The Walk 1/4/12 2/1/12 M
A Not Very Good Day 1/4/12 2/1/12
By Chance 12/1/11 2/1/12
Cheated 11/16/11 2/1/12
Dumb Ideas 10/26/11 2/1/12
Flashback 12/14/11 2/1/12
Yugoslavia 1/12/12 2/1/12
THE WALK
February 1, 2012 at 11:41 pm (MANDALAS, Stories, Thought for the Day)
The estimated walking time was one hour, but of course it would depend on how quickly one walked. The recommendation was to take a step, pause, and take another step. But there was also encouragement to subjectively and intuitively trust the pace and follow that dictum over formal instructions.
She stood outside and surveyed the grassy structure. It looked like a series of weed, with intermittent channels of dirt. It was hard to imagine how this would be helpful, but she had always wanted to experiment with this, and so here she was. What harm could be done.
She stepped into the labyrinth. Her first awareness was that looking ahead was unproductive. She had to look just ahead of her feet, to know where to place them, or she would be walking outside the lines.
Lesson # 1: One step at a time.
It was becoming a bit usual, since there was only following the dirt path surrounded by grass “fences”. She grew more confident of her stepping, still holding to the one step at a time method.
Lesson #2: I am learning to trust my path.
With the so much regularity, even as she followed the swirling path, her mind began to wander to other times. With her feet stepping one after the other, she reminded herself of how so much of life is putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that the process with lead to a good somewhere, or at least to a somewhere she needed to be.
Lesson #3: Everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to happen.
Someone else had stepped onto the path. She quickly glanced up to see a girl child of about ten tiptoeing along the beginning of the labyrinth, her face lit up with the curiosity of the young. She was well into her venture, and surprised to discover that what was for her moving toward the exit of the labyrinth, was only a path beside where the young girl was prancing into the labyrinth.
Lesson #4: The path can be the beginning or the end of one’s journey.
She wondered, if she walked again, would she learn the same lessons. Maybe. Probably not.
1/4/12
copyright © Susan Alley
All rights reserved
CHEATED
February 1, 2012 at 11:33 pm (Fun)
I love my treadmill. There are days, of course, when I do a bit of “Oh, God, I have to walk my two miles.”, but for the most part I love my treadmill.
One of the things I especially like is that it will record the number of miles I walk. It only records full miles, which encourages me to walk an entire mile, rather than one-half or three-fourths, because one-half or three-fourths won’t record on the total mileage. So, it provides incentive. I feel like my treadmill is cheating me if I walk one-and-one-half miles and it only shows one mile. But that’s the way it is, and I’ve learned to live with it.
My larger frustration comes when I cheat myself, which is what happened this morning. I was zooming along at my 3.8 miles per hour pace, stopping every quarter of a mile to walk around the basement, catch my breath, and recommit to the next quarter mile. It’s a ritual that recently works for me.
I forgot to tell you that when I get on the treadmill and turn it on, I also have to put a magnetic chip on the treadmill, which activates the machinery. The magnetic chip is on a string with a clip. I clip that end to my waistband, and off I go. When I’m finished, I remove both ends of the chip and turn the machine off.
Now here’s the part that most of you won’t understand. It is only understood by people who have at least a smidge of obsessive compulsive thinking. You have to get into the spirit of, I want to have “credit” for every mile I walk, and the world is not good for about five minutes if I don’t get credit.
Alright, so I’m into my walk to about 1 ¾ miles. I only have another quarter mile to go. I’m listening to music (I love Neil Diamond) and I’m feeling pretty good that I’ve almost completed my regimen of the day. I moved my right hand just a little askew of the usual way I do, and snagged the string that holds the magnetic clip.
Now I know this doesn’t seem like much to you, but the machine stopped. I glared at my treadmill as though it had betrayed me. “You could have waited until I’d finished this last quarter mile”, was wandering around in my head. I glared at the clip for not holding on better. I was not in the mood to claim responsibility for not getting credit for my last mile. My treadmill and the clip just looked back at me, waiting. I finally acknowledged I had cheated myself.
11/16/11
copyright © Susan Alley
All rights reserved
DUMB IDEAS
February 1, 2012 at 11:30 pm (Thought for the Day)
We as people can believe all kinds of strange things. But give us a break: some of these ideas get plugged into our little, unsophisticated minds before we have the skills to assess. And often those ideas are plugged in by people who used to be little also and were fed those ridiculous ideas before they could fully assess them. So, they just passed them on as truth.
There’s also the whole concept of the game of “telephone” where one person starts a piece of information, like “I want to make people laugh.” And by the time the sentence gets passed on to the 20th person, she hears, “I want to bake a giraffe.”.
It’s not so much that we each believe all kinds of strange things. The dilemma is knowing when it’s strange and needs reassessment, and when, even if it is strange, we want to keep it.
I’m thinking , for example, of the rules of systems. We get fancy at times these days and talk about healthy, functional systems and unhealthy, dysfunctional systems. We now know what the rules for these systems are. The rules of an unhealthy, dysfunctional system are 1) Don’t talk about problems, 2) Don’t have any feelings about what’s happening (except happy of course), and 3) Don’t trust anyone for anything, do it yourself.
Okay, now those are crazy rules, yet because they pervade our society, with penalties for not following them (like we will ostracize you) we pretty well follow these rules, and we think someone who follows other rules is pretty strange. In order to fit in, in our society, we have to turn our logic upside down and ignore what’s going on inside. Then we wonder why people are anxious and depressed.
Okay, I don’t know the answer. Well, I know AN answer, but the cost is so high I don’t even want to mention it. Well, okay, I’ll tell you my answer, but I’m certainly not expecting you to do it, and I wouldn’t expect that we would ever talk about this again.
One answer is to turn those crazy rules on their heads and find other people who are willing to be brave enough to join you, so you’re not alone. But you can already tell, this is pretty much an underground movement. You’ll have to be quite private if you’re going to be so scandalous as to Talk about what’s bothering you, share your Feelings about what’s happening, and Trust the other person to offer support even if they don’t agree.
Alright, I told you it was a costly, crazy idea. I’m sorry I even mentioned it, and please don’t tell anyone I spoke so blasphemously by suggesting we not follow The Rules.
10/26/11
copyright © Susan Alley
All rights reserved
THOUGHTS & WRITING 