The Answer is Always Right Here

It was in a noisy, crowded bar in Vancouver, BC after playing a show with the political punk band I was in at the time when I heard, and understood for the first time, those words.  

We had taken separate cars up and half the band had gotten times messed up, resulting in a rather frantic and immediate entry to the stage once everyone had arrived.  No sound check.  We just plugged in and went.  Sometimes that’s what you have to do.  

We stayed after to see the other bands, though noisy bars have never been my thing.  I don’t have the ears, or the voice, for it.  I don’t want anyone shouting in my ear, and I don’t want to shout in anyone else’s ear.  It just makes me cough, anyway.

My mind wandered, as it often does in proper pendulum fashion....a wide and graceful slow motion swoop back and forth between past and future.  (Isn’t it inevitable that it has to pass through the present each time?)  

If the grass is always greener on the other side (in the other tense?), then our Selves are always better over there, too.  If we can remove ourselves enough with a projection onto the future then maybe we won’t be burdened by us when the time comes.  If time heals everything then eventually it will just take the parts of us we don’t like away.....right?  Instead of removing the Big Bad Wolf of our ego and judgement, we would rather wait for time to take away everything that provokes it.  Typical ;)

Whatever answers we may seek, we can only find them right here.  This moment.  Even if the journey is 1,000 miles long there becomes here eventually.  Nothing can be discovered outside of now.  In fact....nothing can be said, felt, seen, experienced, feared, sung, drunk, heard, touched, celebrated, broken, destroyed, or even noticed outside of now.  

Once discovered, NOW is a vast and infinite canvas...yet we spend so much of our time trying to create our Life's Masterpiece safely hidden on the edges that don’t really exist.  You have all the room you need to create your incredible and unique work of art.  Don’t worry about taking up someone else’s space.  There is room in the moment for everyone and if we all could get together there, well, I dare say magic might happen.  (And I dare say it does.)

The Prettiest Girl in the Room

“Everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.”  ~32 Flavors, Ani DiFranco

I think about that line a lot.  Sometimes it’s in the literal sense of how people compare their bodies to others and sometimes it’s more in how we get down on ourselves because of others’ accomplishments and attention.  It all ties together.

It’s true that I have been thin all my life.  And I have pretty much been 5’10” since the 4th grade.  I was the textbook definition of awkwardly scrawny, and still have a knobby knee complex that is truly ridiculous.  Because I tried to eat at least a little bit healthy in school, skipping the unidentifiable parts of high school lunches and going for salads instead, people assumed I was on diets and accused me (light-heartedly?  playfully?) of being anorexic.  (The still-clinging habits I adopted to try and prove people wrong are a whole other story!)

It’s taken me a long time to realize the fact that most of my life people have demonstrated that it’s ok to say things to each other like, “I hate you; you’re so skinny.”  And it’s “ok,” because people think it’s a compliment.  People think that phrases like that actually make someone feel good about themselves.  People think in that sense that if they put themselves down it will boost others up.

It’s completely inappropriate to talk to someone in that manner if they’re overweight, so why on earth is it ok to accuse someone of being under weight?  (And furthermore, when the heck did it become a compliment to tell someone you hate them??)

What’s the message learned from that?  “Shine too bright and you’ll make others around you feel bad about themselves.”  Ouch.  No one wants to do that.  Most people would rather hold themselves back than risk hurting other people and somehow the guilt is lessened if we diminish our light and keep ourselves down.

We need to fix this, in a big way.  We need a new model (take that as you will!).  As best I can figure it out we are all here to be as happy as we possibly can, and you know what?  Joy is beauty!  When we shine our brightest, when we do our best, when we follow our dreams, when we take care of ourselves, when we tell, and show, the world that we are in love with who we are, we help teach others how to do the same.  That’s what the world needs.  That’s a remarkable gift we can give each other. 

You are here to shine, with a light that is yours and only yours.  The world would not be the same without it. 

Do Nothing

There are turnaround moments in our lives, some monumental and some mundane.  Sometimes we know without a doubt when we experience one, some take days or months or weeks to catch up to us as such.

Last week I had a quiet night at home with my sweetie.  Neither of us had any plans on the evening, and ended up just doing our own thing, with him in his office and me downstairs.  I’ve been trying hard lately to separate my “work” hours from my “off work” hours (mostly to make sure that I actually have some off work hours!) and that evening I was trying to figure out what to do with the ones I had.

Innocently enough I started looking around the house for little chores I could get done or fun projects I could do, and it began to strike me that everywhere I looked were items or areas taunting me with obligational guilt, i.e. I was completely surrounded by “I should’s.”  It escalated, rather quickly, to the point where I was frantically pacing around the house feeling like I was in one of those horror movie scenes where everywhere the character turns there’s another scary thing in a quick zoom lens knocking them in the face ‘til either they go insane or the camera blacks out.

Seemingly small things had added up to make an overwhelming weight for me, and I was paralyzed to do anything at all about any of them.  I called my mom to try and calm down, and she asked me for an example of the “small things” I was referring to.  I went to a random surface in the bedroom and began naming off everything I saw there and why it was something else that “I should be doing.”  Then she asked me another good question.

What advice would you suggest to your readers if they were to find themselves in a situation like this?  What would you advise them to do?

After a second of contemplating this shiny new thought I practically yelled, “Chill out!  I would tell them to do nothing!”  

That was precisely what I needed to do.  That state of complete overwhelm and panic is a terrible place to do anything from, sometimes even impossible.  Once I surrendered to that notion, I tried relaxing on the couch playing my favorite game on Will’s phone.  Couldn’t do it.  Then I tried reading, but the second I opened the book I couldn’t do that either.  Nothing, Shawnee.  Just sit there, and be still.  Do...nothing.  Not as easy as it sounds, though I had NO idea it would be that difficult!  ...And I will confess that I never actually succeeded.  Thank God for midnight and a comfy bed ;)  

I know many of us can get so driven that it’s hard to get off the productivity train, even when it’s stalled out and stopped dead on the tracks.  It’s hard not to feel like every minute that goes by without something else getting done is five minutes wasted.  

My only flash of solace during this experience was, at my mom’s suggestion, to go around and make a list of every thing, big or small, that was the source of a “should” in my surroundings.  Hence began my daily fun of the Super Duper Ultimate To-Do List!  :)  It’s on a spread sheet on my computer, and I mark off the day something gets done, so I can organize it by day, with all the things I’ve already done at the top.  Sure, my list is well over 100 items long, including tasks, household or otherwise, of varying size (“make a new record” is right there next to vacuum the stairs), BUT in just a few days over 30 of those things got done!  I decided not to care how small something was.  As long as I determined it was taking up brain space, it qualified.  

Even if a list is long, at least then it’s quantifiable.  I much prefer to have it all written down where I can see it, rather than just feel the ominous presence of an unidentified shadow.

Ok then, I’m off to cross out “Write Thursday’s blog” now ;)

I wish you a beautiful day.  (And a little bit of nothing.)

Feel Good

“When I do good, I feel good.

  When I do bad, I feel bad.

  That’s my religion.”

  ~Abraham Lincoln

I love this quote, and I think it works the other way too.  When I feel good, I do good.  When I feel bad, I do bad.

I’m not far enough along yet to claim that I truly understand the law of attraction....but I definitely believe in it....to whatever degree I am capable of in the midst of whatever it is that's going on.  I only know what I have experienced and I know that when I feel super down I can’t very well do much of anything.  It's harder to be productive.  It’s harder to be kind, harder to reach out.  It’s harder to take good care of myself.  It’s harder to leave the house (I’ve heard this is important to do ;)

I’ve been realizing lately that there are so many little ways I can take better care of myself and I just don’t.  I know what makes me feel good and I know what makes me feel bad, so why do I do so much of (the wrong) one and so little of the other?  I can feel bad about my skin, but do I actually take the time to properly wash (and love!) my face before bed?  I can feel bad about all the sugar I eat, but do I actually not eat it?  (What in God’s name do I think will happen if don’t eat the entire bag of chocolate covered strawberries I got in my stocking in one sitting?)  

Feeling good is magical, straight up.  Feeling good means everything.  It means having an open heart so that you may receive.  It means being in alignment with this incredible and indescribably beautiful universe.  It means that you’re less focused on you and more focused on the amazing life force that runs through you.  It means knowing that you are a beautiful human being and you deserve good things.  It means having the confidence to acknowledge your dreams, the confidence to see opportunities to get closer to them, and then the confidence to try.  

Of course you’re not ever going to feel good all the time, but getting back there should always be priority.  Buy that $6 sweater from Goodwill, take the time to make that delicious salad for lunch (instead of just snacking on those chocolate covered strawberries), spend that extra $1 for the fancy coffee you really want, wash your sheets, hug your chickens.  Do whatever you need to do to feel good.  The world will be a better place for it.  

Stop and Go

Sometimes I feel like my life is one big game of stop and go.  Maybe that's healthy to point, but what happens when there's too much stopping and not enough going?  At the risk of repeating an analogy that makes a lot of sense to me, too much stopping is like pausing a song after every line to reflect on it, without allowing yourself the experience of hearing the song in its entirety.

It's important to have a balance, between adventure and reflection.  If you're going, going, going all the time it's easy to miss the meaning of your experiences and what you've learned from them, because the next thing is already there.  But, if you never allow for adventure you'll inevitably be stuck reflecting on a past that is well over by now.

I find myself spending so much time hesitating....just hesitating: second-guessing, rethinking, worrying about the potential worst outcomes of things I put out into the world (and often jumping ship when I find a strong dislike of the worst worst one!).  Some things should be well thought out, absolutely, and others (like that funny post you're making on facebook)....well, just don't need to take up that much time and energy.

We all want to have an effect on the world, but in general we want it to be positive.  With exceptions, of course, no one wants to say or do anything that leaves a negative impression, and we definitely want to leave a good first one.  Some of us are far more cautious than others when it comes to that, and the fear can leave some people paralyzed, never actually gaining the confidence to make any impression at all.

Life is ever flowing, and it's a much more pleasant experience if we let ourselves flow with it.  It's good to take time to rest and reflect, but usually we can get away with coasting for a bit when we need to, rather than slamming on the brakes and shutting the whole thing down 'til we know exactly what we're doing again.

I don't know about you, but I rarely know exactly what I'm doing.....though usually there's some kind of light on the horizon, towards which my heart knows to aim my feet.