Traveling and with limited computer access this weekend I have not set aside time to respond to the #Trust30 challenges from Lachlan Cotter and Ash Ambirge on fear and surprise. One asks is do not doing the thing I fear worth sacrificing what I want and the other questions how I surprised myself in the past by doing something I couldn't and how will I surprise myself now.
If there is a strong wish in me it is to know the truth and to be honest with myself and others. I believe writing helps me pursue this, especially as the words that come out prove to different than what I imagined or what is revolving in my mind, the endless chatter of fantasy. For I have found it so easy to deceive myself, thinking I am honest, when I have left something undone, not paid someone I owed, not acknowledged someone who did me a courtesy, and I go about thinking I am conducting myself well.
However, I surprised myself once when making a driving mistake, getting in the way of another driver who honked at me furiously. We ended up side by side on the street and I rolled down my window and he rolled down his and we looked at each other for an instant. At another time I might have been frightened and avoided him. However, I looked into the man's eyes and said to him "I'm sorry." He curtly nodded. The light changed and we drove off and I will probably never see him again. For once, I took responsibility and did not act out of fear. Can I do so again and not once but every day? I admit I know too little.
What right now teaches me is to accept who I am and see how I can change for the better and become more honest and responsible to myself and others. Part of that is owning my own story. I look back on mistakes and accept this is the kind of person I was and did the best I could with what I had. I looked on others' successes and saw only my own failures. I can get beyond that now. So much is helping me. I learn from Victoria's post on experience not being wasted, necessary to bring one to where one is. Or as Brene Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection, which I have finally begun reading, "Owning our own story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." I am similarly inspired by Marjory's story about connecting with her soulmates and living the story of their bodies together. She and Julie wrote the words describing their bodily experience on each other (love the smiles and laughter in the pictures.) "We wrote our precious word messengers on each others chests to let them sink into our hearts." Further on Marjory writes "Your body needs to know that you will hold its story with tenderness." Or it is captured for me in this sign, courtesy of insightful and courageous Carolyn.
So I continue to pursue honesty, aiming to be like the monk who says to his disciple "I am close to not being deceived about myself." "But master, how can that be?" asks the disciple. The master replies, "Talking is easy. Being is not."
Showing posts with label now. Show all posts
Showing posts with label now. Show all posts
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Monday, December 28, 2009
"You mean, right now?"
Past and future are in the mind only - I am now. ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
(via Lori Moreno)
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. ~Eckhart Tolle
(via Lori Moreno)
Someone once asked Yogi Berra what time it was. "You mean right now?" he answered. (Source unknown)
I was with a school friend and neither of us had seen the other in more than 20 years. I could see changes in both of us - he not so rough-edged, I a little more relaxed. ("After changes upon changes we are more or less the same." Paul Simon, The Boxer.) I don't know what he thought and maybe I won't know. But what impressed me was how gentle and engaged he and his wife were with their son, how relaxed they seemed with him, how much they loved and enjoyed him and yet how clear they were with him on what was appropriate. I contrasted that to my own behavior when my kids were young and how rigid and angry and fearful I was so much of the time. That was the way I was then, that was my makeup.
I didn't feel a great need to reminisce with my friend. I remember those days and how much time I spent at his house and imposed on his hospitality, mostly because I didn't know how to drive a car and didn't make decisions but waited for him to do so. However, today, I was interested in what his life is like now, for instance that he writes for several English-language publications in Japan, that it takes sometimes fifteen hours to fly from Tokyo to here for the three of them, that he plays in a rock band for fun. And at one moment it struck me how little time I may be in another's presence, that at other times I think of the other in my head or look at a picture and that actually being in the other's presence, the living, breathing man sitting next to me and talking with me, what a rarity in life that is, and how true that is with others I know and my encounters with them. Presence is fleeting but how powerful it is when we experience each other's breath and being.
I don't know when I'll see my friend again, but I can write him and maybe visit him, check in on his parents. We don't owe each other anything, but I can be generous and maybe we will have something, another now.
(via Lori Moreno)
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. ~Eckhart Tolle
(via Lori Moreno)
Someone once asked Yogi Berra what time it was. "You mean right now?" he answered. (Source unknown)
I was with a school friend and neither of us had seen the other in more than 20 years. I could see changes in both of us - he not so rough-edged, I a little more relaxed. ("After changes upon changes we are more or less the same." Paul Simon, The Boxer.) I don't know what he thought and maybe I won't know. But what impressed me was how gentle and engaged he and his wife were with their son, how relaxed they seemed with him, how much they loved and enjoyed him and yet how clear they were with him on what was appropriate. I contrasted that to my own behavior when my kids were young and how rigid and angry and fearful I was so much of the time. That was the way I was then, that was my makeup.
I didn't feel a great need to reminisce with my friend. I remember those days and how much time I spent at his house and imposed on his hospitality, mostly because I didn't know how to drive a car and didn't make decisions but waited for him to do so. However, today, I was interested in what his life is like now, for instance that he writes for several English-language publications in Japan, that it takes sometimes fifteen hours to fly from Tokyo to here for the three of them, that he plays in a rock band for fun. And at one moment it struck me how little time I may be in another's presence, that at other times I think of the other in my head or look at a picture and that actually being in the other's presence, the living, breathing man sitting next to me and talking with me, what a rarity in life that is, and how true that is with others I know and my encounters with them. Presence is fleeting but how powerful it is when we experience each other's breath and being.
I don't know when I'll see my friend again, but I can write him and maybe visit him, check in on his parents. We don't owe each other anything, but I can be generous and maybe we will have something, another now.
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