Tag: meditation

Counting What Counts

Posted in meditation, ParenthoodTagged , , ,

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and nothing everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein

Yesterday I went to the store with my kids and my five-year-old daughter wanted to bring her own money to buy a new toy. She packed an entire backpack full of supplies for our 10 minute drive to the store so it wasn’t until after she picked out something that we realized that she hadn’t brought her wallet. I agreed to loan her the money to buy it and she would pay me back but the Barbie accessories she picked were more than she had saved up. Not wanting to make this a lesson in indebtedness I didn’t make much of a point that I was happy to spot the difference. But later when she was showing my mom what she’d gotten, Olivia said, “But I lost all my money.” Stifling a smile I urged her to explain further and she then amended her statement to be “I gave all my money to my mom.” (Like it was some charity thing). I chuckled about that for the rest of the afternoon because this follows on a conversation where I tried to get her to change five-1’s for a five dollar bill but she didn’t like that trade. She wanted to keep her ones and also have the five so she found five coins in her piggy bank and wanted to trade that.

Knowing that this is a common hurdle for kids, I’m not too worried that she’ll get it. But it strikes me that we all face similar lapses in thinking when it comes to counting and what we value. We use “likes” as measures of acceptance when it’s really one insightful comment that makes us feel heard. We count how many times the nanny has left us without extra diapers instead of celebrating how well-cared for the kids are. We count how many kids socks we have to pick up at night when we’re tired instead of the smiles and looks for reassurance we answered in the day. We count how many extra pounds are on our bodies because COVID has made it hard to go to the gym instead of feeling the one amazing beat of life our hearts give us to keep going. We count how many days until life changes instead of leaning in to enjoy the closeness of life now. We count how many friends we do or don’t have instead of realizing that it’s the wholeness of the Universe that can make us feel loved.

I’m an engineer so I love numbers. The only way I’ve found to come back to what matters is to sit in meditation. It’s the time when I do nothing while seated on my meditation cushion that makes the most difference about the quality of everything else I do.

The Practice of Gratitude

Posted in meditation, ParenthoodTagged , , , , ,

“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

I read this excerpt from Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money and instantly identified with it:
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of…. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever.

“Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thought and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justifications for an unfulfilled life.“

The one component that feels so scarce right now is me-time, time when I want to do what I want to do. Between having 2 young kids, working and trying to keep some order in the house that gets ripped into pieces every day as we are all stuck in here during the pandemic, I think it’s probably factually correct to say that my discretionary free-time is at an all-time low. BUT as I read the passage above, I realized that I don’t have to grieve that fact every day.

Lynne Twist, the author of the passage above, suggests we can believe that we are enough. Brene Brown, the University of Houston researcher who excerpted the passage above in her book The Gifts of Imperfection finds that her research shows practicing gratitude is what creates joy in our lives, no matter the circumstances. And she suggests that gratitude isn’t a passive thing that you espouse but something that truly needs to be practiced – like the piano.

It’s funny how easy it is to see in my own life once someone points it out to me. And I can see that my attitude of gratitude or belief that I’m enough can affect the lives of my children intimately. Because I have these years when they are young and still at home with me, even if it’s a little longer because of the pandemic, to set the tone by which they receive the world. In this week of Thanksgiving, it is such a perfect time to start some lasting traditions of naming the things we are grateful for every day.

Carrying Only What Is Necessary

Posted in meditation, ParenthoodTagged , , 1 Comment

“Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.” – Yogi Bhajan

I have a long history with backpacks – picking them out, carrying them, feeling relieved to take them off. At one point when I was in my thirties and planning a lot of climbing trips, I got one that was almost 6000 cubic inches. I can’t even describe how large that is but suffice it to say that when you have a backpack that big, your friends start believing you have room to carry their stuff. 😊

Then when I starting going to meditation class, my meditation teacher had this great meditation about closing our eyes, imagining take off our metaphorical backpacks, emptying them of all the stuff we carry with us like our responsibilities, worries, wit to keep others at arms reach, our history of being hurt and then at the end of our 75 minute session she had us load up our backpacks with only what was truly necessary. I’ve never looked at a backpack in the same way since.

When my daughter started carrying her own backpack in Pre-K class she began her own history with shouldering a load — having to be responsible for getting everything back into it, remembering to go to it to find what she might need and discovering that filling it with all your treasures makes it quite heavy. I found myself getting a little choked up watching her and her fellow 4 yr-olds shoulder their loads. It seemed like such an act of bravery to watch a little one try to organize their essentials into a small space, use all their skills with zippers, pockets and straps and then wrestle it on.

So here’s to carrying only what is truly necessary on our backs!!

Vulnerability and Courage

Posted in awakeandinspiredTagged , , , ,

“I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage.” – Brene Brown

My friend sent me an email the other day that made me feel like the wind was knocked out of me. It said in essence that she was hosting Thanksgiving at her house but we weren’t invited. There are so many ways to explain this away – she didn’t mean it to be hurtful, the pandemic has made gatherings risky so to protect our older generation this is wise and so on. But the fact of middle age is that we very rarely wound each other. Our lives and patterns of communication have solidified so that no one needs to either extend themselves very far nor risk being hurt. It was such a surprise for me to feel so pierced that it threw me and my productivity off kilter for the rest of the afternoon.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts about vulnerability. it started with University of Houston research professor Brene Brown but now I’m finding that thread in so much of what I’m reading and listening to. That vulnerability means that we are daring to live out in the open, to try things and to fail, that if marks whether we are doing something meaningful. And by meaningful, I mean meaningful as in measured by personal growth.

So I’ve been consuming all this content about vulnerability, I know it’s one of my weaknesses and then my friend sends that email that hurts me. My first reaction was to hide, to pull back into my shell and just nurse the wound. I’m a pretty affable person and I can shake things off as unintended. But one of the reasons the email wounded me is that it feels like my friend often makes unilateral decisions without consulting me. And the second reason is because I secretly fear that I value her friendship more than she values mine. And the third is because I’ve never told her the previous two reasons.

Instead of hiding, I waited a few hours and sent an email back saying that I was wounded. I’ll be honest here – it felt yucky. Her response was lovely and though we probably won’t still get our families together for Thanksgiving as we have for every year for the past ten, it won’t stick like a turkey bone caught in my throat blocking my ability to breathe or be grateful. I continue to feel a little tender but within that tenderness is a kernel of additional belonging that I didn’t have before. I can speak my truth and still be accepted. My right to be here isn’t conditional on me behaving affably. I feel a little more wise about how to coach my kids about friendship. I crossed that chasm between learning about something and doing something and it makes me feel brave!

Glimpses of Sunshine

Posted in awakeandinspired, filledwithjoyTagged ,

The other day at my 5-year-old daughter’s check-up, the doctor asked her how online school was going and she answered, “It’s stressful.” And it is stressful – for her teacher who can’t see the kids when she is sharing her screen, for my daughter who often doesn’t feel seen, for her younger brother who wants to do what his sister is doing and for me adding the jobs of teaching assistant and janitor to parent and breadwinner. On one level we are fine and on another level, we are deeply tired as most everyone is during this pandemic.

But every once in a while, something breaks through my grief of how things ought to be to show me the beauty of how things are like the sunshine in this picture. I know that I will be grateful for this extra time with my kindergartener and the extra glimpse I’m getting into how she learns. I also know that generally speaking, I’m a Pollyana but I greatly need these miraculous glimpses to fuel my sunshine!

There are moments when I’m buried too deep in my to-do list to let the light in. Finding time to clean my windows when I don’t have two spare moments to rub together is not easy. But when I take fifteen minutes before the kids wake up in the morning to meditate, do yoga, read something inspirational or write anything that is authentic, it changes my day. The step back from my to-do list restores my heart space that holds the why I am running around doing all these jobs. It widens my aperture to include the big picture so I am more open to see the sunshine streaming in. And when I’m operating from my calm, all my tasks, whether they be work, kids or home go a little better. This Zen saying makes me laugh but probably even more so because there is truth to it, “You should sit in meditation 20 minutes a day. Unless you’re too busy, then you should sit for an hour.”

Yes, this time of remote learning and social distancing is stressful. It puts a spotlight on our human struggle to see and be seen. All of which goes better when we whatever we need to do to clean our windows and let the sunshine in.