Irritation

    

 There are people in my life that irritate me.  I recently had a situation where the person I was around was really grating on my last nerve and then they did a little action that really set me off.  I stormed off.  I said a little snide remark as I walked away just for dramatics, but I am sure it made no difference to them.  The situation continued to haunt me, playing over and over in my head, even though I tried my best to think other thoughts. I did do quite a few Meta meditations on this person- "May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you live your life with ease", as well as on myself until my mind quieted down. I finally decided to dissect the situation.  I was berating myself because if this person made me so mad about something that really made no difference in my life at all, how was I able to love and accept those who were very different from me, with different colors, languages and customs.  After all, I promote peace and love all the time, reposting positive affirmations; "We are all one", "Forgiveness is the key", "Love is the answer", and many more.  As I continued on this train of thought, I realized I was more upset at myself than the other person.  I had allowed myself the feeling of "How dare you", but then I started thinking about my Creator.  In my mind, my Creator loves all life, no ifs, ands or buts.  No matter the circumstance.  My Creator created this person, or there was co-creation, this soul and the Creator.  In that line of thought, then it was this soul's purpose to be this personality, to experience life in their way, not my way.  Mind blowing, at least for me.  The key word for me was personality.  I was not appreciating or accepting the way this person chose to live their life, I was not accepting the Creator was enjoying this personality.  Just because I was not enjoying it, does not mean someone else was not.  Heady stuff, at least for me.  I understand a little more about myself, this being said, it does not mean I will go out of my way to be around this person, they still annoy me, but an understanding is there now that I can only see getting bigger and bigger and love replacing judgement, one experience at a time.

A Sting

 
 Today while walking back from the apartment pool, I was stung by an insect.  I did not see it, I felt it and immediately swatted it from the back of my leg.  I did not react in my usual way of blaming the Universe for the sting, asking, "why, oh why would this happen to me?", I just noticed it.  I felt it.  I wondered what had stung me, and kind of felt sorry for what stung me, who knows, I might have just walked into its path and messed up its day.  I did make a plan of action for when I got back to the apartment; find my Thieves essential oil and take a Benedryl. I have had allergic reactions to bee stings before, so I take a Benedryl now just so I do not end up in the emergency room later.  After making my plan of actin, I continued to marvel at how calm I was.  I was thinking, "I am the only one experiencing this sting at this time.  It is just a sting.  No more, no less."  When I had been stung previously, there were tears, there were threats to the whole insect world and then a thinking of why did I get stung, was the Universe trying to converse with me through a sting?
    It was just a sting.  It happened.  But it is not happening now.  Yes, there is a welt and swelling of sorts, but the actual sting, it is over.  It got me to wondering where did I learn that a sting is bad?  Where did I pick up that getting stung should never happen to me?  I live in a world of constant danger, stings, bites, animals, people.  All seem out to get me.  Or so it would seem if listening to the banter on TV.  Nothing is out to get me.  Life just is.  My actions or reactions to Life is how I perceive it, either through a lens of something is out to get me, or what a beautiful world, where an insect sting can cause me to stop and think how wonderful this world is.  I can truly say I am not happy about being stung, I am not very tolerant of pain, it is something I try to avoid, but when it does happen I am grateful because it does bring me back to present moment and remind me of my humanness.  Maybe that is what is meant by living in this world but not of it the world.  

The Price of Being Human

 
 It was tragic.  It is tragic.  One man responsible for the deaths of 49 people and injury of countless others.  Or so it seems.  It never is just one person that is involved.  It was all the people that one person was around, who influenced them, who helped them gain access to ways of killing others.  911 was tragic and still is.  Every war is tragic.  All the people that died and for what?  To prove a point?  A cry for help?  Why does any human being have the urge or the want to kill another human being for that matter?  Killing and hurting each other has been going on since the very beginning, whenever that was, and people kill and hurt to prove that point too.  Humans die every day, in fact according to Ecology.com, 55.3 million people die per year, the news could not possibly cover all of the deaths and the multitude of ways humans die; they pick and choose who we see that died and how they died.  The news covers the sports hero, the actor/actress, the politician and maybe a human interest story (their words, their choice).  I am not saying that I will not cry when someone whom I hold dearly in my heart dies, no matter how they die, I will.  I will miss them, I will miss the personality of their being, but I do not believe it will cause me to want to harm another person because of their death.  Death is inevitable.  We as humans know this.  Our time will come.  The majority of us do not know when, so why is it such a surprise when it happens?  Why the ranting and the raving?  Is it because it causes us to face our own mortality?  You hear phrases such as, "Cut down in the prime of life", "Gone too young", but who is making these judgments?  Who is too young, what age is ok to die?  From what vantage point are we making these decisions on how long these people should live?  We have a fascination with life and death.  We are constantly bombarded (well at least here in the Western world) on how to look younger, live longer; eat this, don't eat that, take this pill, use this cream, all in the hopes of holding off death.
      I struggle with all of this.  I struggle with some of my family and friends who are devout Christians, who are good people, but who have no problem "protecting themselves and their things" from others, in anyway possible.  I was brought up in a Christian faith.  My understanding of the Crucifixion and Resurrection was that death was not real.  It is just the price of being human.  There are many other religions, actually according to Wikipedia, around 4200, and they all have some differing beliefs on the reason why we are here and why we die.  They give us a reference point.  According to science (another religion?) we are orbiting the sun at around 67,000 miles per hour.   What do all these figures mean?   Nothing really.  They are all mind games as John Lennon so poetically put into words.  As I am writing this, I am having a deep profound love for the human race and I am going to sit and revel in this feeling because I know it is fleeting and I realize how life is just so tragically beautiful.

Mother of the Bride

 
  I am always surprised on how the Universe works in my favor.  I should not be.  After 54 years of existence on this planet called Earth, I would of thought that miracles were an everyday occurrence and should come as no surprise, they are actually part of life.  I did not think about this stuff as a child. I just knew that is how the world worked and I do not recall when I stopped believing in them.  I do remember when I started believing again, when I had children and stayed home with them until they were old enough to go to school, everyday was a miracle that I lived through it.  Not that my kids were bad, as kids go, they were pretty good, but still.  I did start praying more when I had them, for them and for me.  And sometimes when I had a moment to contemplate I realized that although I had not paid attention to all the miracles happening in my life, they were still happening.  To paraphrase Albert Einstein, "You either believe everything is a miracle or nothing is."  As I get older, I notice miracles more often or maybe it is I expect miracles more often, but I am still surprised when they hit me in the face like a brick wall, well maybe more like a soft sponge.
     I was having trouble with a personality at work.  They were brass, loud, opinionated, took over the whole room and just plain annoying.  My perception was making my days at work unpleasant.  I had just finished a book by Dan Harris, "10% Happier", (I strongly recommend reading it ) and he mentioned a meditation called "Meta Meditation".  I had read about the meditation before and since it was very recent, I paid attention.  In a nutshell the mediation goes:  "May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe and may you live your life with ease."  The instructions are to start with yourself, then a mentor, a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person and then all beings.  Since I tend to make my own rules (which is why Algebra and I have never been friends), I did the meditation on this so called difficult person at work, about 3 days ago.  I did notice the next day that she was much less annoying, that a shift had taken place.  Yesterday she brought me a gift out of the blue, a pin that said, "Mother of the Bride", stating, "You can wear this at your daughter's bridal shower next weekend.".  I would not normally wear something so blingy, but you bet I will be wearing it.  The gift was such a small gesture, but to me it was another nod from the Universe stating, "Good job, keep up the great work!"  So, to all that read this blog and others it may reach from wherever this blog goes to into the black hole of the web:  May you be happy.  May you be healthy.  May you be safe.  May you live your life with ease.

Selling the House

We’ve received a counter offer this morning on our house in Bulverde.  And of course we counter-offered.  This could be it.  And so I ask myself what does that mean?  First it means we need to get the rest of the stuff out of the house and my husband needs to clean out his garage of all the tools he has amassed over the 30+ years we have been together.  No room for those in an apartment.  Our son has been living in our house, one because he had not moved out of the house, secondly because we still have animals to disperse when the house sells and thirdly because it is nice to have someone living there to keep up the yard, pool and such for showings.  90% of the house is empty, except his bedroom, bathroom and a few items left in the extra bedroom such as the futon so we have a place to sleep when we need to go back.  We are still waiting to see if the counter offer is accepted.  It is $10,000 less than the price we put on the market, but we are both ready to see this part of our lives close, well at least I am.  So I ask myself again, what does this mean?  How will it affect us?  One thing is we can pay off all of our debt.  That in itself has huge ramifications.    What does financial freedom really mean for me?  I have been trying to pay off debt for so long it has become my mantra, along with losing weight and being happy.  My Ego tells me I will be so much happier when I have no debt, lose all the weight etc…..but I know the trap.  I have lost weight before, through much exercise and starvation, and well I may have happy for a little while, but then the happiness was just not worth getting up at 5:30 every morning and exercising for an hour and half and not eating.  So I struggle with what debt-free means to me and will it really bring me happiness?  There will be one less thing worry about, but what worry will replace it?  (I hear an Alanis Morisette song in my head…..)  Angst.  Thoughts.  Why?  Did I win?  So what if I did?  So what if I didn’t?  And who am I winning or losing against?  All these thoughts surrounding the thought that we might have sold the house and all the while my background noise, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Who comes up with this stuff?  Ramblings of a normal person trying their best to live a normal life.  Whatever that is.