#365Gratitude Day 262: My sister-in-law

I've known my sister-in-law, M. for over 8 years now.  We've been through a lot together.  I remember when I first met her.  Missy and I had driven down to South Carolina to spend a few days there with her, and her family.  She made me feel welcome right away.  She had a certain nurturing, take-charge nature that I immediately felt comfortable with.

She's very much a mother hen.  She's at her happiest when she's taking care of other people.  She and I often compete for the title of Champion for Missy.  Sometimes, joyfully, I lose, too. 

M. spreads that caretaking affection and energy to others besides her sister.  Over a year ago she came to live with us, when she was leaving her now ex-husband.  Not too long after that I came down with a big giant whopper of a cold, that knocked me out for days.  She was an awesome caregiver, bringing me healthy, luxurious meals in bed, and treating me like a king.

A great thing about her too is that she's very open-minded, tolerant, and ready for new experiences.  She knew long before I told her, that I was an ageplayer, and has never expressed anything but support about it.  

In fact, one of the funnier experiences that arose from her moving in with us happened about a week after she moved in.  She was still getting acclimated to living with us, and being in a part of the country she was accustomed to only visiting.  It was in those raw days where she was still shaking off the trauma of escaping a bad marriage in what had become a toxic home.  

She was really looking for ways to contribute to our house, so she did the things that Missy and I hadn't had the time to do since we moved in - she unpacked all our art and hung it around the house, and began to organize and optimize all sorts of things, including...

my diapers.  Yep.  

She made this whole "baby care" station by the side of our bed, repurposing a set of plastic drawers we had used to go to Camp Crucible.  I came home to find it stocked with diapers, powder, wipes, and all the other miscellaneous paraphenalia that go into taking care of me when I am little.

I had two seperate-but-equally-strong reactions to this.   

1. Awwww! 

2. **SHUDDER**  

That second one was because I wasn't used to my vanilla sister-in-law being so a part of, so inside, my kink life.  Knowing was one thing, but putting away my diapers was entirely something else.  

We both had a good laugh about it. 

We've been through a lot together, M. and I.  We've stood by each other through thick and thin.  I'm glad she's family to me. 

#365Gratitude Day 261: Life

I'm grateful for my life, and everyone else's too.  It's all too short and very precious.

#365Gratitude Day 260: A Humble Gift

OK, so, I've written about the three jewels of Taoism before.  To recap, they're:

• Compassion
• Simplicity
• Humility

Today it's humility I'm looking at.

There it is, over on the left, there.  Unlike compassion and simplicity, humility is a six word chinese phrase, "bugan wei tianxia xian." 

I think it's pronounced "bu-gahn way tee-ahn-sha, shahn."  I'm still learning.   

It translates literally to  "not dare to be first in the world", but is more commonly known to be humility. 

I saved this one for last because frankly, it's the one I have the most trouble with. 

What sort of trouble?  All sorts of trouble. 

First, when I was a kid, I was a damned arrogant person.  

Sometimes, I still am.  

I'm fairly smart, and I know it.  I can be verbally quick, I read fast, I'm well-spoken, a good writer, too.     

And, I do like my share of attention. 

I struggle with that.  Because I genuinely do not believe that any of those things makes me deserving of special recognition, attention, nor better than anyone else.  I have plenty of things which are the very opposite of exceptional.  Sometimes, I overeat.  I can be a big showboat.  I'm often clueless, and selfish.

None of THOSE things makes me particularly worthy of being particularly shamed either.  I'm just a person with foibles, like anyone and frankly, everyone else.  

So why is humility a "jewel of the Tao", what makes it a worthwhile treasure? I think they key lies in that literal translation, of not daring to be first in the world.  Put another way, it means allowing that you are of this world, in it, part of it, one part among many.

Being one-among-many means that you don't have to compare yourself to others.  Life isn't a contest.  You don't win it.  You live it.  That means that it's okay if I'm not the skinniest I can be, or if I sometimes eat french fries which I could do without.  It also means that it's never too late for me to pick up a new technical skill, or write another book.  Sure, there are other people out there who maybe are in better shape, or have more knowledge than I do.  But they're not better than me.  I'm not worse than them.  Nor is it the other way around.  We're all just unique.  

A tree needs leaves, many leaves.  The first leaf it sprouts in spring is no better nor worse than the last to fall from it in winter.   

Knowing that is very liberating.  It engenders in me an immense love for other people.  I know that instead of worrying about being judged by them, or doing that judging myself, and thus buoying myself with vapid feelings of superiority, or damning myself with useless feelings of inferiority, I have another option.  Instead, I can allow that each of us is beautiful, a vital part of the same one immense thing.  

That feeling grounds me, makes me more present in the moment, and in my body. 

It's funny, as a Taoist, I'm a non-theist.  It's not that I don't believe in a God, or Gods, like an atheist, nor do I believe in one or many, like a theist or polytheist.  The issue is sort of irrelevant to me.  I like to say I'm spiritual, rather than religious.  But one thing I do have in common with many religious folks is a sense of humble submission.  I submit utterly to my experience of being indivisible from everything around me.  Alan Watts might say that I recognize I'm a function of the whole universe, just as any one wave is a function of the whole ocean. 

I'm grateful for that recognition.  When I can remember it, and experience it, it brings me a lot of peace.

#365Gratitude Day 259: Alan Watts & The Gift of Eternity

Last Christmas my wife Missy got me an amazing gift.  She bought me the entire audio catalog of the lectures of the philosopher Alan Watts.

I've been slowly digesting it for the better part of a year now.   It's immense, over 4 GB of data.  It's literally seven entire 24 hour days or so of audio.

It's a profound gift.

As I was driving to work today, I was listening to some of it. In this particular lecture that you see playing on my phone above, Watts was discussing the Buddhist view of reincarnation and the universe.

It's brilliant stuff. He was saying how reincarnation is not some spooky magical thing.   

It's not that there's some weird ephemeral soul which leaves your body and then is milled by the universe, processed, and poured into some other living thing.

It's actually much simpler than that.  You are the universe. As am I.  

Anywhere, and everywhere, that life is aware of itself, it's the universe.  Just the same way as the molecules in your hand are connected to be a hand,  yet are also separate molecules, is the same way that we reincarnate. 

You are the entire universe, expressed in the place and time where it and we are you.

I am too. What else could I be? 

All we need to live forever is just to change the way we understand the living that we're doing right now.

I'm profoundly grateful to my wife for giving me this gift.

#365Gratitude Day 258: A new podcast hat for our new season

A few days ago, I announced our latest recording of the Big Little Podcast.  We had a little schedule hiccup, resulting in our rescheduling the show to tonight, in about an hour.

To celebrate, I'm wearing my newest podcasting hat for tonight's show.  Time to get this circus going again.