Flight Travel

Part of me has always figured I’d make a good flight attendant. It’s the part of me that has to tuck her head in-between her knees for the 20 minutes prior to landing that has reservations. But other than the debilitating wave of vertigo and nausea that strikes me upon descent I’d be a shoe-in.

I love flying and I love people. It’s not that I love the flying itself. I love the flying experience. And it’s not so much that I love people individually but more that I love the experience of people.

As I’ve met only 1 or 2 others who don’t detest participating in metal-winged travel, I’d take great pride in being the flight attendant to help shift the collective pool of shared consciousness. The way I see it, we’ve been programmed to hate flying. And our hate spreads like the plague infecting everyone in our wake, thereby perpetuating and strengthening our cultural distaste.

The super good news is that hate isn’t the only thing that spreads. Positivity spreads, too. With my brass wings pin glinting in unison with my smile I’d win over one sour-puss traveler at a time, convincing them that enjoying the flight far exceeds loathing it, in the quality-of-life department.

As I made my way through the cabin handing out tiny, scratchy pillows, tiny plastic cups filled with 80% ice and 20% ginger ale, and tiny packets of peanuts, I’d throw in my cheery disposition free of charge, slyly coaxing others to rewrite a new internal story about what it means to partake in the awesomeness of flight travel.

P.S This post and yesterday’s post I borrowed from my writer’s facebook page, but many of my FB posts don’t travel here to my blog. If you’re interested in reading my daily musings please check out my page: https://www.facebook.com/InMindfulMotion/

Perspective

It’s funny how wildly different one person’s idea of a bad day can be from another’s. And by “funny” I mean tragic.

This morning I read a short travel story entitled: The Flight from Hell, amid a collection in the book I’m currently reading. It would take a pile of harrowing and painful occurrences for me to even consider branding a travel experience with that honorific stamp. I’m pretty sure those hanging oxygen bags said to drop down in the event the cabin loses air pressure would need to be deployed. It might even take an unscheduled water landing for me to start pondering the merits of later telling my friends and family that I had, in fact, had the “flight from hell.”

I can only assume that the fellow who penned the story had lived a charmed life before his fateful trip from Jamaica to L.A. And perhaps his perspective had been so incredibly skewed by having never encountered real suffering that he simply had no frame of reference. I kept waiting for the hellish part to present itself. Then the story ended, leaving me still waiting. His idea of a “flight from hell” was basically the equivalent of a minor paper cut.

I’m hoping that upon discovering that his travel story is sandwiched in-between accounts of other writers having been ping-ponged over middle-eastern borders and arrested promptly in each new country, swarmed by army ants and hand-sized tarantulas falling from the ceiling, stranded at sea off the Java coast surrounded by vomit, and rafting down a river full of sewage he came to realize that his “flight from hell”, which literally amounted to sitting on the tarmac for 90 minutes at LAX and then having to wait 10 minutes for his luggage to arrive, sorta paled in comparison.

Sugar

It’s been 2 or 3 years now since I gave up what I call “dessert sugar.” Funny, how I’m not sure how long it’s been. Funny how it doesn’t even really matter. When looking back, individual years acquire a different sort of time stamp in our memory, which dramatically lessens the significance one experienced while actively living it.

I’ve been a life-long sugar addict. One for whom chocolate and cookies stir a deep adoration no other food product comes close to matching. Those were my DOC’s (drugs of choice): chocolate and cookies. On the addiction scale I’d say I was somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, edging my way over the line into the “Danger, Will Robinson” zone.

I came up with the “dessert sugar” phrasing in an effort to find a quick way to explain myself in response to the inevitable quizzical look that would follow after turning down a sugar filled offering. Apparently, people often find it curious when someone doesn’t partake in sweets, which is similar to what used to happen when I would decline libations before I fashioned a largely sober friend base. It would be easier for people to understand if I were, say, a diabetic trying to watch my carb intake, or an alcoholic on the wagon, but as someone who chooses to voluntarily avoid both substances, I become the equivalent of a talking unicorn found serendipitously in the woods on a long hike.

“Dessert sugars” mean just that. They refer to the eats one would commonly consider a dessert product: cookies, cake, brownies, ice cream, pie, and anything having to do with chocolate. If I weren’t limited to explaining myself in the time frame of someone’s minuscule attention span, I would further add that I’ve given up both dessert sugars and junk-food sugars. Junk-food sugars being: candy, breakfast pastries, funnel cake, sugary cereals, and anything else one tends to eat large quantities of and is socially allowed to have at any hour of the day. For a reason I have yet to pin down, I feel it necessary to report to anyone who’ll listen about how I’m not foregoing ALL types of sugar, just the sort that might trigger my particular proclivities. I continue to eat fruit and granola bars most every day. I even drink juice, un-caffeinated sodas, and sweet tea every so often. I guess I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea and wind up stewing in a falsely held judgement about how I’m a hypocritical wind-bag, when next they spot me sipping on a smoothie.

Back to the Woods

Jerry Johnson Hot Springs trail, December 25th, 2016, Idaho

Becoming part of a winterscape thick with cedar,
walking tall among elder trunks
and undergrowth buried in snow,
we communed with a part of ourselves
that often lies dormant.

Under nature’s influence
we can be guided back to what has been forgotten.
And when we are ushered
from our slumber to remember,
we will continue to return,
over and over,
back to the woods.

Priorities

I’ve been thinking about the subject of priorities lately. About how everything comes down to what we prioritize in our lives – what we choose to invest our time into. But it’s the “choice factor” that trips people up most often. Speaking in a collective fashion, we tend to engage with the world around us as though we were victims. Victims of our harried schedule, our work, our circumstances, our upbringing, our causes and conditions. What we have trouble seeing and understanding is that victim-hood is a state of thinking, not a state of BEING.

The possibility exists for us to live our lives un-dramatized, un-apologetically, and un-fettered. The possibility exists for us to step fully into the life we’ve created for our self and embrace it as the series of choices it really is. The so-called burdens that we face are commonly the manifestations of where we place our thoughts and our motivations regarding the actions that ensue.

Bumper Sticker Practice, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two part blog post, to read Part 1 click here!

From Part 1: “Earlier this year I came up with a new mindfulness practice: bumper stickers! OK, let me explain. I like finding new and inventive ways to cultivate daily mindfulness, which means paying intentional attention to something in particular. Being mindful means being mindful of something. And that something can be anything! Anything that allows us the opportunity to practice getting in touch with and connected to the present moment can be considered a practice of mindfulness. And it’s fun to find new things in which to practice with.

So, in January this idea of bumper sticker mindfulness came to me. For each month in 2016 I would practice noticing bumper stickers, while cruising around town. In order to put a little extra weight on this new mindfulness practice, to help encourage me to do it, I would also write down the bumper stickers that caught my eye as being especially odd, funny or interesting. I then also resolved to write a blog post about it further into the year (with Part 1 having been written in June).

As an FYI: my bumper sticker rules included only writing down bumper stickers I saw in action, meaning displayed on cars – so bumper stickers I saw for sale in a store didn’t count. I have a nice little notebook and an easily accessible pen in my car that I scribbled down all of the ones I saw that I deemed worth noting.”

I was a little bit concerned that I had exhausted all of the good bumper stickers in town after posting Part 1, given that Missoula is a smallish place. But I’ve been delighted to find a wealth of interesting new stickers over the past 6 months. I’m also brainstorming for my next new mindfulness practice come January and feel fairly confident that it will once again involve something I’m able to do while driving. As it turned out, my bumper sticker practice wonderfully aided in reducing the frustration I routinely experience while driving. I found myself willing lights to turn red, so I could stop behind a car sporting a new sticker to read. It was like a great treasure hunt every time I took to the streets!

Here are the stickers I jotted down, in order of date seen, since June:

Winter Ocean

Winter Ocean

Snow drapes the town in satin white,
tucking us warmly into shelter.
I see the ocean in its crystalline form,
saturating flat undulating ground.

Transported to the sun-drenched Jersey shore days of my youth,
I feel the salt water tangle in my hair,
as swells of laughter and gulls peak between the ocean’s inhale and exhale.
Bare skin and unadorned feet browning and cracking.

My gaze catches on the snow when it falls
and on the ocean when I’m near it,
the same way it used to when I’d primp on the beaches
to flirt with boys.
My gaze, while peripheral, was held steady by them, too.

But, in the cute, summer boys I would lose myself
in romantic sojourns –
and in the shifting forms of water,
I regain my sovereignty amid each circulating droplet,
remembering with quivering assurance,
that I, too,
have been part of this landscape
since the very beginning.

Kindness

Dear (insert your name here),

When offering love and care, please don’t forget yourself.

Sincerely,
Kindness

Happy & Hella in Love

I feel it’s worth mentioning/announcing/declaring/celebrating, even at the risk of sounding all puppies and rainbows, that I am a happy person, with the added awesome benefit of being super in love with my husband. Funny how “puppies and rainbows” can be viewed as some kind of disingenuous statement, as though someone couldn’t POSSIBLY be THAT level of happy, without putting on some serious airs. But I truly am that kind of happy. And since it’s so very easy to hear from people about how their life sucks and they’re unsatisfied and full of fear and worry about the future and on and on, I thought it might provide a satisfying breath of fresh air to hear about how someone (me) is full of happiness, love and great levels of satisfaction in the present, and a trust that what will unfold in the future is part of what needs to happen in the grand scheme of life.

I was hesitant to offer a post about this, for fear of alienating/offending those who do honestly feel quite discontent. But as it is not my intention to make anyone feel badly, I was compelled to step into this discomfort in order to elevate my platform that happiness is indeed possible. So here’s what I’d like to share:

10 Things I Do To Ensure that Happiness is Possible:

1. I wake up early, meditate for 30 minutes (6 days a week), and end each meditation with a gratitude practice.

2. I prioritize self-care and nourishment.

3. I actively practice to simplify my lifestyle.

4. I don’t wallow in challenges when they arise. I acknowledge them, accept them, and move forward.

5. I devote my time to the service, care, and support of others.

6. I make time to do the things I enjoy doing – and I also diligently practice to enjoy the things I do.

7. I practice to deepen my self-awareness and investigate my habit energies.

8. I revel in music (listening, playing, singing, dancing, going to live shows).

9. I stay in close contact with my spiritual community and surround myself with lovely people.

10. I absorb from others what they have to offer and teach me and continue to thirst for more.

On Grief and Loss

Last night marked the fourth and final installment of a series I put together at our local mindfulness center entitled: Mindful Community Conversations. Once a month since September we’ve focused on a different topic, each featuring a different speaker. My vision was to help create and hold space within our mindfulness practice, in order to shed light on certain topics that are often very challenging and difficult to talk about and address. The topics I chose were: Chronic Pain & Illness, Depression & Addiction, Dealing with Difficult Emotions, and Grief & Loss. Our format started with 10 minutes of silent sitting meditation, followed by a 20-30 minute talk from the speaker and ended with an open sharing circle. As the facilitator for each evening, I prompted our sharing time by inviting folks to offer their name and a little bit about what motivated them to attend the particular evening’s topic. I found that the openness, intention, and strong mindfulness practice of each of the speakers allowed for a very powerful opportunity for community sharing and healing to take place. I continue to be moved and inspired by the coming together of sacredly held circles of people.

Our topic last night was on Grief and Loss. Our speaker was my sangha friend Greg, who’s one of our five ordained members of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing here in town. He’s also a hospice chaplain, so his depth of practice and experience with death and dying is vast. I greatly enjoyed his talk and the sharing that followed, from those who attended. I know that all of the words spoken last night will continue to slowly filter in and through me, and benefit my outlook and perspective in a myriad of unforeseen ways.

This morning, in the darkness of the hour of 5:00am so common and crucial to much of my writing, I wrote this:

To love is to know one day
you’ll grieve the loss of those you’ve extended yourself to,
and it won’t be pretty.
It’ll be devastating.
It’ll be devastating in ways impossible to comprehend until it happens.
And holes will manifest in the open field of your heart.
Holes that will remain as part of your landscape,
like the scars of a deforested hillside ravaged by wildfire.
But, eventually,
you’ll be able to find yourself in the emerging
from those dark places,
amid everything that has been lost,
and you will take back up
the tending of your field.