Reply To: Having a Bad Day

[blackdog]

@seabassd

Thank you for you kind words and encouragement. I would have responded sooner but I haven’t had the time to come back here.

You hit the nail on the head- when will all the work stop? That is exactly the problem I have. And I have been tired for as long as I can remember.

I’m not sure how many dragons I’ve stayed though. Probably quite a few if you count the ones in my head.

I may be making progress, but it’s at a very, very slow pace. I used to think of myself as the tortoise who would eventually beat the hare through perseverance, but after awhile I gave up, crawled inside my shell and made a nice cozy bed in there.  And every time I come out, something happens that reminds me why I like it better on the inside.

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Your second post is right on topic, or at least on target. It may not be what I was talking about here, but it is a huge stumbling block that I keep tripping over time and again. It’s kind of where it all started.

I had this idea of creating the *perfect* Christmas, because it may actually be my mother’s last. But I procrastinated, goofed off, got distracted… etc. And the job was bigger than I realized it was. This house is so cluttered that there is just no place to put anything anymore. I was staying up all night, either cleaning or working on one of my other projects, which were creating more stuff to clean up. I got irritable and started snapping at people, and eventually came down with the flu, and gave it to my mother- right on Christmas Eve.

So instead of creating the *perfect* Christmas I completely destroyed Christmas. And after it was all over I realized what would have made it perfect was just spending time together, not all those things that imagined would make it perfect.

Its those high expectations, the way I think life *should* be, that got me into this mess, because I never committed myself to this life. I sat around brooding about what life should be like, what it would be like, if only…. I spent so much time trying to figure out how to get out of this life and into one of the ones I imagined I should be living that I never got around to living at all.

And now in hindsight I realize that all I ever needed is right here. If I had just been content to live my life then some of those things that I always imagined would happen, or wished would happen, might have actually happened.

There is a Buddhist belief that all our suffering is caused by wishing that things were different than they are and that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be. We are living in paradise, right here, right now. When I first read this I looked up from my book, looked around my dirty, messy living room, and said “Nope, this is definitely not paradise”.

But when you think about it, it’s a good philosophy to live by. To be content with what is and stop looking for what can not be.

 

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