Race Tracks
Posted on June 3, 2009 - Filed Under self reflect
I am a creature of all kinds of internal committees that have opinions about who I am, how I am handling things, and most significant to my self concept: the impact I have on the world. This keeps me from breathing sometimes, lately, most times.
My mind has been all over the place for weeks now. Some days it is calm, settled, manageable. On others it is like race cars on the Daytona Speedway, zipping by at ridiculous speeds. Sometimes my thoughts run by so fast I feel myself waiver from the wind it draws past me. As I watch those thoughts tear around the track of my mind I can hear the roar of the engines and almost smell the hot burn of neurons making way for some clarity. Some thoughts blow out a tire, and hesitate, pulling back from the screaming parade of other ruminations, giving up their fight in the race. Others, skirting the edges of my psyche, lose pieces of themselves as they hit edges or other notions. Then there are those, so daring to push the boundaries, that they lose control, pieces flying in all directions amidst smoke and flame and my own stunned soul. And still, there are other thoughts that keep pace, steady on, careful, tenacious, attentive…
I live each day, conscious of the impact I have on others, and that is a tremendous task I have set for myself. I seem to have missed the simple truth that I DON’T (and essentially can’t) control how I impact others… (I can pinch you, but whether that is pleasure or pain is dependent on how you perceive what I have done. I can love you, and that also depends on how you feel about yourself.) Thus, the races continue on my mind as I contemplate how I step, to whom I speak, the words I use, the way I say it, … and all I can REALLY do is exist consciously in all that I am, leaving footprints of that journey and nothing else, and what the world sees is up to them…
“Vroom …Vroom”
And then, the simple call of a bird, or the pull of wind on the reeds is like throwing a snowball over a writhing heap of ants. Everything stops and gets quiet. In that moment I just “am.”
I am not the committee, I am not what I have done, or what I have not done. I am not the voices of society, or the voices of family. I am not my Masters, or my job, or my home. I am not the books I keep, the money I earn, the jewelry I wear, or my political affiliation. I am not all the roles I have learned to play, or the people I am expected to be. I am not what others define me to be. I am not wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend…
I am my laughter, my tears. I am, in essence, the being who listens, who smiles, who loves and yearns. I am my passion, my fear, my anger, my sadness. I am the contentment of sand between my toes, or rain upon my lashes. I am the breath I take in as I get to know the world, and the breath I release when someone is familiar. I am the response to touch, I am the kiss I plant on another. I am, just as I am – in that I find reprieve from the races.
Comments
2 Responses to “Race Tracks”
You may be infinitely smaller than some things, but you're infinitely larger than others.
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
— Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Just saying, don't take yourself so seriously. Find humor wherever you can.
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The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
— John Milton
Wow. Sometimes Pito's wisdom blows me away. How come he doesn't talk like this in real life?! That photo is so, so sad. I think it says it all. But I think Pito is right. It's easy to allow oneself to get caught up in the turbulence of one's own monkey mind. The heart feeds the mind and then the mind gets all crazy. Laughter is good. As is quiet reflection. I love you!