keep calm and carry on.

2013 is/was a pivotal year for me, in the sense that many of the things i'd read about in recent years, tips and guidelines for how to live a happy, healthy life, suggestions for maintaining balance, shifting perspectives, taming the mind, keeping calm and carrying on...so many of those things i knew, (in theory) i was actually able to apply, to practice, to literally walk the walk after talking the talk.

this actualization is sweetly satisfying. not in a clap myself on the back sort of way, no need to congratulate or applaud these efforts. but more in the aha! the lightbulbs glowed brightly and all of a sudden everything clicked, made complete and utter sense. i feel peace. calm. neutral. there is no wavering, no hesitating, no indecision. just heart.

it's still very much a work in progress, but, this year, this unpredictable, combative year of the snake was ultimately highly informative. because of her sudden emotional swings and unexpected drops, i experienced layered growth, was given choices to either mope and whine, or pick myself back up, (usually both) and all of this with gentleness. right now, RIGHT NOW,  i feel a deep sense of heart-bursting gratitude. to my family, friends, strangers, self, to life.

sometimes we have to go through the chaos, even if it's self inflicted (especially if it's self inflicted) to be able to see more clearly. in order to ride out the storm, sometimes you have to let the storm exist and admit that it's a fuckin storm.

por ejemplo, in november, i began to notice that one of my friends, someone to whom i felt very close and thought the feelings were reciprocated, began to distance herself from me. while it felt off-putting, i asked to make sure everything between us was okay. while her response seemed a bit incomplete, i sensed that she needed time to figure things out on her own and so i gave her space. it had been nearly 3 weeks when i realized that we hadn't seen each other and then, i worried and began to internalize that perhaps i had done something wrong. when i realized that our last interaction didn't seem extremely out of the ordinary, i began to realize that the reason i kept holding on, clinging on the wanting to know the truth of the matter, was because i was hurt. deeply hurt. it hurts when your friend doesn't respond and treats you with silence. it hurts when you have no idea of what's really going on and furthermore, when old insecurities rear their ugly heads in your face. it just REALLY REALLY HURTS. until you decide to not let it hurt you any more.

i can be an emotional person, feeling things deeply and while that can make me empathetic, it can also be misleading and draining. (express emotions but don't let them dominate you.) after a good cry, i realized, that i was creating my own pity party and making myself feel worse for it. in the words of sweet brown, "ain't nobody got time for that!" and that's the truth. friendships don't always last. life is impermanent, things are always changing, and there will always be things i don't know and things i cannot control. so instead of wasting time and energy on things i don't know, i've sharply shifted my focus towards kindness, experiences that teach me, and not taking things too personally, and to controlling what i can: my actions and reactions. let's all keep on, keeping on.

not too tight, not too loose. in the middle.

in buddhism, there's a path called the middle way that only you can find for yourself. it's personalized, meaning that no one, but YOU, can tell you your balanced middle way.

pema chodron says:

The middle way is wide open, but it’s tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.

Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot. We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind. What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.

The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.

for so much of our lives, we are consistently taught and conditioned to understand and follow such binary thought patterns: right vs wrong, good vs bad, win vs lose, praise vs blame and these habitual patterns can create pain and disharmony. finding the middle path is a way to become more fluid, less judgmental and calm. finding my balanced, middle way is challenging but i'm trying my best to approach it with gentle curiosity and kindness. i want to stop struggling and see things for what they are, uninfluenced by my pendulum swing emotions but, focused on peace and with mind control.