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. ;)

Zen and the Slow Leak

My New Year’s Resolution sprung a slow leak that morphed into a gaping hole.

Ok, so in Australia it is Friday…but not last Friday. Nor is it Tuesday. Blog Fail warning horns are blaring everywhere here. Each day I have written BLOG in my bullet journal in increasingly larger letters. Today the word is about an inch high. And fancy.

Even now, I am forcing myself to write—mostly because the alternative is “grade history midterms”. Procrastination priorities are in order, at least…

One of the things I have come to realize is that I have a very limited emotional/mental gas tank. I work really hard to try and keep it full, or at least full-ish. For me, that refilling is a work, it doesn’t just happen. But there are things that put a slow leak to gaping hole kind of kibosh on my tank.

Last week was hospital week. Reports were good. Things are stable. I am grateful.

And yet those days take every bit of mental/emotional energy reserve I have.

I figured Wednesday/Thursday appointments, I’ll be golden to write Friday, heck, I can use my time at the hospital to write!

Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. There is no concentrating at the hospital when you are holding a TGI Friday’s style beeper thing waiting for your child to come out of sedation. There is CERTAINLY no concentration when the time gets long, and then the hospital CALLS YOU ON YOUR CELL PHONE while your child is in the scanner, because your TGI Friday’s beeper didn’t work. Yikes. There is no concentration when you wait several hours past your appointment time to view the scans with a pediatric neuro-oncologist. I pulled out my school papers, looked at them, and put them back in my bag. I just had nothing left to use to think about that. 8+ hours total driving time over two days…car time left no mental room for metacognition. I just can’t concentrate on anything beyond National Geographic or looking out the window/praying for the WaWa coffee cart people to come.

Hospital stuff is just a keep on going kind of moment. I wish that this many years into it I could be less frozen by these days. I am less psycho about them than I used to be, but they still freeze me solid.  In the days after these hospital visits I had to set up the SAME series of appointments for another kid…more chillin’ in the quagmire…but it’s done.

Now that I understand how my brain works, I can plan for it, at least somewhat—but I can’t seem to find a way around that resource suck of hospital days/appointment making/planning/processing—and tackling things I dread. I made some appointments for myself in the last week—gave myself a gold star…and then went and sorted papers kind of mindlessly while listening to Daily Show clips on YouTube. That kind of task is a mental resource suck, too. I just can’t find a way around it.

I just have to make peace with it, and try to keep moving.

So in Australia it’s Friday already—I should be continuing to write about the Happiness Project, and I will get back to that. One of the valuable lessons of that book is to let yourself BE YOURSELF. It’s ok to be who you are, you will find more happiness in NOT trying to force yourself to be something you are not. Being Kristin means acknowledging that I have to regroup after challenging days.  I can’t just breeze through things. And that’s ok. Even when it doesn’t feel ok—that IS ok.  Being Kristin means I hate making phone calls and I have to bribe myself to do it. That’s ok. Being Kristin means even if we are running low on data, I might need to stream some Sia in the car to remind myself I’m unstoppable. That even on these days where I seem stopped, I really am only “like, totally paused”. ;) 

Just keep movin’ right along. If I miss a day, the internet won’t break.

But now, I really do have to go grade those midterms. Or eat lunch.  Hm….wonder which option will win?