Wednesday, October 05, 2005

challenges

From my handwritten Journal:

"I do not know how people see me now, but since I've been changing my attitude and perspective through meditation and controling my thought life, it seems like people are drawn to me. I keep seeing people I used to know. People I normally see around start saying hello and smiling. I am smiling and talking to more people. Things that seem portentious might only be... results. Plain and simple. Interesting. Portents, omens, signs - perhaps not guideposts for lost travelers, but merely the effects of a life lived well."

I had my first very challenging day on Monday. After too little sleep, I had a very difficult shift at work, and I nearly lost my temper a couple of times. The fact that I would even come close is very disheartening to me. I had one small victory - in the middle of growing very annoyed at one particular table I went back to the kitchen and took rein on my thoughts, changing them around and convincing myself that I could be at peace and be friendly with this table. The rest of the time, I was able to be genuinely friendly with them, and in return they seemed to genuinely smile. They left a crappy tip, but I expected that regardless of their mood, and at least they were smiling. A victory, in terms of overcoming difficulties with anger and frustration, which had been held at bay for over a month and a half. I don't know what changed, other than lack of sleep, which I didn't think was overly severe. But with an optimistic look on the morrow, I spent a happy day at work yesterday and even picked up an extra expo shift and managed to leave work smiling under the pouring rain.

Monday reminds me, or perhaps teaches me for the first time in truth, that it is not going to get easier. Waves of negativity seem to exist all over the globe. And when every little moment is significant, every smile beautiful, and every emotion profound, the battle for the mind will not be over til the day I die. This strange new way which I have found is something from which there is no turning back. The sun is brighter. The clouds darker. The rain wetter. The trees greener. Everything is more brilliant and more horrifying. Dispersing complacency seems to open the senses like never before. Not that I have entirely overcome and found myself in a new state of being. Complacency still claws at me. Habits keep trying to form, bad ones, comfortable, time-wasting habits. But I will succeed. I tell myself that nearly every day, and I can now say it without a hint of doubt. That, in itself, despite recent setbacks - or challenges - is cause for rejoicing. Cause to smile.

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