Smelling the Roses

It's December 31... but the multiflora roses are still blooming.  I passed a couple of bushes on the walk home and stopped to smell the roses.  Even with my head cold, I got a nice hit of rose scent.

Traffic was very light on this holiday eve afternoon, and I walked on down the street into the residential neighborhood.  There's a block alongside a park, well out of any main traffic route, and I decided to cross and walk down the 'wrong' side of the street.  All the streets have a slope from center out to the gutters, and it helps my right hip to walk some in the direction with my right leg is on the long side.

I walked just a few steps down the street and saw a Greg's Driving School car come around the corner in my direction, turning right from a side street.  They like this street too, because there's rarely any other traffic.  Proving that is a good choice, the car failed to make the turn (even at very low speed) and careened up onto the parkside curb with one wheel before coming to a stop.  Now I was questioning my choice to walk down the street.  I chuckled at what the instructor and student might be thinking right then, and walked out several yards into the park - seemed like a safe distance - as the car backed up and then advanced sslloowwllyy up the street.

I crossed "driving instructor" off my list of possible retirement pastimes.  Smelling roses is still on the list.

Where Have You Been in the Last Hour?

You might have thought you'd sat on the couch in one place for the past hour.  Or perhaps you were sitting at the dinner table, or walking a few blocks or driving a few miles.  But even if you've spent the past hour on a plane, the distance you've traveled is insignificant in the grand scheme.

In the past hour, you've moved several hundred miles, riding the spinning Earth.  Here at 39 degrees north latitude in Silver Spring, it's about 806 miles.  At the equator, it's over 1,000.  But that's a small fraction of the distance you've traveled along the big ellipse of the Earth's orbit around the sun - about 66,600 miles since one hour ago.  How fast are you moving?  Well, Superman (woman), faster than a speeding bullet.  A speedy bullet might go 1,700 miles per hour - of course it would only go that speed for a few seconds.  You, and the Earth, are moving 39 times faster than that - and it feels like standing still!

Well, it pretty much is standing still compared to the 370 miles per second you're moving through space, along with Earth, Sun and the rest of the vicinity.  1,332,000 miles per hour, or 32 million miles per day.

Feeling the head rush yet?

The Walk Home

Yesterday I left work a little before 5 to walk home.  There are a couple of different routes I take, one of which goes past the bank.  I went that way so I could stop at the ATM.  When I got there, it was in use, and then I realized the person was having some difficulty.  Okay, this will take longer than I expected.  I turned my attention to what was going on around the intersection of Georgia and Cameron Streets.  The bus stopped, not quite in the right lane.  A car easing from a right hand lane over in front of other cars at the stoplight - apparently wanting to turn left instead.  A blind woman, talking on a cell phone, crossing the street with her guide dog, and then milling around a bit - up and down the sidewalk.  The dog seemed confused - but turns out she was meeting someone at the corner and they hadn't arrived yet.

Then a van pulled up and stopped.  A woman got out and walked up toward the bank.  She saw me and asked if I was in line.  I said "yes, but go ahead."  The first person was finishing up, and I figured waiting a little longer was fine, since the van was stopped in a busy street.  I then realized this ATM transaction wasn't going well either.  After quite a while, a man got out of the van and came up to help, and after a few more minutes I finally made it to the ATM.

The rest of the walk home went as usual, until I turned onto Harvey Road, a block from the house.  A truck was stopped ahead, hazard lights on, and a woman was standing by the curb on the other side of the street.  As I approached she crossed over and began to speak - in Spanish mostly, but a few words of English.  She seemed to be saying she had lost her phone, and was gesturing - but I really didn't know what she was asking.  After a bit, I thought that she probably wants to make a call, so I asked if she wanted to make a call on my phone.  Yes, that was it.  So she called for whatever help she was after, I didn't understand the details, but could tell by the tone and flow of her side of the conversation that the situation was being resolved.  She handed back the phone, got in the truck to drive off, and I walked home, about 30 minutes later than expected.

Letting Go

I've written before about not carrying tension from one thing to another - whether physical tension or emotional tension - the same idea applies.  Tension, in a way, is unresolved or unrelieved stress or effort.  

Sometimes events of the past are integrated into our experience - we accept what has happened, perhaps learn a useful lesson, and let go of the rest.  Just another piece in the growing mosaic of our experience, the event has no undue hold.  Wait - that's a telling point of view, because in fact no other person or event has any way to hold on to us - the holding is all our own.   

Nearly all of us have some capacity to accept and let go of things, and also have aspects of life that we cling to dearly and won't or can't let go of, even when the effect is entirely to our detriment.  That's certainly true for me, although through practice my capacity for letting go has increased. 

Without holding on, life's experience flows by in a deep, rich river.  Attachments are like snags that catch onto us - though it is always really us holding on to them - and they interrupt and disrupt the flow - preventing us from full present experience. Without holding on, the future is limitless possibility, but everything we cling to limits us.  We feel that external forces are running our life - we feel that we don't have a choice - that we are boxed in.  In truth - we have made the box - we are not making the choice - and it is our internal attachments and holdings - not some external force, that is running our life.

Friday, December 18

The morning air had a bite to it, and the bare tree branches stood under a gray sky.  It felt like December.  How different from the recent springlike days with golden sun streaming in to light the landscape.  Still, a refreshing morning for a walk.  I smiled at a squirrel that, after running across the street in front of me carrying a nut or some other morsel in its mouth, suddenly leapt up from the ground about thirty inches, landing on a swooping maple tree branch and, without a bobble, sitting to eat breakfast.

Later in the day, standing on the Metro platform, the wind seemed even colder.  Clouds drifted over from west to east.  Then the sun broke through, and I turned to the south to soak up the warmth for a few moments before the train arrived.

Sunset came, gray and red in the southwest sky, lingering for a while before fading slowly.  Four days until the winter solstice and the end to the shortening days.

When Stress Feels Normal

This afternoon I cleared out space to work - just one thing to do.  Calm, nothing competing for attention, nothing lurking in the wings.  This should feel great, and it does, in a way.  But it doesn't feel normal.  It doesn't feel quite like work.  I know it's an important project.  But shouldn't important feel urgent?  Shouldn't I be anxious about finishing the review before something interrupts me?  Why do I feel urges to turn away while this is still unfinished to check and see if there are new emails with more tasks?

Over many years, starting long ago, I learned to deal with the stress of multiple tasks, expectations and deadlines.  First school - books to read, papers to write, tests to study for.  Then work - problems to solve, bosses' expectations, deadlines, meetings, new tasks appearing faster than old ones get completed, growing to-do lists.

This leads to a perpetual sense of urgency and anxiety.  Instead of attention and effort being applied to productive work, much of it is sidetracked thinking about other things that are incomplete,
or not even begun.  Should I even be working on this?  Or is there something more important?
What if I'm forgetting something?  Check the email.  Check the to-do list. Not sure what to do.  Perhaps it's time for more coffee - walking around feels good.

I realize much of this environment, now, is self-created.  I have a lot of choice about being in a state of hurried anxiety, or one of calm focus.  And I realize how often I have chosen to make my environment more stressful, because that seemed normal - it was the conditions and state of mind I was used to operating in, succeeding in.  It will take effort to turn away from that, and make calm focus feel normal, as well as good.

The Wonder of it All

On Wednesday mornings I leave early to walk 20 minutes or so for a 6:30 am yoga class before going on to work.  I look forward to the chance to see the sky if the weather is cooperating.  This past Wednesday the morning sky was cloud free, the air clear and crisp.  As I walked away from the house, I looked up and saw Ursa Major right overhead, upside down.  I turned to walk up the street, looking for the planets that I expected to see - Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

They have been visible for many weeks now.  First, close together, and then as time passed, gradually spreading away from each other along the elliptic, the dimmer, reddish Mars bracketed between bright Jupiter and even brighter Venus.  The planets were there, as expected.  But that morning held an even more special sight. The moon, waning to just a bright crescent, hung in the sky, right in line with the planets, below and to the left.

From near the horizon, and then rising up across the sky in a line, Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.  My mind tried to digest the geometry of the relationships - the Moon orbiting the Earth, Venus closer than Earth to the Sun, Mars and Jupiter farther away, but all appearing in a line from my viewpoint. I'm glad to be alive, just to see this sight one Wednesday morning.

Making Space

Space is an important thing.  Space of all kinds - physical space, emotional space, mental space - in all facets of being, having space to move, to breathe, to make choices, is powerful.

I want more space in my life - but how to create it?  Interestingly, I've found that by intentionally creating more space for others, I find more space for myself.  It can be in any setting.  It might be easing off in traffic to let another car merge.  It might be taking a break from talking to make room for someone else to speak.  It might be pausing to take a breath in a crowded grocery store to allow the crowd ahead to move on.  Opportunities are endless.

I assume that most of the time the others aren't consciously aware I have done anything.  I'm not looking for any recognition or thanks.  It's enough that the act of making, or allowing, more space for others also makes me feel more spacious, more gracious.  It's consciously moving away from stress to a calmer, deeper, more present way of being.

Finding Clarity Through the Physical Body

The afternoon began with me undecided and inert, aware of the list of things I thought I needed to do this weekend, but not motivated to do any of them.   As I began to look up information on a winter yoga training that I'm thinking about taking, it took me to YouTube where I saw a link about hamstrings.  Ahh, that's another thread, as I'm teaching a new class this spring with an emphasis on hamstrings, and I'm always on the lookout for new techniques to weave in.

I watched the video, taking some notes as it went, as it looked interesting and consistent with my ideas on practice and teaching.  I'd been thinking that after the video was over, I'd move on to another project, but instead I wanted to go try out the practice for myself.

I've been teaching an unusual amount lately, and I haven't had as much time for my own practice.  Perhaps that is what was behind my inertia.  I worked through the exercises, and as soon as I finished, I knew very clearly that I was ready to move on to the waiting project.  No doubt, no hesitation - not as a result of will power or analysis - but from some deeper place unlocked by a half hour of conscious movement.