Zen and Practice (aka Hey, a Post After a Hospital Day!)

(first: our MRI day showed everything is stable--time to breathe)

“Practice makes perfect”

Yay, perfect!

Boo, practice.

And really—does practice make perfect?

Practice promotes progress. Practice builds perseverance. Practice fosters peace.

Perfection doesn’t exist. Except O’Bagel bagels (Stirling, NJ). They are pretty perfect. 

Cinnamon Bagel, O'Bagel.

 Yes, it has icing. Be Amazed.

According to family history, my grandmother was a piano prodigy. By 15 she could play Rachmaninoff with ease—but she hated performing, she would accompany other musicians or singers, but she never liked to perform solo, despite her gift.

Enter the first grandchild—the only one lucky enough to meet Grandma, who died very young. My grandfather wanted me to have piano lessons so I could play like Grandma…

But…I am no prodigy, and I hated practicing, and I hated performing on the piano as much if not more than Grandma did. Probably more, since I had zero of her skill—and even as a kid, I hated not being perfect.  I used to pray I would get the flu before recitals.

I never did. 

I know this disappointed my Grandfather (my terror of playing for him, not my immunity to spontaneous flu), which I regret, but my 9 year old self really liked reading and drawing and collecting stickers and pretending to be on Broadway more than piano—even after my parents told me that there were certain songs from Man of La Mancha that I should not belt out at Christian summer camp. 

Probably STILL a good idea not to belt “It’s All the Same” at Camp. Ahem.

And yet, while I know now that it is ok that I did not embrace piano like my Grandma did, as an adult I see the benefits of practice.  More accurately—I understand the absolute compelling need for daily practice in so many areas. Practice no longer means Hanon finger exercises on piano—although sans performance pressure those are kind of zen! Practicing things that promote health, personal priorities, and ultimately what is best for our families is essential, not for perfection, but for progress toward reaching whatever goals we have set for ourselves—even if those goals are as silly as not having Screaming Loud Face when not speaking my opinion (my kid begged me at a recent event not to make “mad face”, I told her that ship had sailed. I have resting SOMEBODY IS GOING DOWN AND IT IS PROBABLY YOU face, which can be problematic. My face YELLS what I am thinking even when I am silent, alas.)

Practice, even when it seems tedious or ineffective, encourages growth. When I started running, I ran secretly, on a field near my house when nobody would see me galumphing about. Over time I ventured on to roads, bought “running clothes”, signed up for a race—not to win, (bwahahaha) but to show up, to prove to myself that perfection doesn’t matter, practice and progress do.

Practice is simply about showing up.

Yoga is all about practice, a theme that has helped me a lot.  Each day is different. Some days are great, other days, every inhale and exhale takes effort, every moment is distracted. But with practice, yoga progresses. After a few years of practice -- AND MEDICINE—to leave that piece of the practice of self-care puzzle out is to mislead, I needed both chemistry and physiology to heal my brain—the breathing, stretching, and focus of yoga has become an important part of my life. Will I be Instagramming pictures of myself upside down on top of a mountain any time soon? That would be a resounding NO.  Will I get back on the mat tomorrow and see where my practice leads? Indeed.

Just show up. Practice.

My morning prayer practice is the same—somedays I am totally “SQUIRREL!” while reading my morning meditation and taking time to pray for friends, family, and the world. Literally “SQUIRREL!”,

I put birdseed on my deck and I see the squirrels coming for breakfast…and an occasional gray cat, recently…but in the practice of showing up for 15 minutes each morning, I am slowly getting better at being present, at checking in with God, at centering my mind and refusing to get caught up in the anxiety that a new day so often holds for me.

Practice never ends; my dad is past 70 and practices his French horn every single day—which is how he maintains his musical excellence—his phenomenal natural talent from his mom provided a base, practice grows the gift—over decades! Practice keeps us in the game, on the road, moving forward—a magical end point does not exist.

So I practice stilling my noisy face. I practice telling my self-loathing interior monologue that some days rumbles to shut up already.  My perpetually cluttered counter: I have to keep practicing dealing with papers and putting things away. Writing AFTER a scan day—here is my practice at that, at writing a few drafts BEFOREHAND--and being ok with having only one little pencil/ink sketch. Progress!

The Goal: Practice showing up. Practice regrouping and starting again when things go sideways. Practice NOT freaking out, practice responding NOT reacting. Practice seeing with eyes of charity, not eyes of OH NO YOU DID NOT.  Practice being ok with imperfection. These practices I must pursue. These are my zen practices.

We won’t reach perfection. Can’t happen. Reminding myself that that is ok is part of my daily practice.  Knowing that tomorrow is another day to try…that practice is an ongoing process…THAT is what keeps me moving right along.

What are your practices that help you get where you want to be each day?

Zen and the Restart

Happy 2019, all.

So…while math is not my first language, chronology is the language of my chosen profession—and I realize that this entry is in no way two or three days after my last entry. 

Oops.

I kept adding BLOG in increasingly urgent fonts to my bullet journal. I dug out my gold star stickers. And yet I could not write the words. 

What the heck happened?

Well—a few things happened. Thing #1: I started working more. Substitute teaching holds a set of challenges that keeps me on my toes until I get home and utterly collapse. As time has gone on and I have worked through most of the different schedule configurations and academic departments, I am starting to get more comfortable with what I have to do. Still, the drain on my mental and emotional energy is pretty profound—especially since as soon as the school day ends I am back on Chauffeur Duty for my daughters, whose schedules are extremely full. Staying awake past 9 has become a challenge!

I understand now why my mom has always been such an early to bed kind of lady.

I am profoundly grateful to be subbing, especially in such a great school where things are clean, organized, coherent (ie there are systems in place for any kind of situation or schedule that might arise) –for my anxiety-plagued brain, the ORDER in this school just makes me so happy. Both my mom and my mother in law have commented on how much happier I seem. I am grateful. This sort of busy just depleted my writing energy tank. 

Thing #2: Hospital Day. More accurately, hospital days, plural. Due to scheduling what-nots, we had to have my daughter’s MRI and neuro-oncology follow ups on different days, around her busy school schedule. The challenges of an evening MRI in Philadelphia, plus days in between, plus oh sh*t we are back in neuro-oncology (an out of body moment that happens every.single.time we find ourselves back in clinic)—all these things put my writing brain into severe overdraft mode. The scan was stable, really stable. There were some other things that had to be pondered/dealt with mentally acknowledged…and once again my brain couldn’t put together words. 

I am continually agog at this phenomenon, how going back into neuro-oncology world puts my brain into insta-survival mode. The mental muscle memory that kicks in as soon as we get on the road to Philly astounds me. If only I had that kind of muscle memory for things like roller skating or backbends…

Thing #3: aka The Big Thing: Enter a Crisis of Ideas. I finished reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton—I had been reading a chapter a day as part of my morning prayer/get set for the day time. This book blew my mind—for folks doing any kind of spiritual seeking, check it out. Anyway, the later chapters of this book broached the idea that we really can’t force zen (he didn’t say it like that, but that was the idea). We can’t structure or create inner peace, we have to get to a point of acceptance and surrender for zen to happen.  I am not saying this right—but basically, you can’t control freak your way to zen.

Hey now.

I like me an action plan. I want to DO THE THINGS AND BE ZEN. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONTROL ALL THE THINGS AND GET TO ZEN!

I want zen to be the first thing I can check off on my to-do list.

Not only that—not only can I not control freak my way to zen...there is no actual end point to zen. It’s not like I can do all the things and force my way to some Be all And End All of Zentastic Zenitude. I can’t just map a route to some magical place in the northwestern hills of New Jersey and be like Ha! Found you, zen!

Nope. Although note the skillful avoidance of 287 and Rt 80. No zen to be found on  those roads.

This is likely beyond ludicrously obvious, but my denial is industrial strength and honed by years of practice.

Years ago I used to proclaim that I thought running was silly because why would you run and not go ANYWHERE but back where you started? I could see running to Dunkin Donuts, or to get fries somewhere, but in a random circle? What the heck?

I hadn’t even thought of this in years until I started wrestling with my crisis of ideas. The zen quest is like running—you get a lot of benefit out of it, even if sometimes you don’t feel like you are actually GETTING anywhere. Progress is measured by a different rubric than a simple point A to point B hooray for fries kind of way.

In this wrestling I have found my task…er, focus for the new year. (How quickly I go right into Do It! mode …) How to reconcile the deep truth I see in this need to let go, the understanding that it is the trip that matters, the destination remains in flux…with the deep truth I see in myself, that I need to know/control/handle all the things. 

I am not sure I have figured it out. Rephrase, I KNOW I have not figured it out. Anyone who lives with me will assure you there has been zero figuring out. But I can no longer let my questions stop me from writing—I have to embrace the uncertainty and keep moving. In some ways, I think that is what Merton means. Similar ideas resurfaced in my subsequent re-read of Jacques Philippe’s Interior Freedom (another mind blowing read—on this second time through I took notes in the margins).  Freedom comes through letting go, not from holding tight. You get peace and THEN do the things, not do the things to get the peace.

HEY NOW.

As much as this idea initially rankled, (Elsa can keep her “Let it Go”)—I see its truth.

I can’t MAKE THE ZEN HAPPEN. But I can take steps to invite it in.  Brene Brown said it perfectly in this week’s “Dose of Daring” email—“The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.”

I want to keep showing up in 2019.

I will keep movin’ right along.  I will try to move forward in letting go of resentments and embracing forgiveness as a PRACTICE.  I will try to use my life experiences to help other folks who are wading through the quagmire of yikes. I will keep Christmas all the year…ok, wait, wrong resolution. ;) 

I will share some more of the tools that have helped me—and honestly, will probably find myself wading through quaqmirish moments of my own (next hospital day is in about 5 weeks). But hey—2019 provides a fresh start on my search for zen—or at least my search for how I can let go and let zen in, while accepting that the work remains ongoing. 

Peace, all. And apologies if the Frozen soundtrack is now stuck in your head. ;)