Earthquakes, floods, global warming, car bombs, failed careers, failed waistbands, too much stuff, too much cake, too much noise, too much too much...
It can definitely be easy to succumb to the negative around us. I know I've spent much of my life waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I have posted about this before: I have somehow become quite familiar with the noise inside my head that instructs me that the inevitable outcome of whatever is presently receiving my focus is doomed to failure in some way. Whether my focus be on money, marriage, or marmalade, there seems to be an incessant need on the part of my good old fashioned ego to run amok through my carefully constructed thoughts, kicking them around like a bunch of mischievous gremlins at a mud puddle convention.
And let's face it, my thoughts are not that carefully constructed. They can be lazy, negative, downright sloppy little gits whose only goal for the future is to trample over the present. These crummy, perpetually hungry thoughts feast upon my greatest hope for myself like my greatest hope for myself is the last pork chop at the apple sauce buffet. They came they saw, they chewed it all up leaving nothing but a bare bone on the plate in their wake.
Great. Now I'm feeling peckish.
Well there is good news in all this, yes? The good news is that at any moment, a new better thought can replace a crap thought and then a whole new series of better thoughts can replace their predecessors. And the beat goes on.
Is it possible to re-train our minds to wait for the next good thing to happen, instead? And then when we reach that point is it possible to train our minds to stop waiting for anything to happen? Isn't it possible to enjoy what is happening now? I think it is.
The other day, I was doing some organizational/administration work for my Arbonne business while my little boy was sleeping. My oldest son, Zachary, was fluttering about, watching an educational program on Public Television. (I offer the specificity regarding the programing to my own ego who berates me constantly for letting my son watch TV in the first place. I really should be a crafting/ exploring nature outside/and teaching with Young Einstein cards all day kind of Mom. Note to self: After posting this, take Zach outside and look at ants. )
Anyhoo, when the program was over, Zach asked me to read him a book. So we settled down and read his Cars etcha-sketch book and drew different cars for a while. I found myself listening to Zachary's sweet little 2 1/2 year old voice and suddenly I fast forwarded to the me as his Mom in 20 years from now. The me in 20 years from now is a Mom of two young men who don't need or want to sit around and read story books with her anymore. The me in 20 years from now stood behind the me from right now, lingering over my shoulder. Together, she and I listened to this sweet, high voice of my little boy trilling to me about cars. And I felt my future self asking my present self to pay attention. These moments, I felt her advising, are fleeting. And they will disappear from out of nowhere.
These moments at home alone with my boys, sigh. Beautiful, rewarding, exquisite, incomparable. Yet, at times they may not be very stimulating and at times they may even be a bit boring. They are also in fact so tremendously precious. Zachary's little voice... Listening to that voice in retrospect as my future self, from a point in time that my present self had not yet arrived, plugged me back into the now moment. I almost thanked my future self for the check in, as if she had actually been standing there beside me the whole time.
Maybe she was. Maybe we all have that future, wiser self guiding our steps through these perceived trials and tribulations reminding us of the present. Maybe we just need to listen to that voice because from the perspective of our future, wiser selves maybe these trials and tribulations are really just the happenings of another moment in time. This moment in this time.
So I'll take my focus off the natural disasters (which I can't control) and imagined failures of my youth and my waistband (which, let's face it, I can control) and I'll put that focus right here, right now.
Here's wishing us all a happy, joyful moment in this moment in time. Let the next one arrive as it may, stocked full of all the yummy goodness we crave. Life's a feast. Dig in!
xoxo
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