Gun violence. Institutionalized racism. Police brutality.
It's a pox on humanity, the whole damn thing.
You can wring your hands, cry, and moan all over social media how fucked up our country is. Or you can do something.
I'm doing something.
What am I doing?
That's a link to a page listing 8 things you can do, 8 actions you can take to stop gun violence.
I signed up for their email list this morning. I'm going to find a local group to volunteer with too. Enough talk. Time for doing.
This is a picture of my running clothes, minus the underpants and the fancy running watch.
I'm grateful for them. Why? I'll explain.
Yesterday I was helping out a friend, who had been in a car accident. She has some mobility issues (which she had prior to said accident), with her ankle. They make getting around troublesome for her, enough so that she rented a wheelchair for an out-of-town trip she's taking this weekend.
I helped my friend get a rental car while she's dealing with accident and health related stuff, and we brought it back to her house. Shortly after that, we parted company.
She had some prep to do to make using the wheelchair work for her. I watched her very cleverly cut little pieces of rope, tie off the ends and burn them, and rig up a harness to carry her purse and water bottle. (Totally cool.) Then we got ready to go.
I want to describe this process to you.
First, she pulled on a pair of driving gloves (necessary for protecting her hands from getting banged up by pushing the wheelchair.)
We exited her apartment, and she handed me the key so I could lock up (easier than jockeying past me in the chair to do it.)
We rode down the elevator to the rented car.
She got to the car, got out of the chair, opened the driver's side rear door to the SUV. Then she folded up the chair, trying to see if it would fit in the back seat.
It didn't.
She went around to the back of the SUV, opened the cargo hatch, put the back seats down, lifted the chair into the cargo bed.
Then she went around to the rear seat door again, tugged on the wheelchair to shift it up a bit to see if she could make it fit better.
She came around to the back, took the leg stand hardware off the wheelchair, and got into the car.
Sounds exhausting, right? Wait, we're not done yet.
I got in the passenger side front seat, and watched as she slowly and carefully took the driver's gloves off, and folded them away.
As I watched her, I felt this great wave of empathy for her. Not sympathy, mind you. I didn't feel sorry for her, I felt a shared sense of her pain, and admiration.
For one thing, she totally rigged up the purse carrying harness thing in the blink of an eye, super clever. This doesn't surprise me though, because this particular friend of mine is like the poster child for resourceful puller-up-of-oneself-by-their-own-bootstraps. This same friend of mine by force of will got herself out of a tiny rural town and into a successful career in a big city. She's kind of magical, really.
She's also the sort of person who can do a lot with a little. She's creative, and driven. When she puts her mind to something, nothing will stop her.
As I got in my own car and she got on her way, I knew she would be okay. But I could tell that her amazing motion was being very hampered by the inertia caused by recent misfortune and specifically all these mobility compromising things that have happened to her.
I've known her for ages. I've been to her house before, lots of times. I can distinctly remember visiting with her and going someplace in her car, from her apartment. It was like a 2 minute operation, that felt like sliding down a pole into the Batcave, and jumping in the Batmobile and roaring out of sight.
How very differemt things were yesterday.
Anyhow. cue today. I get up at around 4:45 am, before my alarm clock, with her on my mind. Also, I know it's going to be brutally hot today, so it's very on my mind to get up, get ready to go walk, and get in a good workout before the withering heat comes.
So, I got to business, getting my pre-run routine done in a hurry. And then I stopped, and looked down at my running clothes, the ones you just saw, and realized how incredibly lucky I am to have the mobility I do. It's big goddamn fucking deal.
This was my third walking workout in recent days. I pushed myself to do an extra half mile or so, because I was so grateful I can.
I really like routines. I love patterns and rituals. They call to me, help make arbitrary order out of chaos.
I think that's why I'm a writer, and why I write code for a living. I'm fascinated when I find these things, like spider webs, or moiré patterns.
I like making and having rituals too. I stumbled across a new one at our new house. It's a slightly older home, with a few little quirks all its own. One of these has to do with my shower.
It takes a little time to warm up. In the morning I have to reach in, get a tiny bit wet, and wait for it to warm up. I've taken to keeping my towel nearby, drying off my arm, and then brushing my teeth or putting in my contact lenses while I wait.
This morning I realized it's become routine for me, in a way I find charming and reassuring.
It's the little things that just make every day special.
So I went for a long walk today. Just got back from it. Spent a good deal of it talking with my friend Snow Cone (not their real name, but a great nickname), about some Heavy Stuff Going On In Their Life™.
Snowy was particularly upset at how life kept seeming to just poop on them, unrelentingly, and how little anyone around them seemed to give a shit about it.
I told them all about a different way to see things that might prove helpful, something I call The Burden of Expertise. I was glad I got to share it with them, and now with you.
Here's a video log all about it.
Here's a list of some of the stuff I reference in the video:
Pema Chodron's Getting Unstuck
Alan Watt's On Spiritual Authority
Verse 2 of the Tao te Ching:
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
This whole find-new-house-pack-old-house transition has been crazy stressful. Lately I've become QUITE aware of how my body manifests and processes anxiety.
Stress putting its best foot forward, on me.
When something troublesome comes up (like say, getting a house I wanted yanked out from under me, or mistakenly having my internet service turned off too early, purely hypothetical examples <insert slow sarcastic wink here>), I have been feeling this giant pressure in my chest , somewhat akin to someone stepping on me in a big, heavy boot.
Here's the thing - after a few weeks of it, I was pretty freaked out. I thought maybe I was having heart problems. (I'm not.) I researched it a bit, and had just had a big if checkup anyhow, which I passed with swimming colors. (Because they were all out of the flying ones that day.)
What I figured out was that it was an autonomic bodily response to stress. Basically, it was me giving myself a nice little panic attack.
Now that I knew this, I knew what to do about it too, practice mindful detachment. Stay with the feeling, witness it, honor it, move through it.
I still feel the boot sometimes, when stuff comes up, but I'm aware of what it is, why my body is feeling it, and I can move through it quickly. I actually had one this morning about cutting off my internet this morning (so, maybe not so hypothetical after all <insert saucy wink here>), and just taking the time to think about it, breathe, and write this blog entry has shoved that boot right off my chest.
Good stuff.
