I wonder why yesterday the toaster burned the toast and today, without touching the toaster or doing anything differently, the toast is perfect? Where did I leave my flip-flops? I wonder if an all-girls high school education actually made me more masculine than many men I know? I should take a shower. Almost done with IRB. That breeze is cool. I wonder how other people experience pain?

Literally…that was in two minutes.  I walked home from yoga this morning; it took about 25 minutes and I had a lifetime’s worth of conversation with myself.  Going in 25 directions.  Whenever this happens I feel the distinct need to write everything down as quickly as possible.  There could be good nuggets of something in there which only time will reveal.  But despite this mental chattering, there was one thought I kept coming back to, I think because it didn’t originate in my brain.

In the 2 or 3 moments in between crazy shooting thoughts, I actually felt compassion.  I’ve been reading this book by Pema Chodron called The Places that Scare You and I assumed it would be a lot about fear.  It’s actually more about the opposite of fear, which as it turns out, is compassion.  Who knew?  Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong all these years. Here’s a picture just in case you want to read (and you really should…what else are you really doing?)

Anyway I usually don’t feel ideas; I think about them, dissect them, think more about them, start to worry about them, get anxious about them, then am exhausted and can’t sleep.  That’s usual.  But, I’ve really been working on “heart opening”–I interpret it more as willing myself to feel things rather than approach them intellectually.  It’s given more dimension to my ideas; we all think a lot about love or anger or hurt.  We ultimately want to manage them, so we approach them as events and then get a plan to deal with them.  But I’m learning that if we feel them, they actually have textures…things we can grip onto a little bit and push our edges.  In other words, I think I’m learning that if we feel things, we can grow in ways that thinking about them cannot approach.

But, back to compassion.  So, I think “heart opening” is working a bit.  I was practicing feeling compassion which isn’t empathy or sympathy.  In those, we place ourselves in the shoes of others (sympathy) or recalling when we’ve actually shared the experience of another (empathy) and felt with them.  Compassion, I think, is the following step.  In compassion we stay in our own shoes, recognize the place of another (be it filled with suffering or joy), and then love them as only we can.  It’s not sharing the experience; it’s just opening our arms and loving, regardless of what happens to us or what we’ll get out of it.  I think compassion is the act of giving away love unconditionally.  We always approach that idea from the receiver’s end…I haven’t really even imagined what it feels like to give it.  I think it’s a good thing.

So this is what I’m feeling about today.  Even writing this down has slowed the chatter.  And it makes me think that in order to give this…dude, you gotta tap into a kind of strength that you just have to trust you have…because I think it’s tough.  You may hurt in the process.  But its completely worth it, I think. I mean, I feel.

Ha-HAH. Caught myself there.

Anyway, as I’ve been talking about, this “forward-looking” perspective coupled with the biggest, roiling shitstorm-of-change conditions over here have led me to what may be either my 4th or 5th mid-life crisis in the past couple weeks.  I’ve been working on re-focusing so I can free myself to do what needs to be done: get my PhD, not go insane, function in my life, find some joy.  You know…the basics.

One thing I realized is that over the past 3 years, I’ve not actively made the effort to keep things “different” or “various” or “changing.”  Of course, I realized this from a tiny little kernel of truth spoken during a yoga class last week; the instructor said to us, “okay, cross your hands like you normally would.  Now, switch it.  It’s gonna feel weird…but even that little intentional change helps us to be more comfortable with the change we find happening every day.”  She was so right…and was proven right in a bigger way by the events of last Friday.

Many of my friends in graduate school have “moved on.”  Not surprisingly, I haven’t…and because of that, I’ve been adrift in this swirl of “lost friends.”  I still see their shadows lurking around in the neighborhoods we all used to live in.  I remember the conversations we had in the bars that I walk past every day.  In that way, I’ve been living in the past.  So one of my intentions recently has been to find new opportunities to find new people to find new parts of my old self.  It sounds arduous…and sometimes it feels that way.

BUT…last Friday I got another chance to uncross and cross again.   I got a chance to turn an acquaintance into a friend…and it worked…magically.  And part of the magic was, I didn’t initiate it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve actively felt “befriended”…it was a nice change.  And the friend I think I’ve found is just comfortable and fun in the best of ways: compelling, interesting, funny, and similar. Maybe I’m technically celebrating the sameness…but this is the friend I’ve been looking for in this time and place.  And in two days, he’s breathed a kind of new life into me…and the friends I already have.

It’s been pretty interesting.  And I very much attribute it to “recrossing:”  Seeing the world in a new light and acknowledging that it might feel weird at first but that it eventually becomes another kind of reality, just ever so slightly different than the other (or last) one.

Here’s to Jerusalem*. Thank You.

*For whatever reason, when I type his name into my phone (to text or whatever) it automatically auto-corrects it to “Jerusalem.”  I have absolutely ZERO idea why…but it’s endearing…so I’ll go with it.

Anyway, I’ll kill myself to remember the Budakon guy’s name but he is amazing…he’s like some kinda black belt in Tae Kwon Do (I’m sure that’s spelled wrong) but super stretchy so he does yoga too.  This is not the point, however.  My point is he said something in one of the videos (that I basically did for 2 years straight) that has stayed with me.  He used to say, “When you concentrate on something, it expands.” What?

I had images in my head of swirling power energies and chakras and auras and things.  I felt I was out of my element.  It was new agey and weird.  But this little thought has followed me around like a nagging 2-year-old for years.  So finally, I stopped to give it its due and…I think he’s right.

If you concentrate on it, it expands.

Of course.  I’ve been doing this for years but I didn’t know it and actually I think it’s been killing me.  Allow me to demonstrate with…a cheeseburger.  Sorry all one of you vegetarians who may or may not be reading this…but one of the few things I crave hard in this world is cheeseburgers…like the, “I need it now” craving.  Once I’ve established that I need that cheeseburger…it’s all I can think about.  It consumes every other thought.  It’s always poking around from the dark corners of my brain, asserting itself mercilessly on my poor frazzled psyche…until I get it…and then happiness.  The same goes for misery and discontentment and loneliness…all that seem to be conditions brought on by reality but all that are actually my own mantras, allowed to form through the circumstances I’m in.

All of this is a long way to say, I’ve decided to choose happy.  It’s a very conscious decision right now because choosing unhappy is a well-formulated awful habit I’ve picked up.  But I ran a little test experiment not too long ago and, I’ll tell ya what, choosing happy works. I think the key for me was realizing that in my life, the opposite of happy is not unhappy, but worried.  I somehow roll around gloriously in my worry…if I’m not worried, I start to worry that I should be. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.  So, I’ve chosen strategically what and how much I’m allowed to worry about things…and I’ve actually started breathing again and everything.

Choosing happy is not easy.  I’ve been trained in worry.  And I’m good at worry…but it’s only taken about 17 years (alright, alright, 28 years) to realize that it’s not worth it.  There is a time and place for everything.

It’s time to give happy its due.  Thanks Budakon guy…whatever your name is.