Play Time in Everyday Ramblings

When I close my eyes I see flowers. I have spent hours over the last few weeks wandering around with some sort of camera (phone, iPad, actual camera camera) reveling in irises and the roses coming on. We’ve not had a spring like this in the 16 years I have been here. This reminds me very much of California. If I had the time and resources I would be painting now instead of working and fighting off a migraine.

Well, I would probably be fighting off the migraine no matter what my circumstances are. I’ve had them since I was 17 and I expect I will have them for the rest of my time in this life. It appears to be a structural thing. If I could decaffeinate that would help but with the work stress and the grieving and the mystery illness and all the activity I get I feel like I need the caffeine to function. I don’t consume much, maybe the equivalent of one or two cups of coffee a day.

It is enough to get me revved up though for what needs to be done.

Maybe too revved up?

I had a chance after much texting back and forth, to see my Buddhist counselor this week. He is a Zen guy. And older than me, and so when I received my first text from him a few weeks back I started laughing. It is efficient, more so than voicemail. He is booked solid and I am busy so finding times to meet is quite complex but texting? Ha.

Anyway, because he is a Zen teacher, and I am going for spiritual guidance as well as actual traditional counseling he shook me up this week by telling me to slow down.

Slow Down.

Eek. And he was kind of grumpy about it too. As in a bit exasperated.

I am a watcher, a person who notices, an observer, someone who pays attention and often am quiet for long periods of time. But I also have my enthusiasms and an almost burning need to express them. And they come out in a rush, a big intense fast rush of communication and I talk fast then.

Mr. Finch is probably the only person I have ever know who was amused by this character trait. My family members are often exasperated by it and my oldest sister was particularly so. She was very clear she didn’t want to embark on one of these listening to me babble enthusiastically about whatever talking jags and would cut me off. Rather brutally at times it felt.

And so over time I learned to rush even more to get in what I felt I needed to say before she cut me off. And of course then that became more annoying to her and we would do this communication dance.

This only happens when I am with someone I trust and care for or I have a point I am bulldog determined to get across, oh, say, umm, at work.

My niece, Miss T. My sister’s daughter does the same thing. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult their relationship was at times but there is evidence of that difficulty. The thing that kills me is that my niece got this trait from me, environmentally as I lived with her for a great deal of her growing up time.

At this point all I can do is focus on it in me.

And like I tell my students when they are embarking on a backbend…distribute the weight evenly across your whole back not just at one pivot point like your lower back or neck that are easier to bend I need to distribute my enthusiasms more evenly.

It is this whole trying not to try thing. Oh me of little faith, I need to trust more and stop trying to control things and be open to the concept that what I need to happen will happen.

Oh, and as Carlo and Diego clearly say…I need to P-L-A-Y more.

Slow down and play. My mission this coming weekend is clear.

Last updated May 08, 2015