Wednesday, May 6th

Not much to tell... I saw one person for direction, though this is my day off this week. I took an hour's walk early this morning and another one later in the day, had a nap after lunch, and watched two dvd's (one was Flags of Our Fathers... heavy!). I cooked an omelet (that can't be how you spell it, is it? I want to add another t & an e) for the four of us for dinner tonight... nice to get back into the kitchen.

I think I must be getting older, but quiet days like today suit me just fine of late. I don't know about you, but for most of my life I've felt a certain amount of compulsion about staying busy, being productive, doing things that I judged "meaningful." Strangely enough, I feel a kind of liberation going on lately in just being able to relax, breathe, and be. Weird, huh?

While all that pressure to perform and produce was largely from within myself, it is "in the air" in our culture, and difficult to escape. I've begun asking myself, what is all this striving about? The push for "progress," the ambition to have more than we do, the orientation toward the future rather than the present moment... I'm becoming a little suspicious of it all, because when it comes right down to it, all of this seems like a distraction from paying attention to the abundance we have right here, right now. When we take a moment to breathe and become present to ourselves, we might discover this abundance in the Simplicity of Being... just being awake, aware, alive.

Again, of course I remember that I am in the tertianship bubble right now, enjoying Oz and this hiatus between assignments, and there is space for me to feel these things. But I honestly hope that it is possible to feel this simple, joyful abundance in the midst of the daily grind. Can anyone verify for me that it is?