JUST ANOTHER DAY
Wednesday Dec. 20, 2017
This morning.
Almost exactly like yesterday’s morning.
Almost exactly like tomorrow’s morning.
Imagine you are sitting inside the international space station, or perched on the Hubbell telescope – or sitting on the moon – take a look at earth. You won’t see change day to day. But look at the headlines – seems like everything is changing in a large way every day. We are drawn to the sensational, the provocative and the dramatic. We are horrified by horror, surprised by revelations and stunned by the sudden immediacy of anything that directly impacts us.
My point?
Almost every eruption of humanity or volcano didn’t start today or even yesterday. Every big thing has beginning, likely a tiny one hardly anyone noticed. Wasn’t something tiny that turned up the heat and caused yesterday’s explosive news, not something last week that caused the incineration of massive fires. Watching from afar we see that.
But we don’t watch from afar, do we?
We watch up close. We see people at close range, see actions that are local – we are far disconnected to bigger forces at work …
So what can we do?
We cannot know which little thing will make a difference, but we know SOME little thing is always at the root of anything good or bad. Doesn’t it then hold that if we all focused on one little thing with the people and activities in our little corner – couldn’t we make a difference? How about if we smiled more, said thank you more, said please more, meant what we said more, followed through more, gave more, took less, showed an interest more … and so on.
Reader feedback:
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY
In my experience, our memories re-surface once we have the grounding to process them. In Focusing (which is an embodiment technique similar but quite different—and in my opinion more interesting and easier—than mindfulness), we call these memories "fresh frozen". They couldn't be fully processed back then, as we didn't have the skills to do so. Now, as adults with more experience, and hopefully self-compassion, we're able to be with the memories in a new way and fully feel the emotions of that memory, as well learn from the experience. In essence, adding it into the story we tell ourselves about ourselves more completely. Powerful stuff!, AD, Toronto, ON
