#365Gratitude Day 355: Coming home to a good snuggling

Yesterday I came home from a trip I had taken to visit my (insert unique relationship descriptor here), Maya.  I was down in North Carolina, so it took several hours by car to come home.  It wasn't too arduous a trip.  For a good chunk of it I listened to a great audiobook, Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings, and for another good chunk had a long chatty phone call with my friend Matti.  

But by the time I got home, it was dark, and I was tired, and I was very ready for a good cuddling.

Which I got, both from Missy, and from Yang.

It was lovely.

#365Gratitude Day 354: Nicknames

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" says Romeo to Juliet in the play of the same name.

I'm not sure I agree, though.  I have a complicated relationship with the Naming of Things™.  

Taoism refers to names as ming, and views them as a necessary, yet limited tool.  Take the word water.  "Water" isn't water, it's just a series of sounds.  The feeling of rain on your face, the smell of the ocean, floating in a lake, or chugging down a cold glass of it, on a hot day all those are more water than "water".  

What's more, naming often  implies a kind of judgment.  Am I tall?  Compared to my friend Maya, yes, very much so.  Enough so that when we have danced together at weddings, she's had to stand on a chair.  (It's fun.)  Compared to say the Washington Monument though, I'm not very tall at all.  

It sounds like naming is a shoddy thing at best.

However, as both an author, and a Very Silly Person™,  there's another side to all this.  I LOVE words, and names.  I love seeing aspects of things and calling attention to them, or playing around with the sweet sounds of something's name.  I often give people nicknames, or somehow twist language to make it my own.  

I especially love it when this is done to me, and for me.  My love of sharks is well known.  Over the years friends of mine have called me Sharkman, Mr. Sharkman, Shark Boy, Fish Boy, all sorts of endless variations on that theme.  Just this past weekend, my friend Michael sent a text to Maya, whom I was visiting, to tell her that the "Heart of Sharkness" was almost there.

It just tickled me.  Such a sweet, loving thing.

#365Gratitude Day 353: Momentary Beauty

This morning I got to the train station extra early, because I wanted to take a much earlier train. 

As I got to the rail station trestle I couldn't help but notice the moon shining away in the pre-dawn sky.  

It was so beautiful that I had to stop and take a picture. Sadly the picture can't do justice to the moment. 

The air was so crisp, and still.  There was a special quiet too, the heavy, thick of early morning, only slightly disturbed by the shuffling and rushing footfalls of people making their way over to the platform.  

There's a sort of poetry, or maybe singing the world around us makes if we stop and listen for it.  

#365Gratitude Day 352: Jerks

So my work on the Big Little Podcast, occasional event wrangling, teaching at kink events, and online advocacy make me something of a very minor media personality.  As I joked with a friend the other day, I'm maybe a slightly larger fish in a very tiny pond.

Over the years, I've developed some very strong opinions about all sorts of things related to being kinky, an age player, or just even a human being.  (All of which I happen to be!)​

Among these things I beleive are the following:​

• Self-acceptance and love matter When you're alternative in any way, it's super easy to fall prey to the trap that you need someone else to tell you that those alternative things are okay. It's a damnable lie. You don't require anyone else to approve of you.
• Labels are mostly meaningless. They're the placeholders for a conversation you can have with someone else. They're useful for those conversations, but that's about it. What one person calls being an "inner kid" another might call being "regressive", still yet someone else might call that "Just how Uncle Dave is, don't mind him."
• Compassion begins with oneself You have to love and embrace who you are, before you can love and embrace who anyone else is.
• Communities don't exist They're social cohorts, groupings of people with something in common. But they're not collectives with a life, culture, and ethics held in common. Each member within them is responsible for themselves, to themselves. Each member within them can (and does) live as they choose, for the most part. There's no such thing as "harming the entire community" or "doing something for the good of the community", or "rousing the community to action to do thing x". Just because I like age play and you do too, doesn't mean we owe each other anything, or are guaranteed to be alike, or even get along.
• If you want acceptance and tolerance, give it. Waiting around for the other guy to be good, kind and true isn't going to do you any favors. You shape the world you live in.

There's plenty more, but that's a fine cross-section of the ideas I hold.  The problem is, many of these ideas just rile people up, and piss them off.  It's not a problem, really.  I don't mind people disagreeing with me.  Actually, I welcome it.  I'm always willing to engage in polite discourse with others, and to refine my opinions, too.

I recognise the essential truth that opinions are much like the anus - everyone's got one.

Sometimes the people who disagree with me get a little unhinged.  They rant and rave, type WALLS OF TEXT against what I have to say, sometimes call me names, all sorts of unpleasant things. 

I'll admit, sometimes it can be irritating and often exhausting.   

But I realized a while back that my purpose isn't to be "right."  (I actually don't think I am right.  There is no right.  Here's a great zen story about how that is possible.)  My purpose is to help people to help themselves.  I don't have the answers to all the questions.  I just have some questions.  I ask myself these questions all the time.  And, for those who want to join me in that self-questioning, I have questions for them.

It makes me feel great when, at my urging, someone else does the same sort of soul-searching I myself do, and comes to a better place for it.  It doesn't have to be the same place I'm at.  (In fact, I think that's kind of impossible.)  I get so much out of the thoughtful discussions I have with others about all sorts of things.

Here's where the gratitude comes in though.  Even when someone not only disagrees with me, but wants to sort of publicly wipe their ass with me, good still comes of it.

For one thing, people who do this sort of thing self-select themselves as members of an elite group, "people I am not going to emotionally invest in, or invite to my house for sugar cookies." 

For another, often when this happens, those enlightened folks who DO get what it is I'm doing will jump in the fray, and do their level best to bring the discussion to a healthier, more balanced place.  In a way, these jerks who foment such unrest are almost an unwitting aide to the very work I'm doing, teaching others mindful tolerance and self-love.  They do their best to not lose their cool as they cope with these argumenative folks.

That makes me glad I know them, and shows me that what I'm trying to put out in the universe is making some difference.   I don't care to try to help every person, because I don't think it's possible and smacks of hubris.  But I do care about helping each person I can.  

When I see people treating themselves and others with compassion, practicing tolerance, being open-minded, and sex-positive, it warms my heart. 

I'm glad that whether they like it or not, people who treat me poorly help me to do what's important to me.

#365Gratitude Day 351: Tense Studies

So, there's this corny joke I love.

The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar together. 

It was tense. 

Corny jokes aside, tense is on my mind today.   

I've been a Taoist for around a decade now.   I remember when I first got started in my meditation and contemplation, I was super excited, and often very confused.  It was like I was learning a whole new way to think, to speak, and to act.  I struggled to understand what Tao is, what te is, tried to move with the Tao as opposed to against it.  (Which is a meaningess distinction, what I really came to understand in subsequent years was that I had the choice to practice mindfulness, or not to.)  Along the way I frequently got into long, thinky exchanges with my brother, Spacey, who's a very good person with whom to have those sorts of mulling sessions.

Now I find myself on the opposite end of that sort of exchange.  I have several friends who have decided to explore Taoism and mindfulness too, and are just getting started with their own journey.  I get phone calls, texts, emails, fetlife messages, the occasional munch conversation, Skype calls, and Kik messages from these lovely people, all seeking to find their way, and wanting my help.  

It's beautiful. 

I'm happy to help them as they find their way.  I count it a big blessing that the work I've done for myself previously is there for me, so that I, in turn, can help them.  In an almost ineffable way, it's like this giant mobius strip.  That which was before exists to shape, inform, and nurture that which is coming to be which in turn exists to lend shape to that which was before.

I know, it makes my head hurt, too.

But I'm grateful for it.