In my new apartment, by myself without Niki and Hollins, my dogs, for the first time since I moved here in August. The door to the balcony is open and I can hear, see, smell the rain as it pours. When I took the dogs to Gerard’s, I felt a bit of weight developing in my mind…I didn’t want them to leave me. It is almost as if they had been a buffer or distraction zone which precluded me from experiencing my thoughts / feelings just as they are. So now, not only do I get to hear my thoughts of loneliness, and feel their heavy energetic quality, but I also get to hear the judging “nagging” punishing voice that says: You are not as realized as you think you are; if others think well of you it’s because they don’t really know you; on and on and on… Any and all notions of Basic Goodness have seemingly gone down the drain… Further cycles of putting myself down for not being able to keep my heart always upbeat, always open… Further cycles of feeling disgusted with myself for not feeling basically good…As if putting myself or anybody down really worked as a tool for growth.
So, there…I can breathe…I can be present to myself as I try to both reconstruct and deconstruct some of the events of last week….
This past Friday, though I was feeling a little under the weather, I had intended to get out of work as early as I could to help Gerard buy his new computer and set it up. Instead, at work someone decided that end of day Friday was a good time to hold a meeting that lasted more than an hour and a half. So instead of getting out around 3:30, I got out closer to 5:30…frustrated, exhausted. I nonetheless managed to help Gerard and this made me feel a little better.
A couple of weeks ago my niece got married. She was happy, and Michael was too. They are starting their new life together. Seeing them go through the ceremony, seeing how special doing this was to them, made me think of many things. I remembered I was married, and the love that came through that union. I also thought about how I am by myself now, and of how strange this feeling seems: at times an enjoyable feeling, and at other times, a feeling of failure. I thought about how brave they were; of how brave I think my niece is…and I cried, deeply felt tears rolling with the memories of her as a newborn baby, as a cute little girl, as the young woman that came around two and a half years ago to live with me in Austin, paired with the images of her as I see her now.
Life goes on. The new school year has also started, and for the most part it has been gruesome. It has come with an inordinate amount of new things to do, kiddy-cooties, and also new requirements from the district. The image of planting a new seed, and watching the plant grow is almost always with me now: if we tug at the new shoots the plant will not grow any faster; most probably it’ll die. As a Pre-K teacher my job as defined by the system, seems precisely to be just that: to tug and push the children to grow and do things whether they are ready or not.
I listen to the rain, my niece about to visit…And I can clearly see that if this were another person talking to me about his or her life, I would be able to see that she was under a lot of stress. So, I guess I need reminders of a felt sense of Basic Goodness, because at this moment, as I am writing this, those are just words. The memory of having had the feeling is there without the energy or the feeling itself, thus, I feel sadness, a sense of loss.
But wait, that’s it, right? A lot has changed in my life since July of this year, and many of the changes are still happening or not yet consolidated. So I guess, I can be gentle with myself and let things be as they are. I can, as my meditation instructor says be, if not my best friend, at least friendly with whatever arises. I can be present with the sense of loss, so that I don’t become blind to other things which are also present.
I can acknowledge that while I am in the midst of life, I have a tendency to forget the important things, the little things that help sweetness emerge allowing life to be felt: My dogs’ happy faces when I take them to the park, or when I brush their teeth (they love their doggie toothpaste!); my kids’ joy when we make a house out of paper triangles, rectangles and squares; my colleagues’ laughter when funny things come out of my mouth; my niece’s face when she looks at her beloved. And I can practice so that next time I can remember the sweet things that matter a little sooner, knowing that if I don’t, everything is still manageable.
In the meantime: I’ll drink my tea, listen to the rain, and comb my hair while I wait for my niece and her husband.
Baby Buddha Speaks 