the little things
I have not posted here for a while, for which I feel bad. I hate it when blogs I like to read have not posted for a while, because I look forward to their news. So I feel bad that I haven't posted regularly recently. I have news of little things, little happenings...
It seems like my inner and outer life is going through profound changes, but if I were asked to describe them, I might have some difficulty. Partly, it would be reticence and shyness. Partly it would be because of my difficulties in finding words to describe what is happening. (I mistyped 'words' initially as 'worlds'!!--is that a freudian slip?)
Maybe it would help if I said I've been studying some of T.Harv Eker's teachings about money? So many of the inspired teachers I have read over the years just seem to dovetail together into an ever-expanding way I am learning, my growing way of looking at my world.
People who know me very well, know that money has been difficult for me in my life. That's the reticence part. I was raised in a household where money was not discussed, unless I asked for something. Then money was something we 'did not have'. As I've been studying Eker's ideas, I've come to realize that I have a lot of unhelpful and downright dangerous beliefs about money. I am now trying to un-learn these and replace them with thoughts and behaviors which will make that side of my life better.
The other part is the little things. I practice appreciation every day and can spend hours watching, noticing, observing little things. What a wonderful place I live in! There are the birds. There are the various trees. There are the other little creatures.
The other day, I noticed again the cup-shape pattern of the needles of a volunteer red pine to the north of the house. The dark green, finely needled bundles crowded at the tips of the branches were holding little balls of snow, like cotton balls. The repeating pattern all over the tree had me standing like a fool for many minutes, staring out the window.
Yesterday, my coffee got cold as I forgot to drink it, watching two red squirrels under the bird feeder in the apple tree to the south of the house. About the same size as chipmunks, these two little squirrels were very entertaining. Nervous, they flitted up and down the tree when alarmed. Then they would sit very still, watching with bright eyes, the tension in their feathery tails twitching every few seconds. When they scampered about, their feet moved too fast to see, making their movements seem like water rippling, lighting fast, flowing, rather than 'climbing' up or down the tree. Then the branches of the tree became their aerial highway to the branches of the maples at the south of the yard. Down the limbs they flowed, down the trunk, then hopping and skipping across the tops of the zigzag old cedar-rail fence, out of sight.
I have come to realize that as I have thought about and appreciated my 'birds' and the rural life I appreciate, it has been coming into my life in a greater and greater way. Unconsciously, I have been attracting more of what I want into my life and I'm grateful for it! I did however have to let go of my old life and go into a sort of free-fall which was very frightening.
What a contrast to an acquaintance of mine who has been so busy holding on to what she has worked so hard for, at the same time being extremely unhappy in her marriage: damned if she is going to let him have any of what she believes is rightfully hers...and the mess keeps getting bigger and bigger. I think she is so much more frightened of what "might" be, that she is more comfortable holding to the awfulness of what she knows now, holding on with a death grip. She would rather strangle what she has now, holding on, than face any future without what she believes she has rightfully 'earned'.
It has become very obvious to me that what you focus on is what you get. So, consciously, I am trying to focus on what brings me joy, peace and fulfillment.
That is not always easy, for example, in the workplace of my paying job. Conversations sort of lose their momentum, sometimes coming to a screetching halt when I put in my 2 cents-worth.
One woman who shall remain nameless, mostly because I don't like her or trust her, started to tell me about how hard she works and complained about how lazy her peers are, how they leave all this work undone. She boasted that she loves to work hard and do a good job.
I finally said, I would rather play. (I was trying to change the subject, because I frankly found I could not agree with her and it was tiring.) I think playing is much more important. To be kind, I did try to explain that when I'm doing something that I love, although to another it might seem like work, to me it is play.
As an example of how different we each are, in terms of what we find is play/work, I told her about my Oldest Daughter, who loves anything to do with cosmetics. Oldest Daughter recently found a book about some make-up artist who took Hollywood stars and made them up to look like another Hollywood star completely. This to her is fascinating. To me it is barely interesting...To me it would be work to delve into it in any depth. To Oldest Daughter, gardening is work--to me it's play.
But, you know, I could tell this woman would rather have stayed in the mode of complaining about her peers and how hard she works...you know what I mean? And as a result, this woman is embroiled in too many fights to count: with her bosses, peers and nearly everyone around her, who all have complaints about how she does her work...
Observing this, I'm struck again by the idea that what you focus on, is what you attract into your life!
So as I sit here, my back to the windows, the sun shining in is so warm on my back that it is comforting, like an embrace or a hot water bottle.
I smile, as I think about Molly's walk (Molly is my English Bulldog, for those who are new to my journal), a head-swinging waddle. But even she is trimmer, more fit and the weight keeps dropping off as she gets her exercise with us.
A new bird sighting for me: a pileated wood-pecker, who Ann describes so colourfully as 'putting a hurtin' on the trees' around here. An ugly, surprisingly large bird, inmy opinion, not surprising it puts such a hurtin' on trees!
Long stare into the yellow eyes of the grey owl as it makes a regular reappearance around our home, a strange heart-stopping moment each time, appreciating the muted elegance of it's colouring.
My laughing-Hoti sculpture disappeared under the snow after I moved him here into this garden. Maybe when he reappears as the snow melts, I'll be able to report on our seedlings as they sprout in our greenhouse.
During the day, the greenhouse is positively tropical. It is not heated, however, so, fearing the night-time temperature drop, we haven't dared to start any tender seedlings yet. Besides, we have set ourselves the task of painting the laundry room first...then we'll start our play in the greenhouse.
My friends Connie and Kim giggle at me as I serve them a lunch of taco-salad..."I've never eaten avocado before. Have you eaten this before?" they ask each other, in giggly whispers."Kidney beans...have you eaten this before? Me neither." Imagine me asking Kim to peel and cut up some avocado! They are having a marvelous adventure while I'm worrying they will not like it. Thank goodness they love me anyway.
Amazing that from apparently totally different life-paths, my housemate Ann and I have come together and are so compatible in many ways. If that is not the universe conspiring to make our lives richer, I don't know what it is. I pretty much took one look at Ann as she opened up the door that wintry afternoon in December,and I knew I liked her. If we were too different in life-styles, it could have been so much more difficult.
And I know, when she goes off to California as she has planned, life will unfold for me as well, here or in some other great place, in some good way that I cannot as yet envision. That Ann's life and mine are running parallel to each other for a while will be another rich strand in the colourful lives we are each weaving.
Those are some of the little things I am appreciating, little words that hold worlds of meaning for me.
It seems like my inner and outer life is going through profound changes, but if I were asked to describe them, I might have some difficulty. Partly, it would be reticence and shyness. Partly it would be because of my difficulties in finding words to describe what is happening. (I mistyped 'words' initially as 'worlds'!!--is that a freudian slip?)
Maybe it would help if I said I've been studying some of T.Harv Eker's teachings about money? So many of the inspired teachers I have read over the years just seem to dovetail together into an ever-expanding way I am learning, my growing way of looking at my world.
People who know me very well, know that money has been difficult for me in my life. That's the reticence part. I was raised in a household where money was not discussed, unless I asked for something. Then money was something we 'did not have'. As I've been studying Eker's ideas, I've come to realize that I have a lot of unhelpful and downright dangerous beliefs about money. I am now trying to un-learn these and replace them with thoughts and behaviors which will make that side of my life better.
The other part is the little things. I practice appreciation every day and can spend hours watching, noticing, observing little things. What a wonderful place I live in! There are the birds. There are the various trees. There are the other little creatures.
The other day, I noticed again the cup-shape pattern of the needles of a volunteer red pine to the north of the house. The dark green, finely needled bundles crowded at the tips of the branches were holding little balls of snow, like cotton balls. The repeating pattern all over the tree had me standing like a fool for many minutes, staring out the window.
Yesterday, my coffee got cold as I forgot to drink it, watching two red squirrels under the bird feeder in the apple tree to the south of the house. About the same size as chipmunks, these two little squirrels were very entertaining. Nervous, they flitted up and down the tree when alarmed. Then they would sit very still, watching with bright eyes, the tension in their feathery tails twitching every few seconds. When they scampered about, their feet moved too fast to see, making their movements seem like water rippling, lighting fast, flowing, rather than 'climbing' up or down the tree. Then the branches of the tree became their aerial highway to the branches of the maples at the south of the yard. Down the limbs they flowed, down the trunk, then hopping and skipping across the tops of the zigzag old cedar-rail fence, out of sight.
I have come to realize that as I have thought about and appreciated my 'birds' and the rural life I appreciate, it has been coming into my life in a greater and greater way. Unconsciously, I have been attracting more of what I want into my life and I'm grateful for it! I did however have to let go of my old life and go into a sort of free-fall which was very frightening.
What a contrast to an acquaintance of mine who has been so busy holding on to what she has worked so hard for, at the same time being extremely unhappy in her marriage: damned if she is going to let him have any of what she believes is rightfully hers...and the mess keeps getting bigger and bigger. I think she is so much more frightened of what "might" be, that she is more comfortable holding to the awfulness of what she knows now, holding on with a death grip. She would rather strangle what she has now, holding on, than face any future without what she believes she has rightfully 'earned'.
It has become very obvious to me that what you focus on is what you get. So, consciously, I am trying to focus on what brings me joy, peace and fulfillment.
That is not always easy, for example, in the workplace of my paying job. Conversations sort of lose their momentum, sometimes coming to a screetching halt when I put in my 2 cents-worth.
One woman who shall remain nameless, mostly because I don't like her or trust her, started to tell me about how hard she works and complained about how lazy her peers are, how they leave all this work undone. She boasted that she loves to work hard and do a good job.
I finally said, I would rather play. (I was trying to change the subject, because I frankly found I could not agree with her and it was tiring.) I think playing is much more important. To be kind, I did try to explain that when I'm doing something that I love, although to another it might seem like work, to me it is play.
As an example of how different we each are, in terms of what we find is play/work, I told her about my Oldest Daughter, who loves anything to do with cosmetics. Oldest Daughter recently found a book about some make-up artist who took Hollywood stars and made them up to look like another Hollywood star completely. This to her is fascinating. To me it is barely interesting...To me it would be work to delve into it in any depth. To Oldest Daughter, gardening is work--to me it's play.
But, you know, I could tell this woman would rather have stayed in the mode of complaining about her peers and how hard she works...you know what I mean? And as a result, this woman is embroiled in too many fights to count: with her bosses, peers and nearly everyone around her, who all have complaints about how she does her work...
Observing this, I'm struck again by the idea that what you focus on, is what you attract into your life!
So as I sit here, my back to the windows, the sun shining in is so warm on my back that it is comforting, like an embrace or a hot water bottle.
I smile, as I think about Molly's walk (Molly is my English Bulldog, for those who are new to my journal), a head-swinging waddle. But even she is trimmer, more fit and the weight keeps dropping off as she gets her exercise with us.
A new bird sighting for me: a pileated wood-pecker, who Ann describes so colourfully as 'putting a hurtin' on the trees' around here. An ugly, surprisingly large bird, inmy opinion, not surprising it puts such a hurtin' on trees!
Long stare into the yellow eyes of the grey owl as it makes a regular reappearance around our home, a strange heart-stopping moment each time, appreciating the muted elegance of it's colouring.
My laughing-Hoti sculpture disappeared under the snow after I moved him here into this garden. Maybe when he reappears as the snow melts, I'll be able to report on our seedlings as they sprout in our greenhouse.
During the day, the greenhouse is positively tropical. It is not heated, however, so, fearing the night-time temperature drop, we haven't dared to start any tender seedlings yet. Besides, we have set ourselves the task of painting the laundry room first...then we'll start our play in the greenhouse.
My friends Connie and Kim giggle at me as I serve them a lunch of taco-salad..."I've never eaten avocado before. Have you eaten this before?" they ask each other, in giggly whispers."Kidney beans...have you eaten this before? Me neither." Imagine me asking Kim to peel and cut up some avocado! They are having a marvelous adventure while I'm worrying they will not like it. Thank goodness they love me anyway.
Amazing that from apparently totally different life-paths, my housemate Ann and I have come together and are so compatible in many ways. If that is not the universe conspiring to make our lives richer, I don't know what it is. I pretty much took one look at Ann as she opened up the door that wintry afternoon in December,and I knew I liked her. If we were too different in life-styles, it could have been so much more difficult.
And I know, when she goes off to California as she has planned, life will unfold for me as well, here or in some other great place, in some good way that I cannot as yet envision. That Ann's life and mine are running parallel to each other for a while will be another rich strand in the colourful lives we are each weaving.
Those are some of the little things I am appreciating, little words that hold worlds of meaning for me.
posted by Kati at 1:54 p.m.
1 Comments:
It seems as if I've lost virtually all my appreciation for the "little things" these days, something I'm sore about disappointed about. Strange, as I consider myself a pretty artistic person at heart: exactly the kind of person (in other words) who would really be able to appreciate said little things.
There's so much opportunity to appreciate but at the same time there often seems to be so little time. (Ridiculous, I know, but that's the feeling I have much of the time.) Beautiful sunset? Who has the time?
I'm trying to remedy this but for a lifelong depressive like myself it's slow going. Hope you're well.
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