Posted on

Comfort Zone or Prison?

This morning I was reading about my comfort zone in Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. It spoke of the challenge of living a life of possibility when I am stuck in my comfort zone. And then I read this:

The Prisoner (I)

My hand has one gesture left,
to push things away.
From the rock dampness drips
on old stones.

This dripping is all I can hear.
May heart keeps pace
with the drips falling
and sinks away with them.

If the drops fell faster
an animal might come to drink.
Somewhere, it is brighter than this–
but what do we know. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

It is dark, quiet and lonely in my comfort zone. Stutz refers to it as womb-like. That analogy is apt for some comfort zones. Initially, when I feel my comfort zone, it is warm and soothing. I can gently sway in the heart-beat-rippled pool. Comfort.

Sometimes, though, when I feel the pull of desire for something that is outside my comfort zone, this womb is a prison with water-smoothed walls. I’ve heard it said that change happens/comfort zones are breached, when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. What a difficult place to be in! Perhaps that is why my comfort zone becomes like a prison: pain to stay; pain to leave.

Here’s a thought.

In the fantasy novel, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, the narrator, Kvoth, is a storyteller. He tells a story of a mythic hero, Taborlin The Great. Taborlin is held is a prison made inescapable by magic. Though, he wouldn’t be call Great, if he didn’t escape. How he did it was by calling the name of the stone and it fell away. He named the “thing” blocking his path and it no longer stood in his way.

“When he awoke, Taborlin The Great found himself locked in a high tower. They had taken his sword and stripped him of his tools: key, coin and candle were all gone….

“Now Taborlin needed to escape but when he looked around, he saw his cell had no door. No windows. All around him was nothing but smooth, hard stone. It was a cell no man had ever escaped.

“But Taborlin knew the names of all things, and so all things were his to command. He said to the stone: ‘Break!’ and the stone broke. The wall tore like a piece of paper, and through that hole Taborlin could see the sky and breathe the sweet spring air. He stepped to the edge, looked down, and without a second thought, he stepped out into the open air…

“So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind and so the wind obeyed him. He spoke to the wind and it cradled and caressed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown and set him on his feet softly as a mother’s kiss.” (The Name of the Wind)

Back to my comfort zone…

Consider what it would feel like to name the pain or fear that is keeping us locked in our comfort zone. The unknown becomes the known. And the known can be made to fall away, or solved for, or made small and ignored.

Is our greatness waiting outside our prison?  In time, they may tell stories of us too.

Posted on

Five Lessons I Learned Not Dying

I have not thought of my life as one of an experience of “not dying.” I sometimes joke with my husband that he has given God plenty of opportunities to kill him, and he is still here. He must not be done with him yet. Have I the same privilege? In reading Maggie O’Farrell’s new memoir, I am I am I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, that is the understanding that I have. I have not died yet. I am not done.

I am fortunate–I can truly say that–that I have not experienced any near-death events. I suppose my brushes with death are more figurative. They are there.

There is nothing unique or special in a near-death experience. They are not rare; everyone, I would venture, has had them, at one time or another, perhaps without even realising it. The brush of a van too close to your bicycle, the tired medic who realises that a dosage ought to be checked one final time, the driver who has drunk too much and is reluctantly persuaded to relinquish the car keys, the train missed after sleeping through an alarm, the aeroplane not caught, the virus never inhaled, the assailant never encountered, the path not taken. We are, all of us, wandering about in a state of oblivion, borrowing our time, seizing our days, escaping our fates, slipping through loopholes, unaware of when the axe may fall.” (pg 31-32)

I could be trite and say that the lessons I have learned from not dying are, like:

  • live everyday as if it is your last
  • be grateful for what you have
  • enjoy the journey

But, I don’t live my life like that, all the time (I am grateful for a close parking spot during Christmas shopping).

What I do know is this:

  1. Life does go on.
    In the moment, something can loom large and I don’t see a way out of its shadow. There is and I do. And, the angst I felt finding a boyfriend in bed with someone else when I was 25, doesn’t even register now that I am 55.
  2. Small moments need to be savoured.
    Most days my family rolls their eyes when I present one more sunrise picture from the bridge. Each sunrise is special even as I am anticipating the next one, and even if it does happen everyday.
  3. Time passes differently for everyone.
    Time passes in a flash for my husband. Thirty doesn’t seem that long ago for him and eighty doesn’t seem so far away. Time stretches languidly in both directions for me. I like that I feel like life saunters. Our two perspectives means that we treat time differently, and I haven’t been able to teach my husband to flip to my way of viewing time. Maybe I don’t need to.
  4. Healthy is better than wealthy.
    There is joy in taking care of yourself and others. Preparing a delicious meal or relishing a deer stretch in yoga are simple pleasures that help me to feel life deeply.
  5. Nurture family altruism.
    I was helping my daughter with her philosophy homework reading an article by Steven Pinker about altruism and social contract. He referred to nepotistic altruism as the act of doing something good so that our genes survive. I don’t think I would reduce what I do with and for my family down to such scientific rational. And I would do anything to help my genes survive (even read Plato and Hume). Perhaps that is the evolutionary argument for love. Families are like a petri dish for the world. We learn about ourselves and how to treat others in each of our family experiments. As it is in the microcosm, so it is in the macrocosm.

I have had the blessed fortune not to die. I must ensure that I live.

I consider myself steeped in luck, in good fortune… I have been showered with shamrocks, my pockets filled with rabbits feet, found the crock of gold at the end of every rainbow. I could not have asked for more from life, to have been spared with might have been. (page 241)

Posted on

A Good Night Means A Good Morning

These headlines keep showing up in my inbox:

 

And now I will see more as Google tracks my searches.

For years, I have been establishing a morning routine. I am a morning person. I like mornings. I start my mornings with a solid Awake tea.

My morning starts at 4:35 (so I can feel like I have already hit the snooze) and I head straight for the gym. I am home at 6:10. I get the dogs leashed and meet my friends at the corner for an hour walk. I am back between 7:20 and 7:30. Then it is shower, breakfast, meditate, journal, plan my day and get started.

In order for my morning to go smoothly, and I don’t feel like I need a nap at 9 o’clock in the morning, my morning routine has to start the night before. If I don’t get to bed on time, I don’t get up. If I don’t fall asleep quickly enough, or stay asleep all night, I don’t get up. I generally only miss my workout. The dogs get me up whether I like it or not. A poor night sleep doesn’t set me day up well even if it started an hour and a half later.

I am a good sleeper, normally. We are starting to learn about sleep and its patterns:

Most of us know that getting a good night’s sleep is important, but too few of us actually make those eight or so hours between the sheets a priority. For many of us with sleep debt, we’ve forgotten what “being really, truly rested” feels like.

To further complicate matters, stimulants like coffee and energy drinks, alarm clocks, and external lights — including those from electronic devices — interferes with our “circadian rhythm” or natural sleep/wake cycle.

Sleep needs vary across ages and are especially impacted by lifestyle and health. To determine how much sleep you need, it’s important to assess not only where you fall on the “sleep needs spectrum,” but also to examine what lifestyle factors are affecting the quality and quantity of your sleep such as work schedules and stress.

To get the sleep you need, you must look at the big picture. (Sleep Foundation)

Generally, a good evening routine means getting everything done so that I am in bed on time and have a chance to read myself sleepy.

 

I don’t feel sleep deprived with the sleep I get, but I am paying attention to what I do in the evening to ensure I get the best sleep possible. As a mother, a business woman, and a wife, getting myself ready for sleep means that everyone else is ready too. The kitchen is clean. Lunches are prepared. Emails are answered.

Smarter people suggest that to get the best sleep you need to start thinking about sleep at about 2 in the afternoon, when you are to stop drinking caffeine. I have set my caffeine cut of at about dinner time. I like an afternoon tea. Experiment with what works for you, if caffeine is a problem.

Screens should be turned off 2 hours before bed. I text my children who are away from home around 9:30 to hear how their day went and to say good night. And I set my phone alarm to get me up in the morning quietly. I am not an obsessive screen watcher, so the few minutes of screen time doesn’t seem to affect my night. What time do you need to shut down?

My goal is lights out by 10:30. And when that works, my morning works.

To get your morning routine working, set up your evening routine for a good night sleep.

Posted on

That’s “Just” Perfect

Perfect is such a controversial word.  For the most part, the word is either considered unattainable or a sarcastic rendering of something far from it.

Why does a word that can describe the petals of a rose or the slope of a lover’s back seem closer when spoken in anger than in love?

In the urban dictionary, most people agreed that perfect was unattainable.  I would like to champion the “perfect” cause.

When I looked up the work in my high school dictionary (I actually pulled it off the shelf), perfect isn’t unattainable, and it isn’t scarcastic either.  What I did find was:

perfect (pur-fekt) n: certain, sure, content, satisfied, pure.

There was another word that struck me:

Mature.

In my old dictionary, the word was used twice.  Once on its own and once combined with sexual maturity (let’s here it for perfect experiences).

What about being mature was perfect?Perfectly Mature

When I flipped back a couple of pages to find out what mature meant.  I found:  having completed natural growth and development; and having attained a desired state.

I am not sure I am completed my growth and development, but it would be perfect to attain a desired state.  I am take a rest from striving and being anxious.  I can enjoy mature wine as it tickles my taste buds.  I can savour a fine piece of chocolate as it melts on my tongue.  I can be taken away by a good book.  Or lifted up by a job well done.  And I can enjoy perfect sexual maturity.

Being mature or perfect is not the end.  It is the beginning of enjoyment.