298: make peace with the moment

Found at 31experiment, via SouleMama

There are certain mantras. There are certain things we need to remind ourselves: that we are all essentially good, that we must be here now, that we should be proud of ourselves and our choices.

Sometimes that's not so easy to remember. Me, I tend to look backwards and forwards all the time--remembering first dates, the undergraduate years, times when I wasn't so unhappy with my body or with this space I take up. I look forward to being back in school, to having children. I have trouble stabilizing myself in the here-and-now.

But look at today: the temperatures are low enough that we haven't had to turn on our air conditioning in days, I have new running shoes to try out tonight, I just dropped my friend Colleen off at the Anderson Center for her two week artist residency (and gawked at the vastness of the house), I've got a good book to finish and a project on the knitting needles, tonight I will make dinner with my husband and fall asleep easily.

Life is good, I was telling my book club girlfriends last night. We were talking about running, and Emily said she was fueled when she was angry--I realized that was when my own endurance rose, both on swim team in high school, and when I used the elliptical at the Y. And I felt better. Do I need to invent reasons to be angry to make it more than a handful of blocks before huffing into a juttering walk? Do I need to bring myself back to mad? No. I have another motivator, but I'm going to keep that mum for a little while.

Making peace with the moment isn't entirely the same thing as being here now, though. Rather, it's about forgiveness and acceptance and all of those difficult things that allow you to embrace being alive and not letting things bog you down. I have some baggage I have been carrying about, and I'm choosing to let it go. There are moments when I find I need to prove that my lack of forgiveness is justified, that I am right, and how much energy does that take? Making peace with the past.

Making peace with myself: the anger I get at time wasting, the procrastination, the cluttered home and cluttered body, the bad poetry to get to the good, the impatience, the things that make me miserable when I look in the mirror. The utter lack of self confidence. These things have to go. Making peace with the journey.

Indeed, I find myself in a very lucky place in my life right now: I'm married to my favorite person in the entire world, I have girl friends who fill my heart, we have a home and a little animal family, a garden, good conversation, long walks. It's not always the case, and there is someone very dear to me who has been holding her own through an amazing string of bad luck lately. My heart is with her, and I hope this sweet illustration maybe helps. A little bit.