#365Gratitude Day 343: Mobility

This morning I'm running really late.  I got out of the house, and booked it to my train station, then actually ran (in dress shoes, fun!) to try to make the platform before the train left.

No dice.  It literally pulled away as I got up to it, slapping the doors helplessly to try to get them to let me in. 

So, I waited in the cold, freezing rain.  Did I mention I also forgot my gloves today?  Yay! 

After the next train came, I boarded quickly, heading for an upstairs seat, and got warm. 

When we got to my stop, I disembarked, and tried to move out of the station, which is an outdoor one, as quickly as possible.  A really large guy with a very awkward bag was moving slowly, and obliviously, and blocking the narrow pathway I was anxiously trying to sprint down.  

I ducked around him on the far side, and walked quickly to the station entrance, and out from under the covered roof into the rain itself.  Ahead of me, on the sidewalk, was another really big guy, with an even larger rolling suitcase in one hand, and an umbrella in the other.   

Now I'm 6'2", which means I'm at eye-height to the pointy end-caps of most umbrella spokes.  So I was super careful to work my way around this guy and not get an ocular stabbing.  At first, I was really annoyed.  After all, I'm already late.   

Then I had this moment of satori, that experience of awareness that there's no seperate me from anyone else, and we all together, are one.  And I also saw that these two guys moved slowly because that's what they physically had in the tank.  For whatever reason, whether it be age, infirmity, ill health, lack of fitness, whatever, that rate of speed was all they had to give.  They weren't intentionally blocking my way.  They were just doing their own level best to get on their way in a cold, wet, gray, kind of disgusting morning, just like me.   I felt like a heel for being selfish about their being in my way.  What hubris!  

I'm in reasonably good shape.  I could certainly be thinner.  It's actually something I'm actively working on again.  But I've got excellent mobility.  I sprinted to the platform earlier this morning.  I can move fast when I need to.  I'm fairly limber.  My mobility is a fantastic gift.   I'm grateful I've got it, and grateful I can appreciate it.

#365Gratitude Day 342: Being Challenged

Yesterday was a day that tested me, in many ways.

First, I had this technically challenging thing to do at work.  I was a bit nervous as the day started, and by lunchtime had worked myself up into a chest-pounding, headache-having ball of stress.  At lunch, I realized that I was psyching myself out, needlessly, and resolved to just plug through what I needed to do.  By the end of the day, I was feeling pretty confident that I was on top of the thing.

Then there was this email we received from a podcast listener.  Sometimes we get mails that are, well, challenging.  He started out by complimenting us, then admitted he only listened to the beginnings of shows, never listening all the way through, asked me several questions he would have had the answer to if he had listened to the aforementioned shows, and then went off, declaiming on topics related to the relationship between ageplay and actual children, as well as caregivers and the elderly, in a way that made my skin crawl.  

I took a deep breath, counted to a large number, and then responded back to him with compassion, trying to be helpful where I could, and shutting down the parts of the conversation I found inappropriate.  Later in the day, he wrote me back, and much of what I had to say seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

Then later that evening, just before bed, I got the heads up on a similarly challenging thread in the podcast's fetlife group.  

Every so often we see threads around this subject, which, in brief, goes something like this: "I think the way I ageplay isn't sexual, and not a fetish, and I'm tired of being lumped in with all you perverts.  If only you/the community/the world/foreign dignitaries/my sixth grade social studies teacher could act differetly, then I could be happy, and the world would be perfect."

Okay, to be fair, that's a pretty snarky thing I just said.  I think I can be a tad snarky in my own blog, if nowhere else.

I read the thread all the way through, and after more deep breaths, thoughtful introspection, and a little bit of counting to ten, I responded to it politely, and then shut it down.   An interestingly gratifying thing about the thread is that many of the responses to the original post were really thoughtul, balanced, and compassionate.  There's a maxim that Spacey and I have about the show, and a message we broadcast loudly, which is that if you want acceptance from others, you must first give it.  

Anyhow, that all sounds like an exhausting mess, why would I possibly be grateful for it?  Because these moments are among those which most help me to know myself.  

I'm an intelligent, reasonable, compassionate man.  I need challenges and testing to experience these things, and to hone myself.  I can't recall who said it, but I once heard someone say "It's easy to love and have compassion for people who like you, or are easy to get along with.  Difficult people are a blessing."

Sometimes I'm the difficult person, even to myself.  I spent a good couple of hours torturing myself because I felt stupid earlier in the day.  

I don't need challenging people to be less challenging.   Unwittingly, they become a sort of workout for my compassion muscles.  I'm grateful for them.

#365Gratitude Day 339: I bit a financier

We were in New York, and I couldn't help myself, since I had the financier in my mouth. 

Before you think I have some sort of Wall Street Banker fetish, you should know something: a financier, as it turns out is a small sort of french cake.  

I didn't know either! 

Missy and I tried them when my aunt took us out for brunch yesterday at the Brasserie, a lovely and fairly snooty french restaurant in Manhattan.  

When I saw them on the menu they struck me so funny, I had to order them. 

They were delicious. I'll maybe have to lick a realtor next. ​

#365Gratitude Day 338: Moments & Memories

My aunt often says that life is made of "moments and memories."  It's advice I take to heart, generally favoring experiences and adventures over material things. 

Missy and I just had a weekend like that. We left home Friday night, and drove vaguely in a New Yorkish direction, but with no fixed idea of where we would stop for the night. 

After many hours drive we got off the highway in a town I had heard was plentiful with Ingress portals, and wound up parking in the empty lot of an elementary school around 11:45 at night while I found us a hotel, using an app on my phone.  

We got back on the highway and drove a few miles to our hotel, which turned out to be right across the street from an abandoned car, which was attended by police.  

That's because it was on fire.  

Seriously. 

The next morning we slept in, and got ourselves a late breakfast at an art-deco, retro future chic diner, called the Skylark Diner.  It was amazing. It was also an Ingress portal. 

We sat next to a couple who ALSO happened to be Ingress players and who Missy had been chatting with in-game from the car as we circled the parking lot. 

Eventually we made our way into the city.  We had a wet, rainy day of window shopping and Ingress,  followed by riding in a bicycle cab to see The Lion King. 

The bicycle ride was "soggy, yet satisfying," and very romantic.  

The play was amazing. Funny, beautiful, and moving.  

We did all of this because we were celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary. 

I am so grateful I get to make moments and share memories with my sweet, beautiful, funny, gentle wife.  

#365Gratitude Day 337: Duh, piglet

So over a year ago I ran in a half marathon, and then stopped being mindful about exercise and healthy eating.

A year of such mindlessness took its toll on me, and I've put back a significant amount of weight. ​

For a few months now I've kind of wanted to get back to being serious about health and exercise, and made several false starts with tracking my calories, and working out. ​

This week has been different though.

​First, it's been different in my exercise. I worked out three different times this week, swimming. The first time was 30 minutes of breast stroke. The second was 45.  It was tiring, but felt good.

Before yesterday's workout was the tip over point for me though. I had the choice to do 30 or 45 again, and I went for the extra.  I just wanted it. ​

​Similarly I have been really on top of my calorie tracking. Each day I've come in under budget for my eating.  Several times when confronted with the opportunity to eat poorly, or over budget, I said no. 

I think I know what's changed. I found my de again. ​

De, pronounced like "duh", is a hard concept to explain, or even understand.  The Tao Te Ching (or Dao De Ching) is, loosely translated, "The book of the Way and its Power."

Saying that de is power isn't exactly right though. Over years of reading, contemplation, meditation, and mindful practice I've come to understand de to be "virtue in action."​

De's power comes from applying oneself consistently and constantly in small things.  It also comes from the understanding that small  things are all there are.  You build the Great Wall a brick at a time. You eat (or rather don't eat) a plate of french fries one at a time. 

There's an amazing book about this called The Te of Piglet, by Benjamin Hoff.  Piglet, Pooh's tiny friend is very, VERY powerful.  He's positively LOADED with de.

It's not because he's strong, not because he doesn't get scared of things.  Rather it's because even when he feels unsure of himself, he still goes about his business and does what is necessary. 

As I stood in the locker room of my gym yesterday, I once again found that same familiar, powerful feeling.  

It didn't matter what had come before.  I would swim, and push myself, because it was what I wanted for myself, in my life, now, utterly.  Fear, doubt, the past, the future all were irrelevant.  All there was was this action I was intent upon doing. 

Once I knew that was so, getting in the water and doing it was positively pleasurable.  

I'm so grateful to have found my de about this again.