sense of wanting to be creative today, however, so I need to nourish those thoughts. I want to paint. I want to create. I want to make something lovely today, so this writing is helping me pinpoint that. I collected rocks on my travels – they fascinate me in their colors and textures. I want to create some gem trees to go on these lovely rocks, so I believe that will be in store for me later. I will sort through some photos and get some prints ordered so I can begin painting and just reveling in the beauty of nature and my travels.

I have soft music playing, my hair is in a towel as I wait for Ms. Clairol to do her thing and wash away that gray. I admit – that is a vanity. I am 56 now. I don’t feel old or act old. I am not sure 56 is old these days, although when I was a child I felt my 50 year old grandparents were decrepit. I have earned my life, my days, my years; I have earned the gray hair, as my father always told me when I was younger (he earned it because of me, I think). I have earned the character on my face, the knowledge in my mind. But I am just not ready to have gray hair all the time. It is a reason for vanity, and I guess we all have our standards. It is fine on others, and I admire women who allow the gray to shine; gray hair is so beautiful. I am just not personally ready for it in my life. So my vanity is to color it. 

I felt the need to write early, rather than later today. I needed the catharsis of it, I think, in order to set my mind right after the confusion of waking late and feeling as if time was rushing past me. I had to stop for the moment and appreciate the morning and the chances given to me for the day. Over the last few years I’ve been reading a lot of books on Self-Help, New Age, Buddhism, Mindfulness, Meditation and living a more balance, essential life over all. One of the things I skimmed through last night was from my meditation retreat back in late May. There were so many take-away’s that I continue to live and experience. I learned that the quiet inside of me is actually a beautiful thing. So much chatter and noise fill our world, and when I am able to retreat into the quiet inside myself it is what my soul needs at that moment. I am learning to exercise my right to be inside myself. That healing, for me, is there. I need to remember to stop for a moment and take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the beautiful air around me – the air of home, or nature, or even the car; wherever it is in which I need to be grounded. To relax. To refresh. To release. That which cannot be solved in that moment, or has already been resolved – it all just needs to be released. The only thing important in this right here and now is this moment. I discovered a few years ago that I am actually not bad at living in the here and now. I did not do that when I was married. It was always about what had happened in the past – and not all bad, but good, sweet, fun things. It was very much about the future; would we have children, when would the house be built, would we have enough money to make it through, and so on. It was a huge amount of pressure I was not even aware was building. When I was searching for myself after my marriage ended I kept coming across the phrase living in the now and I was unsure what it meant or how to do it, and yet somehow, I found myself one day saying to someone, but why does it matter where you went – what you did, what it looked like then. What matters is this here; this now. This is what it looks like today in this moment. We have to just relish it and live it an appreciate it. It occurred to me at that very moment that I had succeeded in that goal and I was not even aware I had. I work at it still, at keeping myself grounded, at keeping others in the moment with me. It is not easy, but those moments during the day that I can say and see; this is it right now. This is the moment to live in. Those are the sweet, wonderful moments of living my dream and a goal I set for myself many years ago; to live now in this moment. To breathe in, to be aware of that breath, of all my senses alive at once, and to exhale the moment before; to leave that behind me.

I saw Michael Singer speak at the retreat I went to back in May. He spoke at a temple he built on land owned by him and his community. One of the things he spoke of has stayed on my mind. He said that everything that happens to us happens inside our own minds. The things that affect us are the things we allow ourselves to think or to feel; to experience. This is such a uniquely easy, yet difficult concept. We think but it’s hot outside; I had no control over that – I am hot. We think, it is raining outside; I am wet. But it is our thoughts telling us we are hot or we are wet. That a person made us feel something or think something. We ourselves control our own thoughts, and in that sense, we control our environments. Everything that happens to us day in and day out happens inside our own heads. I’ve read a lot about the energy that we are made up of; the molecules, the atoms, and so on. When we touch something and we think we can feel its surface; bumpy, rough, cool, hard – whatever it might be. That is really the energy in our body creating those sensations for us; the atoms and molecules that make up our bodies react to the energy of that which we believe we touch. That is so hard to grasp, and I am not successful at it all the time, but I understand and appreciate it, too, especially when it becomes clear in my mind. The keys I am touching as I type; the cat stretched out snuggled on my arm as I sit here; the chair under my bottom. The energy of those items dance and vibrate and the energy that makes up my body dances and vibrates and it creates a sense of touch. Below the cellular level we really never touch; we are just energy meeting energy. It is amazing and incredible and beautiful all at once. To be aware of my own senses; to live in the now, in the moment. That is true mindfulness and true appreciation for the beauty and wonder that make up our lives. It lasts momentarily for me, and then the thought or feeling or emotion escapes me and I am back to my perception of reality once again.

My mood shifted, definitely, from the earlier mood I was in. I’ve written on and off throughout the day, and I changed my slight irritation and discomfort into a day full of moments of value. I am so grateful for the chance to be reflective, to have the time and inclination to do so. I am so grateful for this vacation so that I can continue on this path I am on; writing, thinking, reflecting, creating – just being me for the next few weeks. Relax. Refresh.