Tag: gratitude

Pay the piper, and enjoy the tune

I have only just realized that I’ve been paying an extra three months for a service that I don’t want.

Have you ever done that?

It’s always annoying. This streaming service, that subscription, the small donation that you thought was a one-off…sigh. Or, you know, a service that isn’t very good, that I’ve been looking forward to concluding when my contract was up.

And this time around, it was a chunk of money that made me blink a little. How could I forget to cancel it?

I keep giving myself the pep talk: well, of course you forgot. The company didn’t send you any kind of reminder, any kind of thanks for doing business with us at the end of your contract. No upcoming bill notice. And I’m back to work full-time, still madly studying for two intense courses, finding my way through the daily life threads that tangle and knot all of us sometimes, and dealing with an injury. (Well, two injuries since I managed to fall skating and made the first injury quite annoyed with me again.)

Oh, and there’s a pandemic going on.

The pep talk isn’t working. I can try to get a refund for part of it. You never know. I don’t have the energy to pursue it very far though. That’s why I hired the company to begin with! (Oh, and here’s a tip I should have followed: buy local.)

There I go again. I don’t want to feel this way. Trapped, helpless, letting that negative self-talk monster out to play, becoming so tangled in those daily-life threads that my energy is all about escape instead of peace, simply being, gratitude and happiness, and allowing life to be what it is.

Allowing! Thank you.
I’d forgotten that gem,
as I forget it nearly every day
until something taps me
on the shoulder
and asks for space in my life.

And gratitude.

That’s a tough one to practice in the dark times, but it’s tough on the dark murkiness too. Gratitude is a mop and broom, a scrubbing brush and a jug of disinfectant to murk and discouragement. I remind myself: there was a time, a most-of-my-life time, when this blink-inducing amount of money would have taken me over, filled me with instant, stomach-grinding, paralyzing fear.

Now, things are different, and so is my acquaintance with fear.

(Fear is, in fact, weak.
And I am strong!
So are you.)

I don’t want to forget about that money.

But I am so grateful that I can choose to forget about it. I can choose to let it go. I am grateful that at this place in my life, I’ll still be able to buy my groceries, take an Uber, order pizza now and then, and enjoy my lovely little riverside apartment if I choose to. I am grateful that if I notice my energy draining away into a prolonged fight for a refund, I can stop. I am grateful that I don’t even have to start that fight if I don’t want to!

I can choose to pay the piper and enjoy the tune or walk away with earplugs in and make my own tune.

And I am grateful that I have learned to recognize these knotty experiences as just things that happen, things that float by and unravel, things that have consequences and effects but that do not control my feelings and actions. I used to see them as enormous boulders made of all the knots and threads, petrified knots that would crush me if I did not resist, fight back, and obey fear.

I won’t ever try to tell you that your experience is the same as mine, that your condition is your problem or your fault and you can fix it all with gratitude. That is not true. The world can be hard and cold, and we are not meant to be bearing the burden of the cruel things that came our way as children, that come our way now as we navigate the treacherous ways of healing from trauma.

I only want you to know that gratitude, if you can find it, can help you make it through. And I see you, I hear you, I love you, I am grateful for you.

(And–I should just point out that the shysters in the featured image at the top are some kind of relatives, uncles perhaps, Irish or Italian, New Jersey, quite probably Barnums. My family is not unacquainted with ~~scam~~ creative business people.)

February 13, 2021
Samhain is still Samhain (So there, COVID!)
Today is holy in many cultures. Here in North America, we’ve nearly lost the holiness in a mess of candy chasing and best-costume prizes. This year is different as COVID rages and people choose to — or are made to — stay home. I would have anyway (solitude is my refreshment), but I have rarely felt so deeply the need, on this day, for spiritual connection. Pandemics can do that to you.

Ghosts of October 31 past grin at me from the wind storm shadows and tossing branches outside my tree-top windows. Many Hallowe’en parties, many All Hallows Eve vigils, some Dia De los Muertes (thank you Mariachi Ghost!) celebrations, some Samhain gatherings. But this is the first time I’ve watched the full moon rise and understood the meaning of the night, looked for the ending and beginning that my heritage (Irish and Catholic) teaches me.

Samhain moonrise

My grandmothers and great-grandmothers for generations prepared in vigil for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. They would have kept, and slowly lost, the memories of an earlier time, a time when the great fire festival at Tlachtga in Meath marked the passing from the light half to the dark half of the year.

I imagine wandering back to Ireland, slipping into their Rosary circle, letting their prayers lead me deeper into memory, to ancient times, until we glimpse the brightness of the Samhain fire far across the island from my grandmothers’ homes.

“This is a momentous time in the lives of a people to whom the changing of the seasons was a matter of life and death.”

https://www.newgrange.com/tlachtga.htm

What did they do when they saw the beautiful light? Samhain was the end and beginning of the year, the last gifts of the precious harvest stored, the thinning of the veil between this world and otherworld, a time to honour and welcome ancestor spirits and protect from harmful spirits. There were rituals to be followed in those ancient times just as there were for my grandmother and her vigil with her ever-present Rosary, just as there are for each of us if we are willing.

And, I think there must have been private, hidden, silent words, soft thoughts and barely articulated feelings. Whatever the ritual then or centuries later, I think they said, thank you.
```
Thank you for the promise of the sun once we’ve made it through this long darkness,
thank you for the promise of light and new life,
thank you for 
this dark night to let our sadness out and watch it disappear into the dark,
this thin veil to release the grief of the year past,
the sorrow of unwanted goodbyes, 
the end of things we would have held closely. 
```
Things change, and we need a holy place and time to make peace with the change. Our beings rest in ritual, relax in familiar prayers. We do well when we can set aside time and prepare a particular, separate space to give thanks for change, to allow, to rest without resistance as the seasons shift, as darkness and light circle in their long dance, and as the moon rises on this holy night.
October 31, 2020
Friday the 13th. I mean, why not? (COVID-19 Day 2)

The bus was late. Not just late, it disappeared. I heard the same stories of late and non-existent buses from everyone on all the routes. (SHOUT OUT – transit drivers do a great job in stupidly tough circumstances. When are we going to realize that free transit is the best thing for any city? Oh and include in that a several-times-a-day disinfecting and cleaning schedule.)

Late buses don’t seem all that important anymore.

Four cases confirmed, the university closing and moving to online classes, food services laying off people after catering cancellations pour in, so, so, many artist friends report canceled concerts, art shows, fundraiser parties, and other self-employed friends who help supply and support those events share their worry about canceled contracts.

(You already know about all the big ones like the NHL and the way arenas dumped all their low-end employees. See, they’re just doing it for (as a friend posted) shits and giggles to decompress after their full-time jobs. They don’t need the money. The players still get paid of course. OMG, how would they manage if they had to do without a paycheque?)

Schools are closing! But not for another week. Because – well. I’m not sure why. Just because.

I work at the library. Not going to talk about it because – well, again, just because. Only to say that we’re starting to feel the stress. We see the families who come to the library because that’s the only place they can access for free, and it’s such a nice environment after cramped, noisy, falling apart apartments. We see the kids doing their work there because they don’t have internet at home, and maybe they don’t want to risk taking books home then forgetting to get them back in time. I am so grateful that I have a good job.

Throughout so much of my life, while I was married for way too long to someone whose emptiness could never be filled, someone who, over and over again, took what I had just because I had it, who spent money as if he had a giant trust fund because money is a river he said whenever he wanted something, and you can’t dam it up, throughout those dismal decades, I could not have kept our children fed and clothed, could not have paid for a place to live if this pandemic had happened then.

I am so grateful for where I am now. But I shiver and feel the clench of fear in my gut each time I think of families in those desperate circumstances. Trauma lasts a long time.

I know from experience (the bitter kind, turned sweet) that meditation is my go-to medication, and without it, the trauma will take over, bitter as f, and pack away all the thinking parts of my brain. So meditation is, thank goodness (goonness, I typoed. I like that.), back in my life to lead me through this crazy world.

My son is working long, long hours outside in the cold. I’m not too worried because he has excellent hygiene, and being outside in the fresh air is a good way to stay away from nasty viruses of all kinds. But no sleep and long hours and cold, freezing cold….He has a bit of something that does seem to be no more than his usual sinus and head cold. He has a bit of a smoker’s cough. I’m going to pick up some more immune-boosting supplements and Nyquil after work.

The Rexall across the street is out of things I didn’t plan to buy anyway: face masks, hand sanitizer, and alcohol. I didn’t check the tp situation, but I do need paper towels. Wasteful, yes. One more ethical conviction that fell in the face of real life.

I’ve given in to the lure of paper towels and Swiffer, but they don’t completely rule me, not yet. Instead of fitting up the Swiffer mop with its own cleaning pads, I use paper towels to sweep and the cleaning pads for a quick hand scrub of the bathroom. Can you tell I sometimes feel guilty about it? Hardly the act of an environmentalist.

Then I think of the years, decades, when hardly a disposable anything crossed my threshold and came through my doorway. Ferry trips from Salt Spring to Vancouver Island meant taking cloth diapers and extra terry cleaning cloths, plastic bags for the dirty stuff, and (for some reason I don’t remember) a small plastic baby food container. I think it might have had some kind of baby butt cleaning goop in it in case I couldn’t get to running water. In those days, change tables were scarce. Dryer? That’s why they made the sun.

Packed lunches – waxed paper if there was no other way, lunch boxes, and hard to clean thermoses. Candles made and remade from melted wax to save on electric lights. Melting snow for baths, dishes, hair wash when the well ran dry.

I think about it, and then I forgive myself – again. Inner balance, calm, stability has a way of spreading to the people around us. Mental health first means we have the strength and energy to create environmental health.

Back in the store, it turns out they are also all out of rubber gloves – the thin disposable ones. Something else I would never use, but recently, I’ve had a couple of allergy scares when cleaning. I don’t even use “products”. But it turns out that excessive amounts of TKO can cause me to blow up like a scarlet balloon if I touch my face. Now that constant cleaning is the way of life, and disinfectant (wonderful Benefect, for choice) is coming to stay, so are rubber gloves. I’ll have to wait on the disposable ones though, and make sure to thoroughly disinfect the yellow ones every time. It’s getting complicated.

There’s plenty of cough and cold medicine, lozenges, vitamins. Is that good news? People aren’t getting sick in droves, so there’s medicine left? I don’t know, but I buy enough to get my son through this and have some leftover. The staff are friendly and patient despite what must have been a hectic day.

I’m still unsure about how I feel. Anxiety is hanging around. I see my friends’ Facebook and Instagram posts, so I know I’m not the only one. I sit down to play some slow, simple, early music on the harp, breathe with the music, focus on heart energy flowing through my arm and into my fingers. Ah. There it is, the inner serenity, the spreading pool of golden light. That’s something I can do to – maybe -help.

I make public some of my earlier harp videos and share them with friends. I don’t know if listening to it will have anything like the effect of playing it, and my harp should be plugged in since it’s not fully acoustic, and my laptop mic and camera aren’t very good, and…

Oh. You again. Listen, anxiety, I really do appreciate your protectiveness. But I’m good, thanks.

March 17, 2020