#365Gratitude Day 317:A reunion sandwiched in

So there's this supermarket not too far from where I used to live.  I used to stop in there many mornings on my way to work, for a breakfast sandwich. 

There was this lady behind the counter, I'll call her Polly.  When I first started going to her counter, I was not particularly thrilled with Polly.

I was often in a hurry, and Polly never seemed to acknowledge that. She would take her time doing whatever sort of sandwich or coffee related chore had her attention before giving me the time of day.  She would happily grouse with her co-worker about all sorts of unpleasant things about her job, their boss, the market price of Chilean Sea Bass in a turbulent economy (okay, that one I'm making up), all sorts of things, rather than just get me my damn sandwich. 

And, she seemed so very, very grumpy. 

Then I had an epiphany. First, I realized that it's not about me , and that perhaps her job really wore her out. Maybe, I reasoned, people all morning long treated her like some sort of breakfast-sandwich-ATM, instead of a person, and that she found it ponderous and terrible.  

So, the next day I resolved to talk to her, be thankful, kind, polite, and just treat her like a person.  

Everything changed. Her face lit up. She opened to me, and we really connected. Polly became kind, sweet, and real.  

I began to really look forward to seeing her, and she did the same. When I would walk into the store, she'd meet my eye and smile. She would get a spring in her step. It would make my whole morning, too. I'd carry the good feeling of seeing her with me all the way to work.  

So, today.

I haven't been going there for many months now.  I moved not too far away, but enough that going there would be out of my way.  One of the few times I did stop in, looking for her, I was told she had been moved to a different job in the store, and that she didn't work the café anymore.

But today I had an errand nearby, and stopped in.  I go get myself some delightful tater tots off the hot bar, grab a bottle of affogato from the cold case, and go to grab a breakfast sandwich, when I see her, back turned to me, talking with someone behind the counter, and in the midst of performing what looks like a food safety inspection.  I call out to her by name, "Polly? Is that you?"

She turns around, and her face splits in a wide grin.  She greets me like an old friend, which in a way, she is.  Our relationship is very limited, and not all that old.  But it's got history.  She tells me she hasn't seen me around in a while.  I tell her about my move.  She tells me about her job change, which is really a promotion.  We both tell one another how very much we've missed seeing one another, and really both mean it, too.

It was lovely.

She wished me happy holidays, in case she doesn't see me again before them.  I walk off feeling light as a feather.

As soon as I got in the car, I had this long talk with my girlfriend, Squee about the whole thing.  She laughed, long and loud.  Back when I first started going to this place, and dealing with my no-longer-crabby friend, she used to hear my daily woes about the poor service, and was witness to my realization of needed compassion.  We've both referred to the sandwiches as "Polly Sandwiches" because of this.

We got into this long talk, at first just about the reunion, and how wonderfully silly and fantastic it was.  But then, I saw something I observed to her.

The whole thing, the way I turned my impressions around, the way Polly and I became friends, the lasting good effects it's had on both her and my own life, are an example of really powerful 德 (te, "virtue" or maybe "magical power").  I threw off my judgments about Polly, embraced mindfulness, and made a genuine and lasting friendship.

It's amazing how good a world this can be, when I'm fully present in it.

#365Gratitude 315:Boundaries

One of the great things about working out, is that part of how I do it helps my mind as well as my body.

Often when I swim, I listen to philosophy lectures.  Today it was an Alan Watts lecture on the wisdom of the ridiculous, a lecture about Chuang-tzu. 

A big point that Watts made has to do with the boundaries we see between ourselves. What he said was "all boundaries are held in common." What that means is that part of how I know who I am, is because I'm not you.   However at the same time, boundaries are where we meet, where we join.

The example that he gave for this was sitting outside at night, looking up at the stars, and feeling how very far away they are. Millions of miles from here, and billions of years ago, that light shone forth that we're only seeing now. 

But that's us, too.   The light that comes from our world shines in a multitude of night skies elsewhere.

In a manner of speaking we are everywhere.  We are everyone. We are everything.  

If you need a little more down to earth example of that, I've got one from this morning. 

When you're swimming laps in a pool, and you've got one of those plastic divider ropes, separating your lane from the one next to you, whose divider is that? Is it yours? Does it belong to the person in the next lane?

Yes.  

#365Gratitude Day 314:The sweet embrace of the unknown

So, yeah.  President Trump.  I'm one of a very large number of people this morning who feel "like I was thrown into a dumpster from a moving car being driven by a giraffe high on PCP."

Sometimes, we all have that moment where we're walking through the house, in the dark, in the middle of the night, and we bang our toe against something.  It hurts.  And for a moment, we sit down and grab our toe, and worry that perhaps this time, it's not just sore, but maybe broken.

And maybe for a little while we wear shoes in the house, or decide that maybe we don't need that fig newton and slug of milk right from the carton in the fridge in the middle of the night.  (Hey, it's my house.  Don't judge.)

And we keep going.

That's the whole point of this blog.  We don't start anything.  We don't stop anything.  We just keep doing.

There's a zen story about it that's my favorite.

This one.

Let's keep going.

#365Gratitude Day 301:Farting & Litter Boxes

Ok, so I'm sure your very first reaction is:

How the hell can you possibly be grateful for either of those things?

Well, because they're more than what they smell like.

My friend Moliére called me up this morning to ask me a sort of silly question.  He's a cat person, as am I.  Not like we have tails and pointy ears and chase little balls around, we just both have cats and really, really love them.

So, his question: "When you're cleaning the litter box does it ever feel like you're working in a zen rock garden?"

Know peace.  Or pieces.. of poop

I laughed.  That shit is funny.  (womp womp)  

But then I got into a big conversation with him about how actually, there really is a kind of zen there, one which I've talked about for years with my brother Spacey.  I even call it "cat poop zen". When you're a cat person, you love all the cutesy funny things they do.  The way they chase the laser pointer, or want to attack your shoelaces, the derpy faces they make when they sit on your chest and look lovingly in your face.  You also take the bad with the good.  My cat Yang likes to claw the steps.  Yin forgets how sharp her claws are and is always trying to lovingly stroke me with her paws when I'm in bed.  Sometimes I sleep naked.  You do the math.  Sometimes Yang overeats (because Yang), and then proceeds to throw up in gobs like a t-shirt cannon at a sporting event.  Yin makes an AWFUL sound in the middle of the night that when translated into english comes out as "HEY WAKE UP... I'M ABOUT TO LEAVE A HAIRBALL FOR YOU... SOMEWHERE."

And of course, there's the litter box.

But I love my cats.  They're like my children.  And while in the moment all those things kind of suck, they also really don't suck.  Because they're part of the package deal.

"Thanks for being such a good friend!"

Farts are like this too.  In my entire romantic, dating history, I've always known a relationship really was going to be successful when the person I was dating was able to fart in front of me, and vice versa.  Farting is like the gross universal connector amongst humanity.  Everybody farts.  And nobody looks like a rockstar when they do it.  Some time in the recent past Queen Elizabeth farted.  Somewhere in the White House, our commander-in-chief has cut the presidential cheese, and will do so again.  It makes us human.

I certainly do it.  Fairly often.  Around Missy plenty, too.  It helps me know I'm just a fragile, imperfect person, like everybody else.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a littler box to go scoop.

#365Gratitude Day 300:Good luck around 2:30

My wife Missy has been going through a series of what you might euphemistically call "dental misadventures."  It's been one bad thing after another. ​

This most recent thing turned into a painfulnd expensive procedure she has to have, which was due in large part to a mistake the dentist made.  I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty specifics for many reasons, but the whole situation has been awful. 

But this morning, it got better, much better. The practice got in touch with her, agreed to pay entirely for a related procedure, and allow us to pay our part in pieces.  

Missy texted me about it just as I got to work, and her relief over the whole situation was palpable .  I'm so glad she can get to the end of all this awfulness quickly, and that the dentist showed us compassion.