Q'est Cera Cera

One of the biggest hurdles I have with my condition and plainly with my instincts and very nature, is letting go.  Letting things be what they are, accepting things for what they are, and moving on.

It's odd that this is a major hurdle for me.  You would think that someone who likes open clear spaces and has spent the last 7 years purging possessions to live a less baggage riddled life would quintessentially represent the precise opposite of a clingy disposition.  But, that's not honestly true.  My efforts of purging have essentially been my process to clear the hurdles of hanging on to way too much.  Not only that, but it was my way of trying to help my husband do the same thing.  And with every single thing I purged, the lighter the weight on my shoulders got.

Between that and moving into a bigger space, it's been absolutely liberating to live a less cluttered life.  That's why it's all the more devastating when the clutter in your mind begins to pile up again, setting off triggers, and driving you into a darkness that's hard to yank yourself out of.

I began reading A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle again.  The reason I'm re-reading it is because I need to de-clutter my mind.  I need a refresher on how to parse my thoughts, rationalize my worries, and find the inner calm that spares me from going back on medication.  The one thing I hate about the medication most of all is that feeling of complete numbness.  There's a huge difference between accepting life as it comes and not feeling anything at all.

In the opening chapters he explains that at the very core of the human condition is madness.  He explains that there are several ways in which even our religion addresses "madness of the mind" so as to document it's presence and somehow "deal" with it.  The underlying message is perhaps that to continue fighting it's existence, ignoring that it exists or treating it like it's a foreign contagion is absolutely futile.  I can also extrapolate that perhaps because it has always existed that it serves a purpose in enlightening the human race; in awakening ourselves to something that is greater than ourselves.  I'm really not one to follow dogma in any form, but I can say that I honest to goodness feel that this philosophy holds a great deal of truth and logic.  And I think it helps me explain my penchant to speak my own theories/philosophies for all to hear.  While I've said before that I'd love to be Eckhart Tolle, I know hardly anyone is listening or reading my thoughts.  But I still think there's really something to be learned in this process of deconstructing my own mental health challenges.  And even if I'm the only one learning it, at least I've worked things through in my own head somehow in as logical a fashion as I can imagine doing.

So my goal this week, as I get back into the swing of working after being on holidays, and dealing with the daily grind is to make every possible effort to let things be.  Q'est Cera Cera.  Hopefully that will allow me the head space to find stillness, calm and to meditate.  Centre my thoughts on my soul and the energy within me so that I can brace myself and my daughter for our medical challenges this spring.

Making the best of it - Making Lemonade

So one of the benefits to living in the city is it's access to rotating insanity and quirkiness.  There's no end of weird shit downtown, all of which are prime opportunities for inspiration, and great conversation starters.

But part of the charm in the country is the constant access you have to pockets of understated wackiness that bespokes the quiet humour of every day life.  We have pockets like this in our new town.  The most vivid one is a home on the main road coming into town.  Lord only knows who lives in this house, but you have to imagine that it's a retired couple, and the wife is all about keeping the husband out of her hair inside, and so she has challenged him with finding his own source of entertainment outside the house.  Fearful of venturing too far from the kitchen where a seriously kick ass apple pie might be produced, he sticks to what he knows.  He cuts his grass once a week and when he does, he takes advantage of all those Canada Goose decoys his wife has been hounding him about for 30 years.  He creates a tableau with these geese, using all his other found crap from the shed that his wife's been trying to get rid of, just so she'll keep off his back about none of his shit being useful anymore!

And the result is something that you can't help but admire.  It becomes a land mark.  A mile marker for people coming to visit you, so that they know they're still going the right direction.  It becomes a momentary smile of distraction after an other wise harrowing day in the city.  When you see this tableau, you look precisely to see what's different, what's changed, and instantly you know you're 2 minutes and 30 seconds away from walking through your door into solace and comfort: home.

This race took a week for these geese to run across the full width of this person's property.  All of them on children's rocking and bouncy horses.  It honestly gobsmacks me to wonder where in the world this person find 12 rocking horses, and 2 dozen geese.  It's hard to see it in the photo above, but there are at least a dozen geese perched on children's plastic lawn chairs, watching the race.  Presumably they've bet their best goose food on the winner!

And not to be outdone - all these geese in their various poses, there are adult geese, and several goslings.  Check out the teeniest tiniest ones on their little infant rocking horses keeping pace.  

Aside from rocking horse races, these geese have been admiring the Stanley Cup, playing golf, croquet, baseball, and hockey.  They are always fully outfitted, and if I am indeed right, and there is an elderly retired couple living here, I am in awe that they are still married...and I am in awe of the fact that they have made such an awesome creative work out of being happily retired.

I am making a ton of assumptions here, but I can't imagine a life where this is your weekly mission in life, could not bring you so much joy!  

And that's my point my friends.  In every stage of life, there are reasons to be unhappy, and there are reasons for being anxious.  But there are teeny tiny little things that surprise you.  And those teeny tiny things that surprise you - if you're lucky and can be surprised every day - are the things that help to create emotional balance and stability.  Laughter and all those things that make each of us odd and unique are precisely the things that make us healthy.  Even on my darkest days, I find something to laugh at.  And I'm so lucky now to have a flock of plastic geese that will guarantee me that laugh at least once each week.  Find your thing.  And if you are able to find your own thing that will bring that joy to just one other person, dive in and make it happen.  Watching their smile will make yours so much brighter and stronger, and you won't even notice how much work it was!