Posts Tagged ‘thought’
New Insight
I awoke with a song in my head. It was a Roches song, but I didn’t know which one. I let the short snippet play round and round, over and over, enjoying it thoroughly, but that still left me wanting.
It took only a few tries to locate the right song, “The Scorpion Lament,” from their album, Keep On Doing. Ahhh. It’s like scratching an itch.
While processing all that, something else was revealed to me this morning. It is probably obvious that we would have a list of things demanding attention here on our new property. – I wonder how long I get to refer to this place as ‘new’ to us. I will probably use that term through the first year, since every day is still new to us, because we have not experienced spring or summer here before.
Anyway, regarding that list, …there are a couple of things that seem to me as though Cyndie should take the lead. When I don’t hear of any results on those, I toss out a few hints, occasional reminders and eventually realize I’m simply nagging.
“Yeah, I could do that.” she accommodates me.
With regard to one particular issue, last night I finally asked her if she needed something else to happen first, as if there was some step in a sequence that hadn’t yet occurred. That is a loaded question, in a way, because she is so classically random, …like the way she mows the lawn.
I was becoming confused with her choosing not to act in cases where it seemed to me it would be something that could be quickly knocked off our to-do list, or at least trigger action that can bring subsequent progress. What was holding her up from taking this step? If she was truly random, things should be able to happen at any time.
That’s it! This morning I realized that her not doing things isn’t the result of waiting on a sequence, it is the very manifestation of her randomness. That is why it doesn’t appear to bother her that a particular step gets done by a certain time. Meanwhile, I grow uncomfortable. I want it to happen in sequence, meaning, do this now, and then other things can follow.
It is why I am bugged by the fact that we suddenly find ourselves working on one thing, when I feel like we haven’t yet finished another. I also realized that after we accomplish some of the random tasks, I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction from having done so, as Cyndie does, because I’m still framing it as having been out of sequence.
Eventually, things work out for both of us, one way or another. We are invested in learning from our styles, and in achieving more together than would be possible, each on our own. I know that I have benefited greatly, over and over, as a result of her randomness through the years.
Our success is the reward that comes from the attraction of opposites, which is accomplished by overcoming the difficulties inherent in being so different from one another!
Contemplating Memory
A wonderful person I supervise at the day-job was addressing the roomful of us, describing an alarming incident that happened on his drive to work. The latch on the hood of his car released while driving full-speed on the interstate highway. He looked at me and made reference to the time my car had the same problem.
My blank stare gave me away.
“Don’t you remember?” he asked.
I didn’t want to completely deny his assertion of the occasion, so, admitted I wasn’t sure. In actuality, I would have comfortably stated that I had never had that experience before in my entire life. Any hint of a memory about such a thing had long ago gone missing.
Minutes later, while visiting the restroom –after he had described how he had gone out to my car with me to look into it (because he and I have the same model car)– I found myself with time to think about it. I exhumed a faint recognition of our both being out at my car, in front of our building, with the hood open. That’s it. That is all I can muster. And, only with the help of his series of descriptions of the event.
I will admit that my immediate reaction, standing at the sink, was to think of how my mother’s memory fractured and faded before our eyes in her later years. Was this my first hint of a pending similar fate for me?
More significant to me was the realization of how wrong I was in my confidence that I had never had that experience before in my life.
In my years of self-analysis since being diagnosed for depression, receiving treatment in the form of talk therapy, and subsequently contemplating my acquired dysfunctional perspectives, I discovered far too many instances where I staunchly defended something in which I held an unreasonable confidence.
I expect that my past depression has robbed me of a lot of memories. At the time, I wasn’t in a healthy enough mindset to record experiences like a mind otherwise would. Historically, I felt that if I had no memory whatsoever about something, then it never could have happened to me. It wasn’t so much a logical deduction, it didn’t feel possible to me that I would have no memory of something.
I no longer possess that same confidence. At the same time, I still need to practice the art of being conscious of the fragility of my perspective of the here and now. It’s something that a few horses will be more than happy to assist me with, I’m sure. Everything fits together rather nicely, don’t you think?
I wonder if I will retain a memory of having had this specific experience and following insight. I’d say that having written about it should be a help, except I tend to forget most of the things I’ve written in the past, so that doesn’t provide much of a confidence boost.
Random Thoughts
Can it be called stalking if you are married?
Funny or fantastic things are funnier or more fantastic when you have someone to share them with.
Why won’t she answer?
Jigsaw puzzles become incredibly more difficult to assemble after eyesight no longer focuses short distances.
Back in the 1800s, when February temperatures climbed 20° above freezing in this area, did people worry about global warming?
I wonder if Bradying will become the craze that Tebowing was.
How many text messages is too many when not receiving a reply?
How much can you tell about a person from what they wonder about?
Do drivers who don’t use turn signals to indicate their plan to turn ever get bugged by drivers in front of them who don’t use turn signals?
Is it possible to discern what the last thought is before falling asleep?
How do I know when its just a thought, and not the first dream of my night’s sleep?
Some men would love to have 4-days of the silent treatment from their wives.
Is there an age limit for having imaginary friends?
Was it possible to misspell things when taking dictation using “shorthand?”
What makes a person suddenly think of “shorthand” when they haven’t had a thought about it in decades?
If you don’t think about something, are you less inclined to miss it?
Random doesn’t mean there won’t be a theme.
If you don’t have anything nice to think, don’t think anything at all.
Two can play at this game.
If two are playing this game, how would you know they are both playing?
Why won’t she answer my calls?
Altered Perspective
Nothing is ever really as hard as we make it out to be. It is remarkable, the mental power we have to influence how realities play out. If I think that some task is difficult, and I keep repeating that message to myself, it seems only logical that the perception I develop is bound to make the task more onerous than it would otherwise be. Especially as compared the choosing to entirely refrain from telling myself anything negative, and forging ahead without hesitation to tend to the task at hand, regardless the challenge it presents.
I spent the majority of my life under the duress of a negative perspective. It is a complex collaboration of insecurity and dysfunctional thinking that conjures up a belief that this is a sound and logical manner of reasoning. Yet it is the kind of thing that one defends with stubborn resolve. It is such a misguided effort.
Nothing is as bad as it seems. The pains we cling to, the wrongs that we have experienced, are ours to release at any time. It is absolutely possible to give them up in an instant. Both Cyndie and I have learned to do this. In time, it is possible to become aware enough to avoid even taking on certain mental burdens in the first place. It is something that I wish I had learned to do much earlier in my life.
It was never as hard as I perceived it to be.
Idea #637
I recently read that one of my online friends had her home broken into by thieves who took, among other things, her jewelry box. It appears that cash and jewelry remain a top draw for home invasion thieves.
Instead of keeping precious jewelry in the obvious jewelry box on the dresser, my idea would be to create a box that looks like a bedroom waste basket. Make it small enough that you can pick it up off the floor when you want access. Create a fake top that looks like used tissues and tags cut from new clothes, maybe some crumpled paper.
Thieves would not be inclined to look for valuable things in a trash bin, but if they do catch on to my idea, there is the possibility we could get them to start taking out the trash when they break into our homes.
Why Not?
Is it the big stuff, or the little stuff, or the more obvious combination of the both of them that deserves our attention at every given moment of each and every day? There isn’t always big stuff happening and sometimes there isn’t even any small stuff. But then someone’s house burns to the ground and they lose everything. Next thing you know, someone feels emotionally injured by the way another person spoke to them. Big, and little. Sometimes we pay attention, and sometimes we don’t.
Regardless of what happens, big or small, we look out at it all from inside ourselves and measure it against our own relative perspective. Imagine if we learned to do so with an attitude of awareness that, that is what we were doing, and did so from the spiritual center of our being.
We alter everything we observe, simply by observing it. Why not alter it for the better?
What’s It All About?
I’m not convinced that it matters whether or not I know that angry Democrats rebel against Obama’s tax-cut deal with Republicans. Or that Google delays netbook plans for Chrome OS to mid 2011. How about my awareness of the US appeals court ruling that the Food and Drug Administration can only regulate “e-cigarettes” as tobacco products and not as drugs, and thus cannot block their import? There were 55 people listed in the local obituaries for yesterday, and I didn’t know a single one of them. I could hold a door open for an elderly man in a public place and have no idea that he was a survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (If he was 18 when it happened, he’d be 87 years-old now.) I can interact with an employee at work and not have a clue they had been involved in a domestic dispute the night before. I have walked past people who are experiencing inner despair and not paused to notice.
Then, when I am all alone in the darkness, I sense it all. It’s as if there is a time lag and when I stop long enough to free my attentions from the distractions of the day, it all catches up. Energy doesn’t vanish, it is transferred from one form to another.
With luck, I overcome the urge to be overwhelmed with grief for the drama of our human foibles, and I come to rest in the simple solution of feeling love for all those who need it. Love is what it is all about.
It’s True
I’m beginning to think maybe life itself may actually be based on a true story. I woke up yesterday and found the weather was just like what the forecast had predicted. Everything that happens is just like what really happens. It’s impressive. It would make a great marketing campaign. “Life …Based on a True Story!”
It seems odd though, since we are all just made-up characters.
.
I am experiencing the weirdness of time perceptions again. The ‘long-ness’ and shortness of passing time. Both happen, simultaneously, and I am smack dab in the middle. I waited while Cyndie was having knee surgery and it was a classic moment of ‘killing time.’ Minutes, and then hours, pass by and I am static. When that phase ends, I move to being a companion in her recovery process. My normal activity is placed on hold. It was a long day.
Yet the day passed by very quickly. It seems like we just got up, and then we were home. A brief rest on the couch in the afternoon and suddenly we’re off to bed for the night.
It reminds me of my perception of having children. At first, they were around the house a lot and required frequent attention, and then not so much of either being around the house or needing attention. In the time it took me to bend down to put my socks on one morning, they were done with college and entering the work force.
The same things that seem to take a long time to pass, are also passing by very quickly. It’s true, even if it seems like I just made it up.
Flowing Thoughts
I apologize in advance for my decision to allow some words to flow unabated, but this is one of those times when I haven’t come up with a specific subject worth writing about and so as an exercise in freeing myself from the logical center of my thinking and all the usual censors of common sense for communicating in a conventional manner, I allow the words to tumble out in a stream of conscious flurry that for some reason involves a distinct aversion to happening in concise, pleasing-to-read sentence structure. It brings to mind the fact that it reflects all of nature and time in that none of that ever pauses in the way we do with our little dot at the end of each grammatical phrase. The earth just spins and spins and light fades to dark so fast sometimes it boggles my mind and then in a blink it is daylight again and critters and little children are skittering about with irrepressible energy to explore their world as if this might be the last chance to do so, probably sensing that for centuries people have been conjuring ideas that our existence is doomed and some apocalyptic event will unleash horrific wrath as if something we earned or at least somehow deserve and it may just be thoughts like that which allow entire tribes of people to become so fixated on their fears and hatred that they will do everything in their power to avoid peace settlements which normal logic sees as twisted because peace makes so much more sense in the way that a calm sunny day compares to a dark and stormy one. Do you see how an untethered mind will wander to the angst which can be the wrong place for a mind to dwell and therefore effort does need to be made toward correcting the path of the stream of thinking toward a plane of hope that allows for a vast landscape of happy, healthy ideation in which possibilities abound and where reality is still well within grasp so that it doesn’t turn out to be some frilly false front of fantastic, but a seriously great accomplishment of truly healthy being and that is something that can be managed on an individual basis and with some luck there are moments when enough healthy logical individuals come together to impact our world in a way which adds value for the masses and not just in the way a group of athletes do when they surmount all obstacles and beat the odds to triumph and claim the top prize in their sport, but in a way that entire nations succeed in doing right for all citizens and supporting the human rights of people and animals and when doing so finding that everyone wins, not just the greedy financial wizards who devise ways to dupe the system… oops, there it goes again. See what I mean? So much for that exercise. I’m considering going back to normal sentences. As if that will solve things. I suppose it can’t hurt. Hope that was relative something. It’s what I am offering today. It is Labor Day weekend here and I am up at my favorite place. I’m going to go see what the day brings. Thanks for stopping by. Happy Sunday to you!
Train of Thought
How would you know if today was your only chance to make a split-second decision, like the ones in a television drama, that would make some critical difference in another person’s life? It seems to happen every hour on TV. Have you ever stopped to ponder how often it happens in real life?
I wonder if anyone who reads this will remember a time when there was no such word as “television.” Think about how many things in our everyday lives are described by words that have been created in our lifetimes. Words for things become accepted as universal with very little fanfare. Each year there is a little tidbit in the news that announces new words officially added to one dictionary or another.
I’m pretty sure that the day I was born, my parents never could have pictured the gadgets that I would be using by the time I was 50. I doubt my father or mother would have imagined that when my children were born I would be in the delivery room with Cyndie to cut the umbilical cord. Imagine what the differences will be in 50 years for someone born today.
It is interesting, from the perspective of the year 2010, to see the once outlandish visions of the future that were broadcast on television programs like, “Lost in Space” or “The Jetsons” and that have yet to be achieved. Compare them to some of the devices like cell phones or GPS navigators that seem like they are right out of a “Star Trek” episode.
The first time some movie about the concept of ‘reality TV’ was released (EDtv or The Truman Show), it seemed like such far-fetched ridiculousness that the movies were almost laughable. Reality has really lived up to that fiction, hasn’t it? The odd thing is, as producers continually push to capture the next crazy thing that really happens in the world, the content turns out to be so extremely outrageous it appears unbelievable. We figure they are making it up. We find reality hard to believe. In order to seem credible, they need to create fictional situations that aren’t so extreme, in order for audiences to accept them as plausible.
How is it that we are supposed to believe that characters on ‘reality’ programming aren’t actors? Any regular person who is not acting would notice and look toward a guy standing next to them holding a big video camera. I’m looking forward to the next program in this sequence. One that focuses on the camera person who records activity for the ‘reality’ shows. We need a camera following around the camera person who follows the subjects of the ‘reality’ shows.
Watch out for your opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life today. This might be the day.
Relative Something 