Mind Less Mondays

Mind Less Monday

A Case Against Being Mindful

Mind less. I don’t want to be mindful all the time or even most of the time. It’s a worthy endeavor, but my mind is already full most days. If I give careful—that is, mindful—attention to everything, I foresee serious brain overload, resulting in something akin to the infamous Microsoft Blue Screen or the Mac spinning rainbow of doom inside my head.

To avoid such an experience, and contrary to all things Zen, I have decided to have mind less Mondays.

Today, I will mind less that the flowerbeds on the walkway to my door are a jumble of color, scent, and variety. I will mind less the weeds and instead see the petals. I will mind less that orange and pink and peach and red are not the best color combinations. I will mind less that some plants are too high, that some plants are too low, some are too few, and some are too numerous.

I will instead wake up to the riot of color. I will instead marvel that the Amaryllis has popped its first spring bloom. I will bend to touch the nasturtium and savor that it is orange although it sits next to pink and savor the pink that sits next to red.

I will continue to be amazed at the different varieties of salvia, the colors—pink, blue, orange, purple, red and white, red—the leaves, the petals.

I will walk with delight and mind less the chaos in the flowerbed that too often reflects my life. Instead, I will see the color, the families, the diversity that I find I mind less in all aspects of my life.

Love In the Headstones

Finding Love Among the Headstones

Walking the Road Between Life and Death

Cemeteries aren’t the usual go-to place for lunch in a shady spot on a sunny day. However, I imagine it was no accident that I found myself eating lunch in one about 48 hours after I helped welcome my daughter’s first baby to the world.

Emma Renee Pickerill, February 15, 2013

After visiting my daughter and granddaughter in the hospital Sunday morning, my sister, my son, and I were ready for breakfast, maybe lunch, even brunch. It’s rare to find a restaurant without at least a thirty-minute wait on Sundays in the south. We drove past three places when we noted the lines and realized we’d be hungry for at least another hour.

I offered to cook at home, but we saw a Burger King with no lines. We received our fast-food order fast, as expected. My sister’s dogs were in the car, so we needed a shady spot to park and eat. I then spied the lane going into the historical cemetery off a road behind the BK parking lot.

Shadows of leaf-filled trees and pine needles as they waved in the breeze welcomed us as we pulled to the side of the dirt road between the two cemetery sections.

We enjoyed the cool respite from the sun as we ate our lunch. Cemeteries don’t bother me a bit. I think they are interesting and informative. I enjoyed seeing the ancient grave markers and inscriptions in centuries-old New England cemeteries when I lived in Massachusetts.

My sister walked her dogs down the lane and I explored the peaceful green area. As I strolled, I remembered that in fewer than 24 hours, I would be driving two hours to Sebring to celebrate the life of my father-in-law, who died at 90 a few weeks earlier.

I felt the opposite poles of new life—birth—and the end of a life and how we mark those milestones in our lives and the lives of others. I felt the new life of my granddaughter, yet I also felt a keen loss knowing we would celebrate the life of her great-grandfather in only a few hours.

Rollin Raimer Smith, September 7, 1922 - January 12, 2013 

Conflicting, yet complementary emotions crept to the surface of my psyche. I felt them both—embracing beginnings as well as endings.

It was then that I noticed a headstone like none I’d ever seen, yet it was so perfect for the moment.

Love transcends life, death, birth, space, time

A giant heart shape, it reminded me that between those beginnings and endings, yet continuing and eclipsing birth and death and time is love.

Love, love, love, we begin with love, we end with love, and transcending all beginnings and endings is love. Just love.

In the Presence of a Being so Fresh from God

Pure Bliss

In the Presence of a Being

So Fresh from God

“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing

when they who are so fresh from God, love us.”

~ Charles Dickens The Old Curiosity Shop

Bliss in the presence of a being "so fresh from God."

One who is “so fresh from God” will arrive any day when my daughter’s first child is born.

A part of me envies her as she is now, changed but not changed, as she will be after her baby draws his first breath. So, with these words, I tell her to notice that change, to be aware of that transformation as it occurs, to mark that time her soul, her entire being, cracks open and she will love like she has never loved before.

She, I, billions of other women, of course, love their babies before that first breath. It’s a love of expectancy, of yearning, of patience, and finally, impatience as the longing builds to see a face, wrap tiny fingers around your own, to feel skin against skin, warmth, scent.

With these words, I tell her to notice those moments when time stands still, when the awe of new life is infused into every fiber of her being.

I tell her to cherish as I did those sweet hours following the birth of each of my children. At that time, I entered an altered state of consciousness. In that state, I marveled at the new life, life that came from me, but somehow not from me. The deepest human connection I’d ever felt moved me away from the boundaries, the limits, of human interaction. A bliss like none I’d ever known before—or since—permeated every part of my being—physical, emotional, spiritual.

The words of Dickens remind me why: I was in the presence of a being so “fresh from God.”

Laboring at Keeping Clean

Impersonal Hygiene

When I Must Clean-Up More Than My Act

I hope my hands don't look like this when I get the
"Mom, I'm in labor!" phone call.

I knew I was a slacker at what FlyLady calls getting dressed to shoes every day. Until recently, at 9 a.m., I fumbled my way to my desk still wearing last night’s sleep clothes—baggy shirt, yoga pants, flip-flops, my hair clipped back in its ever-present barrette.

I can edit without make-up. My brain doesn’t need an ironed blouse to function. Should I shower? No. I might decide to garden and two showers in one day would be downright excessive.

If I needed something from the store, that wasn’t a problem. I sent my son inside and hid my slovenly self in the car away from the public eye.

All that has changed. My daughter’s first baby is due in nine days. She wants me to be her labor coach, patient advocate, Mom-in-charge, and keep her fiancé from repeatedly saying, “Everyone just keep calm now. Just keep calm.” She knows he’ll be trying to keep himself calm. However, she wants someone to hush him should his mantra have the opposite effect of keeping her calm.

She’s shown signs of readiness for a week now. My bag is packed with lip gloss, soothing lotion, mints, soft cloths, socks—anything I can think of to keep her comfortable during her labor.

Babies are so darn unpredictable, though. I’m staying close to home, keeping my cell phone charged, and getting daily updates.

I also have had to clean up my act—literally. No more slacking in the personal hygiene business. I shower and get dressed first thing most days but not every day. My son called Monday when he finished work for the day and asked me to pick him up. I was just about to garden, so I was wearing less-than-presentable clothes. My misshapen gray shirt’s sleeves had stretched almost as wide as the shirt’s body from me pulling them up, getting them wet, and then pulling them up again. What was once the tiniest of tears from my cat’s claw in the front of that shirt had become a gaping hole. My ragged-hem ancient Levi’s were covered with paint splatters from two summers ago. I won’t even talk about what I had on my feet.

I looked at my clothes and thought, “It’s just a quick trip. She won’t call.” I then pondered the what-if aspects of getting “the call” on my way to or from fetching her brother. Part of that whole unpredictable thing about birth is not knowing just how long labor will take. If I were to get “the call” while in transit, I didn’t want to have to say, “Have baby chill for another hour or so. I’m a mess and must go home, shower, and put on some decent clothes.”

I became the master of the quick-change art, put on a decent shirt, clean, nonsplattered jeans, brushed my teeth and hair, put on real shoes, and went on my way. Of course, because I was presentable, I didn’t get that call. I imagine that I’ll get it after I finally head outdoors to plant the shrub that’s been sitting in my driveway for six months. Its roots have formed a forever-circle inside its too-small container and it probably has about another week of life in it before it croaks from neglect.

I imagine myself covered in dirt, nails blackened, hair mud-splattered, sweat and grime clogging every pore of my body.

The phone will ring and she’ll wail “Mom!” as I survey the mess that is me. I’ll just have to put that quick-change art to the test, grab the nailbrush, scrub, scrub, scrub, and be on my way.

Put Down That Q-Tip and Step Away from the Window

The Blue Sky Jeered: “Nanny, Nanny, Boo-Boo”

Setting Priorities on a January Day

I don’t know about you, but the first thing my houseguests check is the windowsills. That’s after they’ve inspected the bathroom corners, which, of course, I have disinfected to the point of being surgery-ready.

This is precisely why on a recent Sunday I spent an hour cleaning the windowsill in my bedroom. It’s a north-facing window that gets no sunshine, and when I opened it the other day, I spied mold. “Horrors!” I thought. “I have to clean this right away. I have company coming in three weeks.” I opened the window wide and the area behind it where the screen is attached had corners globbed with black goo. Dots of the foul stuff were festering on the screen frame. I got to work.

Bleach spray in hand, I sprayed and wiped. I couldn’t reach the corners and I couldn’t get into the edges where the screen met the frame. “This is a job for Q-Tips,” I said aloud. I got out a fistful of swabs and set to removing every spec of grime, dust, dirt, and spider web.

I knew the job would be much easier and quicker if I simply removed the screen. I would have easy access to every nook and cranny because the screen created each of those nooks and crannies. However, I remembered that my screens are part of a Mensa-inspired puzzle; once the screens are removed, they cannot be refitted properly. It makes no sense, but it’s true. I have the mosquito bite scars to prove it from past failed attempts.

It was of utmost importance that I get the area cleaned. I was positive that at one point three weeks from now, someone would go into my bedroom, move my rocking chair, part the curtains, open the window, and spy the mold. It was a dirty job, but it had to be done, never mind that stain on the living room carpet the size of Rhode Island. I have my priorities.

Even on a beautiful January day in Central Florida, I have my priorities. Unfortunately, I was looking through the screen, so I saw that beautiful Florida day. I saw the blue sky, I saw the poufs of clouds. I felt the warm air. I sprayed some more bleach and picked up another Q-Tip. I felt harassed and heckled each time I lifted my eyes from the grunge and looked out the window. The blue sky started jeering “Nanny, nanny, boo-boo,” at me for being inside and cleaning.

“I’d Like to Buy a Day.”

“No, You Can’t.”

The day was so perfect that the frigid folks in New England would be dancing in the streets, flinging aside coats, hats, mittens, some even stripping down to their long Johns. It was the kind of day that if a Wheel of Weather game existed, someone with a huge stash of cash would say, “I’d like to buy this day.” But this day was so spectacular, they’d be told, “Sorry, you can’t afford it.”

I ignored the taunts and plunged ahead. I decided that if only I had a bamboo skewer from the kitchen, I could make short work of the job. I could get into the tiniest of crevices and be certain every centimeter was clean, really clean.

I got up and started to turn toward the kitchen. As I did, I heard a mocking voice coming from the window. “Nanny, nanny . . .”

“Oh, hush!” I said. I tossed the cotton swabs, paper towels, and blackened, bleach-soaked rag into the trash. “I don’t have to buy a day. It’s mine for the taking. I win.”

I got dressed, left my room, left my house, and went out to meet that sky.

Editing Lance Armstrong

Editing Lance Armstrong

Dishonesty and Deception Change

More Than We Think

Resistance is the enemy on which I’m waging war these days. Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, is my chosen weapon, so I study it every day. I close the pages, start shoving Resistance out of the way, and do my work. (Resistance is pretty much whatever keeps you from your calling—your art.)

Resistance and Rationalization, Part Two on page 55 marked the end of Sunday’s reading. In it, Pressfield warns that Resistance is armed with justifications that give us a reasonable escape hatch from doing our work. Pressfield adds that even valid excuses don’t cut it if they keep us from our work. He notes that Tolstoy managed to write War and Peace in spite of having 13 children. He also cites Lance Armstrong, who, although he had cancer, “won the Tour de France three years and counting” (at that writing in 2002).

“No, he didn’t,” I say aloud, with a shudder of disgust. It’s January 2013, and everybody knows Armstrong did not win three Tour titles; he didn’t win seven races. He didn’t win a single one. He didn’t do his work.

Pencil in hand (I keep one handy when studying Pressfield’s books), I strike through that that sentence. I delete it as if I’m stripping Armstrong’s framed yellow jerseys from his walls.

Editor is my job description, but my real work is what I’m doing right now—writing. I usually edit manuscripts or PDFs. In already-published books I read on my own, I’ve made limited brief edits and then for only the most egregious errors. Deleting an entire sentence was a first. Afterward, I thought how Pressfield or his editor also must delete that sentence for reprints of The War of Art.

I also thought about dishonesty and how its tentacles have such an immense reach. Armstrong’s deception even weaseled its way into my room where I was studying. I thought of all the books that must be edited to delete his lies. Magazine articles, photographs, sports histories, web links, and more must be edited, rewritten; the non-victories must be deleted. I viewed his deception only from an editorial perspective. The level of treachery he breached caused disillusion and emotional and psychological damage on a massive worldwide level.

Armstrong’s lies ripple to tens of thousands of us—perhaps even millions. His deceptions descend into the category of big lie, the whopper.  The deception of a solitary fisherman casting his rod in a deserted stretch of river with neither cell phone nor digital camera close has limited exposure when he brags about the fish that got away. Armstrong’s fish tale was disseminated on a grand scale. And for years we bought the lie, even though we felt the annoying tug on our collective legs.

Most of us lie. We tell the big lie (not usually as big as the bike story), we tell the white lie, which generally is a kindness, and sometimes, we simply lie. Like the reasons we might use for not doing our work, sometimes the lie is reasonable, it’s plausible, even if by telling it, the person we hurt most is our own self.

Armstrong fell and we must now edit him from so many aspects of our lives because after all, he did not do the work and he lied about it. But even his fall has some value. It reminds me to stay honest, to others, but especially to myself. It commands me to get off my rationalizations and excuses and to focus not only on telling the truth but also living the truth. My truth is that, unlike Lance, I’m going to stop rationalizing and get to work.

Steven Pressfield's book, The War of Art, is available at Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Art-Through-Creative/dp/1936891026/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359412306&sr=8-1&keywords=The+War+of+Art

Slipping to Conclusions

Seeing Isn’t Always Believing

Thinking Something Does Not Make It True

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,

And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes

The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.

~ From As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

Inner voices argue: "Careful! That's ice."
 "No, you ditz! It's paint." 

“Watch out! You might slip,” inner Voice One commands every time I approach the green sidewalk in front of the Sebastian Goodwill store. For frugal me, that’s once a week. I stop short when I step onto that sidewalk because white dots are scattered across its surface. As I look down to gauge my next move, I usually see that I’m wearing flip-flops. A shuffle of conflict ensues as inner Voice One and inner Voice Two argue:

“Look at that! It’s salt. That means ice!” says Voice One.

“If that sidewalk were icy, you would be cold. You’re wearing flip-flops. You aren’t cold. That’s paint, you ditz,” says Voice Two.

“So it is,” I mumble and I adopt the quick steps I use since I have come from the land of ice and snow.

Yet for a few seconds, my eyes (and my memory) tricked my brain into believing, knowing, that I was about to step on ice. I changed my behavior and became cautious, poised to prevent a fall that wasn’t likely to happen.

Seeing is believing, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. Just because I see something, as when I see salt on that icy sidewalk, doesn’t make it real. Just because I think something, such as when I think, “I’m about to step onto an icy spot,” doesn’t make it real. However, for those moments I see the ice, those moments I think the ice, it is real. My next action could well be to pull my nonexistent wool coat closer to my chest and tug my hat tighter over my frozen ears.

Seeing my unfettered, exposed feet is the reality check that brings me back to Sebastian, back to warmth—back to the present. Past experiences such as seeing salt and ice can provide present wisdom to keep us safe, but it’s important to know when to leave those experiences in the past—where they often belong—lest we slip into the present unawares.

Just as thinking I was about to step on ice didn’t make it true, thinking many somethings doesn’t make them true. I try to stop myself when I think something and decide, on only the basis of my busy brain, that my thoughts are reality. It’s particularly “unreal” when I think, “I bet she/he thinks _____________” or “I bet he/she said ______________,” or “I bet he/she will __________” as if I am clairvoyant and have a working crystal ball.

When I languish too long inside my own head, whatever scenario I conjure, real or not, is real because I experience it; it’s what I’m living, even if it’s happening only behind my eyes rather than in front of them. I can get so involved in a memory, a future projection, or an imagined discussion, action, or experience, even someone else’s, that it might as well have occurred. I enter the danger zone when imagination takes over and blocks the awareness that not one thing has happened in real time.

Imagination is an enriching, sparkling part of life, but it’s not a good path to let our neurons take when what we imagine causes us to surmise what other people think, how they behaved, reacted, spoke, believe, or anything about their future actions or thoughts.

It’s called jumping to conclusions. I do it. Many people do it. It can cause real harm, especially when we create negative thoughts, emotions, or actions that have no basis in reality. Jumping to conclusions harms us even during the moments our imagination dives into whatever worst-case scenario it has devised. Shaking off that descent into my darker side, I often attempt a switch-up. I say, “________ probably will not happen” and I decide to hope for the best.

Rather than hope for the best, perhaps a better course of action is to think for the best. It would be too bad if by slipping to conclusions, I really did get hurt, or worse, hurt someone else.