Mindfulness

“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”
The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Pema Chödrön

The thing that is most important for me to remember is the thing that I most often forget, that despite it all, everything I fear, all of the things I feel anxious about, what came before and what is to come, that there is this one precious moment, and if I stay awake and alive and present in it I will always be okay. There are so many strawberries.

Yesterday was not an easy day. Last night was better. I had a lovely live video chat with my dear friend whom I chat with weekly and while we were chatting I had my feet soaking in a big “foot bucket” with magnesium flakes and liberal amounts of essential oils — lavender, rosemary, frankincense, and tea tree. It absolutely smelled heavenly in here and it was very relaxing. I felt much better by the time I was getting off the computer, got the dogs out and got myself ready for bed and then we snuggled up in the recliner and I read, from 11 to 1. I wasn’t sleepy so I kept reading. I am loving my cozy mystery. The thing was I only slept for 2 hours before waking up again at 3 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. After getting caught in one of those anxiety spirals where you feel like you are spiralling round and round about to go down the drain I remembered what someone else recently said she did. When she gets like this she turns on the light and reads a little while, just 20 or 30 minutes. It is enough to redirect her spiralling mind. I did it and it worked. I went back to sleep but woke up 2 more times. I was raggedy by the time I got up this morning.

The thing is after spending some time spinning my wheels I started looking for the strawberries. I was able to do this because my daughter Rachel called and we had a great talk that helped me with things that I am fearing. And then I focused on the fact that dear Eleanor was coming today at 1, she is here now. She comes twice a month to help me with some things here in the house and it makes a world of difference for me. And then my dear Noni is coming and is going to spend the night. This is a huge treat for me because she is not able to come like she used to in fact didn’t come at all for several months. We will have a lovely dinner, and watch our current show, The Crown, on Netflix. We watched the first season last year and loved it, this 2nd season will take us awhile longer since she doesn’t come every weekend but she was here last weekend, not to spend the night but for dinner and we watched a couple of episodes. I hadn’t know she was going to do this until the last minute and it was an unexpected treat.

Just now I am sitting here and I am looking to the week ahead which has had me really frightened because my daughter will be out of town. She is my rock and even when I don’t have to call on her, which I do as seldom as possible, just knowing that she is there makes me feel safer and more at ease. I have been in a panic about her going. But when we talked today she reminded me of a couple of people that I could call on in an emergency and even came up with one more person she is going to ask to be there if I need someone. I am not as alone as I so often feel. I have to remember that. All too often I feel like a tiny creature in a barren dry desert, all alone, but if I look up I can see that from my own little patch of earth there are strawberry fields stretching out in every direction. There are people all around us and more often than not if we are in real need someone will help us. It is easy, today, to focus on all the dark, scary things happening in the world, and there are surely plenty of them. What I think is vital is to remember that there are a lot of good people out there, people who are caring and kind, and who will help you in your hour of need. Most of the scariest times in my life have come about because I was in a kind of self-imposed exile. I had only to open a door or a window and look out to see that there is a whole world out there.

And these moments… if I were to line up all the moments of my life there will have been dark, painful ones among them to be sure, but more of them, most of them, have been good, there has been love, there have been wonderful people, at the very least the times were not times of crises, even if they felt difficult. As I approach each moment I need to remember that the present moment is more likely to be a strawberry than a tiger. Why it is so easy, easier it often seems, to paint a “worst case scenario” than to imagine a lovely moment, or at least a calm or peaceful one? I do not know, and it will take conscious effort, after a lifetime of patterning that set me up to be afraid because bad things were happening, to believe that it would be more of the same, but those times are long past, and today I am, for the most part, okay, and, for the most part, I will be. And I will remember this song, because it makes me happy. There will be strawberry fields forever, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear. So I will leave you with this dear friends. And reach for the strawberries every time. Every time.