One Run Does Not An Enlightenment Make

You go for one slow run and get thinking you're God's own gift. You should write a blog post telling everyone to do as you've done. Get out there! You're enlightened from that one slow run.

Then you remember this is your first run in weeks. You feel your big belly and sore legs. Maybe you're not one to give advice.

You recall too what you've read about mediation. (Read about instead of actually doing meditation.) Fools run through the temple halls shouting about their enlightenment. Monks who have mediated more than half their lives hear the fool, accept him, and return to their breath.

This morning you watched two guys run past your house. They didn't look enlightened. They were just running. One foot and then another.

You had just finished the writing you do every morning. A practice about which you hold few expectations. Just one word and then another. You accept what it gives and try to be worthy of its gifts.

Your run today was just moving through this life. No enlightenment. No need to shout or blog. (Though here you are.) You were just running through the halls of this temple Earth, quietly, following your breath, trying to let go expectations and be present to the gifts your every step delivers.

Enlightenment, if you really need it, is probably both a lifetime of miles ahead and right here already.

Happiness

What makes you happy?

It's not an idle question. I've been thinking on it for days and come up with:

• family
• writing
• work
• coffee
• listening to music

On the flip side, what makes you unhappy?

Seems as important to think of things that make me unhappy and yet I keep doing them. Such as:

• social media
• overeating
• most TV
• staying up late
• waking up late

Where do you put your energy?

I know where to put mine, it's so simple, and yet I struggle.

How do you live a happy life? I really want to know.

Current and Against

Why should I be like a dog that runs after every bone she likes to throw?

—Jane Dobisz, One Hundred Days of Solitude

Wrote two of my three morning pages on paper that wouldn't take ink. My pen skipped and my frustration grew. Starting page three, it was the same, but I wadded the page and tested sheets until I found a good one.

Subbing in good paper for bad every difference though it was the simplest of actions.

It's the difference between beating my head against a wall versus finding a door, window, gate, or some way around, over, or under. Better to choose a new way than to beat myself senseless trying to break through.

Good choices, even the smallest, make big differences, so I:

• Leave the phone downstairs when going up to bed.

• Leave election results to morning and even then look just briefly. I voted and encouraged others to vote. There's nothing left to do and no good in obsessing.

• Deleted the Twitter account and have back hours, yes hours, I spent there daily.

• At work, close the email tab and check the inbox just twice a day.

None of these is complicated or seemingly important, but the effects may become profound.

In finding a good page I "lost" two bad pages. Last night I "lost" the chance to spend hours wondering how the election would turn out. I have "lost" hearing the noise of the Twitter crowd. I've "lost" the distractions of constant email.

Which is of course to say that I've lost nothing at all.

These choices ought to be obvious, but I get caught up in accepting the page before me, believing I must be always accessible and on top of the news, feeling that social media matters and email is the most important thing I do. I get caught up in following the crowd.

My best choices are usually made against the current of trends and the rushing crowd.

And so I remind myself again: Don't blindly accept. Thoughtfully consider my own choices. And when in doubt, turn against the current, turn toward joy.

Real World

I am drafting this in a notebook with a fountain pen, an analog experience to be sure. Making it more so is the cat in my lap and the fact that I am not scrolling through Twitter.

This has been my usual Twitter time, after dinner, before bed, while the television is on, but this morning after too much deliberation (weeks of it), I deleted my Twitter account and released myself from that hellsite, as people, mostly Twitter users posting on Twitter, keep calling it.

I left Twitter in part because I'm spending too much time there and it has long been making me angry, but I felt pushed over the edge by the actions and words of the new CEO who is a child masquerading as an adult. He is a spoiled brat of a child to whom too many of us provide power. I was acquiescing to his behavior, tacitly approving of his actions by remaining a Twitter user (i.e. One used by Twitter). Today I withdrew any and all of that approval.

Now, if I want to express myself to the world, I need do it in person or on this blog. It seems a better arrangement overall.

Screw Twitter and the thin skinned villain at its helm.

Also today, a staff member was involved in a terrible car crash. They are okay ( though maybe not all right) thank goodness, but it's another reminder of what matters and what does not.

Tonight, some elections will be decided, but for once I won't stay up watching the returns and reading every knee jerk Tweet. Instead, the cat and I will go to sleep and be ready for a new day.

That new day will be in, of all places, the real world.