Now that Halloween has passed, the holidays are looming. I don't mean to sound like it is such a dismal thing...it is not for me. However, I tend to get caught up in everyone's fury of trying to make the holidays special instead of noticing how they ARE special anyway. Imagine what the holidays could be without the traditional Thanksgiving stuffing that no one likes but can't bear leave out, or forgetting the 50 Christmas cards for $100+, or skipping the choosing, wrapping, under thinking and under budgeting of gifts. Not to mention the constant snapping of photos and oh shit, did we charge the camcorder?
I want to spend a holiday where I just exist and am mindful. This is terribly too much to ask right now, I know. I am now raising a human and must join the race of documenting. every. single. second.while.making.every.second.meaningful.
But this is all beside my point.
Beeecauuuse...I have this bad habit of doing the NEW YEAR RESOLUTION LOAD OF YOU KNOW WHAT. And I have the habit of failing these resolutions within days and casually thinking there is always next year. Is there? We don't know. So I must be prepared to break this habit.
Screw the New Year. It is the beginning of November, the feast of all souls, and my soul is at stake. I am starting the act of mindful living today.
I am starting here. And I am not going to describe it to you through my late-Thursday head static. I want you to read about it for yourself and get just as inspired as I am...static and all.
What a simple, transforming thing to do. I involved my husband and we started today.
Here is what we came up with:
Me:
1. My husband. My wing man. Thanks to Snickollet, I am aware of this gift every second. That awareness always leads me to a quiet prayer for her and her children as they trudge through the blessing/burden of everyday living. She has changed my life.
2. My daughter. My healthy, spicy, non-stop bundle of becoming.
3. The recent happiness of close friends. A first pregnancy, an engagement, a job offer. I want more for others more than I want for myself...thanks to this man.
4. An able body. No matter how difficult running has been lately. I had the good mind to take a week off to let some injuries heal. I am rarely so smart.
5. The closeness of family. The time that I spent with my parents last week. The fact that I talk to my sister every day. That my sister-in-law is crazy enough about my daughter that she drove to my house to see her in her adorable duck costume yesterday.
Husband:
1. Me. Uh, this may just be something he says to get me in the sack.
2. His daughter. What a ridiculous display of crazy, drop everything love he has for that child.
3. Our house. Very noble, but remember we are trying to sell it, dude. Don't get too attached. A roof over our heads is a very, very good thing, though.
4. The fact that Blogging is a hobby of mine that doesn't suck money out of our bank account. Okay. I will give him that. After triathlons, every diet on the planet and every workout gimmick on the planet, I will give him that.
5. Our cats. Yeah...they are cute and all, but they poop a lot and they literally kicked me out of bed at 2 am this morning.
See, good people? See why I am ready for that and not for this? I will save "this" for another time. Please comment.
I'd love to hear your list.
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3 comments:
OK, the comment you left at my blog? About how I am everything you want to be? That was an amazingly nice thing to say. What a compliment--it brought tears to my eyes.
Thank you for the prayers and support.
And now I must go link to the inspirational thing that you linked to because it sounds like something I could use.
I totally agree about the holidays. The struggle to make things meaningful with displays instead of ordinary interaction, day to day comforting, giving something of yourself 2 months before Christmas instead of buying gifts to demonstrate what you should have done or could have done. Oh, the content analysis that can be done with the idea of display.
My list:
1. My husband: To paraphrase the title of a Lee Abbott book - Everything to me. All at once. Strength. Intelligence. Wit. Love.
2. My dream: Running after the writing dream is a difficult thing. I am challenged from the moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep again. I get frustrated. I cry over teaching. I cry because I'm lonely for my husband. I learn of a college roommate, younger than I and already pregnant and I feel the incessant pulse of my ovaries. Sometimes I second guess these sacrifices and tell people that it might not be worth it. Sometimes I have delusions of grandeur. Sometimes I can't get out of bed. I have learned to struggle against struggle and simultaneously embrace it.
3. My Cleveland home: I long for it. I have memory cycles about it. I imagine the driveway and the lawn and then I imagine the side door, the stairs up to the kitchen, the living room with newspapers and magazines everywhere, the stairs, the cats perched on the first landing, the bedroom that still looks new to me, the attic where I wrote the best literature analysis I've ever written. My Columbus apartment is all right. It's not my Cleveland home.
4. My imagination: I don't know what I would be doing without my daydreams and wild imaginings and the thought, "Whoa, better get that down on paper." Emotional rearrangement comes with wild imagination but it's worth it to feel so keenly. I write this now because I haven't spent the day crying over various things.
5. My breasts: I'm acknowledging physical body instead of lofty pursuit and challenge. My breasts are my best physical feature. Husband says that my eyes are but I've been inspecting longer than he has.
I'm here by myself at home while Colin is at school, and I was determined to take this time to myself to write. I turned to your blog for inspiration. I feel truly blessed that God has put you in my life. Your writing is SUCH an inspiration to me.
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