I loved seeing friends from my childhood, friends from Kansas, my cousins from Texas and Oklahoma and being able to do lots of fun things with them like meeting them for breakfasts, or lunches, or dinners, or sightseeing. Like I said: busy, busy, busy! My poor day planner has hardly any white blank space -it was taken over by the black pen of planning!
I have always been a planner. I keep lists in just about every room in my house. Lists of things to accomplish, to plan - I'm always thinking about the future, both near and far. And I enjoy doing that. However, it can become overwhelming and then I'm not so good at turning it off, if you know what I mean.
My childhood friend, Karen, is still teaching (the retirement in Oklahoma is not nearly as wonderful as it is for teachers in Colorado!). She asked me at breakfast Friday morning if I had ever had beginning-of-the-schoolyear nightmares. I still have them! When we shared what those dreams were about we realized that it was a fear of lack of preparation. And with that revelation, I found that that is why I'm still having those dreams. I still feel that need to be prepared, no matter what, and that's why my mind can't turn off.
Many years ago I read Eat, Pray, Love and was in awe of the author taking a year to find her own meaning of life when her present situation became so difficult that she was consumed with anguish and disappointment. She didn't want to live her life that way. It wasn't healthy for her or for the people she was around. She needed a new perspective on her life. Granted, taking a year off to travel to Italy, India and Indonesia might seem a little extreme for most of us, but that's what she needed.
In India, she joined an ashram - a place of meditation and reflection. I could relate to her not being able to turn off her mind long enough to benefit from meditation. She would sit in the TM room, close her eyes, begin the chants and then find herself thinking, "what a great room. I could put one of these in my house, although I'd definitely want AC. What colors would work best, I wonder. What should I put on the walls . . . " The completely wrong way to approach stillness. But, how does one turn off the mind?
At first I was going to entitle this blog "The Art of Being Lazy", but that isn't really what I wanted to talk about. I can do lazy pretty well! Just sit around all day and drink ice tea and read my books in the sunshine. (Didn't get to do any of that last week and thus the topic for this week!) But I believe stillness and laziness are very different. Being still requires a certain mindfulness that being lazy does not. But how can one be mindful of emptying the mind?
I love taking yoga classes, but I find that even when I concentrate on the poses I'm still thinking about how cute that lady's outfit is, how I hope that yoga can help that overweight woman lose weight, wondering where the other person got her mat, how does my pose look in the mirror, where will I go for lunch afterwards,and so on, and so on . . . Sheesh! I can't even concentrate on my breathing which they say is one way to avoid all the extra thoughts. After about five mindful breaths I take off again!
I think the closest I can come to stillness of both body and mind is when I'm surrounded by nature. Perhaps that's why I love the SW of France so much. Nature is more prevalent than civilization. When we were at the farmhouse, Andy took off on some runs in the woods and I took off for walks around the perimeter of their property. I concentrated on my senses - the sound of the birds and the little stream, the sight of the thick undergrowth and the trees all around me, the feel of the soft moss under my feet, the smell of the loam and the woods and the newly mown hay. I was so relaxed and felt so at ease and calm and still.
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| The farmhouse |
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| The path of stillness |
I can do that in the mountains here in Colorado, but since I'm never that far from home, I'm afraid that my thoughts always manage to creep back in. Thoughts about what's on my calendar for tomorrow, who has a birthday coming up that I need to buy cards for, what am I planning to do for dinner . . .
I know there are people who have to have constant sound. I see people running or walking and they have their earbuds in or their bluetooth. People playing their music loudly in their cars. In the last ten years of my teaching I wanted no sounds on my way home or even once I reached home - no radio, no TV, no talking on the phone. I was surrounded by noise all day at school and I needed quiet and calm once I left there each day. I still love quiet and calm, but I'm still working on keeping my mind quiet.
I don't plan to spend time eating my way through Italy (although that is very tempting!), meditating in an ashram in India, or finding the meaning of life with a guru in Indonesia, but I hope to someday be able to master my mind to the point that I really can turn it off for long enough to feel rested and renewed and refueled for the next step in my life. And I hope to have many more steps! Which may take me to places beyond France. Who knows? It's a great big wonderful world out there and I would like to add my footsteps to so many others who have walked before me.
Thank you for joining me as I turn each bend on this road that I'm on. I hope it will be a journey of discovery in every sense of that word. I will continue the work on my house this week - at least at this point in the week I seem to have enough blank space on my day planner that there will be time for that. But I hope to also work on how to be still. I don't know that it is something I can ever master, but it's all part of the journey, right? Merci, mes amis!
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