enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Finding the way, one day at a time.

Hi friends.

Interesting weekend.

I mean, every day, every weekend is interesting, because I'm on a track of learning and growing. Sometimes it's two steps forward; at other times it's two steps back.

By the end of the week this week I was evidently very tired on account of not having slept through the night in more than a week (ongoing neck issues). I didn't write about it, but on Friday night I felt quite low.

The thing with feeling low these days is that I simply accept it for what it is. I don't try to change the feeling or hide the feeling, or, and this is important, stumble into the fear that I'll be stuck in the feeling forever. What I do is first examine the facts - not enough sleep, had a terrible day at work, had an unpleasant experience at the work retreat on Thursday (which got me thinking again about how much I don't fit in there, etc., etc.) - and try to figure out exactly what thought process is at the root of the glum feeling that has come over me.

I have found some interesting tools to help me in this process. I used to enjoy writing in these circumstances, but I've realized that writing links me up with a digging down or a dwelling, and so effectively it imprisons me in the feelings I'm experiencing (i.e. it's a return to the comfortable habit of being mired in bad feelings). It was comfortable to do that for a long time - because we gravitate to a feeling that we've come habituated to - but it's not what I need. In fact, it's the exact opposite of what I need to do in order to feel better.

So what am I loving these days?

Well, for one thing, I'm loving meditation. And really, it should have been obvious to me, but this is exactly the thing when one is feeling down. Meditation is exactly the opposite of rumination. And thereby, it works. Meditation brings me back into the flow of what matters to me and what appeals to my heart. It never fails to bring me a bit of peace.

The other thing that does it is creativity, which should also be an obvious one. I didn't do any drawing yesterday, but I put on a favourite movie and did some brainstorming about things that I've loved in my life and done well, and dreams that I might never speak aloud but that I might possess.

After this I started working on a knitting project, which, silly as it is, I love. I'm making a sweater with ruffles right now, partially of my own design.

Later, I signed up on a sewing website for some free patterns. I'm going to make a blouse. Just for the hell of it. And I'm going to draw. What I wasn't getting before is that you give creativity an awfully difficult job if you ruminate first and THEN expect creativity to dig you out of it. If you choose creativity in LIEU of ruminating....

Well, you get the picture.

It's a slow process, but I'm figuring it out.

I'm writing all of this as I'm quite proud of myself and by last evening I felt empowered and calm. And this was even BEFORE I received an email from Andrea. It turns out that (he lives with his elderly parents, remember), his dad had had heart trouble a week or so ago. He was in critical condition for a couple of days, then was stable, and finally came home on Friday. Andrea wrote that "Yesterday was the first day I have felt happy again."

I don't know ANdrea that well, obviously, but I've had the impression that his father is the most important person in his life. His father was a doctor, which is also what Andrea wanted to be when he grew up. His father decided that it was too much responsibility and so that Andrea should not be a doctor but rather a scientist (Andrea told me that he realizes now that he should have been a doctor, that he regrets being influenced). Perhaps because he was the youngest - his father was 45 when Andrea was born - Andrea has spent a lot of his life with his dad. He used to travel around the countryside with him when he was working in Sicily. Now, of course, he is taking on the role of parent to his dad during the course of his dad's dementia.

So it was interesting for me to receive that email from Andrea, because I didn't think once of myself - of my relief, for example, to hear from him - but I could feel only his pain. I felt a profound sense of admiration for the love between them. I thought also of my own father.

I don't know. Mostly I thought of what it means to be middle aged. Being middle-aged I find is great in one or two ways. For me, the great thing about it is that I feel so much more calm than I used to. In my 20s I was a veritable emotional mess. I was always in tears. These days, I rarely cry because I rarely need to cry. I can experiece emotions in a much more controlled way these days, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. That said, middle age is also a period of loss. Eventually I am going to lose my last parent, for example, and I'm already working through all of the feelings of ambivalence towards my mother which are the ones that will truly plague me at that time.

You know what I was thinking the most during my meditation yesterday? I wonder if I can articulate this correctly...Hmm...It was basically an idea about non-attachment. (I know, I'm a veritable genius. ;)) I think what I was thinking was that we're always struggling to get to the next "safe" place. We want to find a place in which we have solved the problems - anxiety, fear about things that might happen to family, etc. - but that's exactly the opposite of what happens in life. That "solving things" and getting to a new plateau of "fine" is about a self-satisfied feeling of having control, even if momentarily. Real peace will only come when we are able to accept that we have no control. At best, what is in our control is how we steer the ship when a new, not-before-seen storm arises. And even that is not foolproof, because sometimes a storm hits and we need to learn new tools in order to cope with it.

What it is that I think most - which is why I've been so angry in the past with commenters trying to label me in one way or another - is that each single human being's heart is different and thus each human being's solution to his or her life events must be uniquely constructed by him or her. And what a great opportunity for creativity is that?

I would babble on as stupidly for another few minutes, I am sure, but the dude is on his way and we are going to walk to the market. He'll be ticked at me if I'm not ready when he buzzes.

XOXOX

10:30 a.m. - 2010-06-20

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