Zen and the Big Picture

It’s a great big universe and we’re all really puny, 

We’re just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney!

It’s big and black and inky,

And we’re all really dinky!

It’s a big universe and we’re not.

                        --Yakko’s Universe, Animaniacs

Yesterday was Monday.

I hope you were all sitting down for that blast of obvious.

Yesterday’s Monday started gray and soggy and with a teen who brings running late to a whole new level (which is saying something, the Camiolo level of late is pretty epic—and something that in 24 years of marriage I have only managed to mitigate slightly with my heritage of Appert earliness).  The news has been depressing, people are all hating on each other, it was “Columbus Day” which makes me crabby (go, Indigenous Peoples!), and so many of my friends are in true battles for the lives of their children right now.

EXTREEEEEEME MONDAY.

I did not start the week with a Cinderella-esque wake up song and a dancing fest of house cleaning with little bluebirds and shirt-wearing mice.

I did start with my little light therapy lamp, I have zero clue if it helps but it doesn’t hurt, so I am trying to get ahead of the literally darkening days.  I also started with a workout that reminded me how far I have to go in working out, and then moved on to Flop In a Heap Yoga. Ok, so the official name was Yoga for After a Workout or something like that, but the practice of it for me was total Flop in a Heap.

I dragged my yoga mat out to my deck, determined to take advantage of the remaining days of warmth.  The sky hung gray above, and the air thick with spritzy almost-rain, enough that my mat eventually got pretty slippery, which created a challenge I did not foresee. Even my yoga got soggy.

At the end of 25 minutes of distracted Heap Flopping, I lay on my back and stared at the sky, gray and spritzy above, thinking about all the heavy things that pushed me down into the yoga mat, pushed me down in my heart, pushed me down in my head.

            And…Yakko’s Universe popped into my head.

I wish I could say I had a glorious enlightenment moment, and I guess in some ways I did, it just came via the Animaniacs.

Everything is so heavy—but in perspective, the universe is SO MUCH BIGGER than all these heavy things. I know from teaching history for so long, things are often dire. Things often seem world-ending…but they aren’t.  The universe is bigger than all these things.  The world keeps going.

That does not necessarily ease the sting of the hard stuff. When your child is ill, that illness and the surrounding fear/pain/impossible choices become your universe.  My friends who have gone through what no parent should ever go through, the loss of a child, have said that even when you think you WILL die, you don’t. You are broken, but keep going. I love these people so much, and learn so much from how they keep going in the face of everything crashing down.

When you see your country being pulled apart, and it seems like there can be no fix…we look at history. We have been a mess before, here in America. Some might argue our history is a mess of people trying to do the best they can—or not, but it’s messy.  I love our country so much, I HAVE to acknowledge the truth of our mess. But in the big picture—Americans have kept trying to figure out what America can be. We keep going.

This helped me yesterday. Granted, Warner Brothers cartoons often help my brain.  When I’m not quoting Muppets I am usually quoting a Warner Brothers character, which is a bit of a disturbing self-revelation.  Still—it is a great big universe. We ARE really dinky. And in the big picture, somehow it helps my zen to know that we are just a piece of the picture, not its totality. Our mess, our yikes, our running late teen are just tiny points in a Seurat-like arrangement of colors that make up everything.

So I am going to keep moving. Keep doing the things. Keep keeping the faith. Keep on swimming. Keep on keeping on. Keep on reminding myself that the universe is bigger than whatever is stressing me out in any given moment. Because in the big picture, in my dinkiness,  that is all I can do.  And that is important… (why?  I will leave THAT for the next blog).

Want to get this song stuck in your head, too?  Click here to see  Yakko's Universe. Thank me Later. ;)