Sunday, November 14, 2010

Step Forty Two: Stomach flu, a funeral, and tears...


Dear Fi,


Last Tuesday I tried to recover from a stomach flu (which attacked my entire family), from a few sleepless nights, from writing an existential and very personal paper, and from the funeral I attended that day. 


I didn’t want to think about anything that day. After the funeral I came home, lied down in bed and fell asleep, for the first time since Friday. I woke up on Wednesday morning... 

On Tuesday I saw tears everywhere. All I could think for this post was a paper full of tears. I imagined tiny tears on a silver wire, black tears falling down from a white paper, layers of tears hanging out from a celling, and tears of various sizes dancing on a wall. I knew I wouldn’t manage to do something time consuming so I just drew a few tears in my notebook during my break at work and that was all I could do.


The clouds of thoughts surrounded me that day and I couldn't free myself from thinking. All I wanted was to have a still mind, with no thoughts flowing, with no movement - just peaceful stillness. And maybe some clarity instead of the foggy confusion about the whole Universe and the purpose of my tiny life.


With years I’ve noticed that these “things” always escalate in my life around my birthday...    


“Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by strong emotion, do we remember that it is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.” {Pema Chödrön}


I’m trying to experiment for the last 38 years and still mostly fail miserably every day but I keep experimenting anyway ;)


Love :*


Sylvia

1 comment:

  1. Yowch! Sounds like you had a tough emotional week last week. :-( I hope you still managed to have a great birthday, despite stomach flu and work. Poor you! How are you feeling now? Hope everyone has fully recovered.

    I'm amazed that you managed to post, despite everything. Did creating the teardrops help to soothe your mind? They are the perfect shape for Zentangle doodles! There's something about your work - I don't know what - but I love the intricacy and I always want to take it and create it in another medium. For example, I think that these teardrops would also be beautiful in material and beading, or layers of paper! ha ha! I always love the patterns you make and the colours you use, so I guess I just want to spend more time with them! I love the sound of your idea, of suspending them from silver wire.

    And I don't think you're failing miserably, by the way! I think you're going from strength to strength, every year! I liked the Pema Chodron quote. "Awareness is the key... never underestimate the power of compassionately recognising what's going on". That's not always easy, but it certainly resonates with me! Lots of Love, Fi xx

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