A morning with pain and love

Awakened by pain this morning - overdid it with the right shoulder last night.  It's okay now, and that got me thinking what "living in the moment" really is.  It means, at least in part, that we don't get gripped by our concepts.  For instance, Oh crap, woke up early hurting, this is going to be a lousy day.  Add to that preferences:  Don't want to hurt!  Reality is that you can only do so much about the body you have right now.  Another reality: pain is always moving and changing if you let it.  I put my heating-pad cape on, it helped.  Moving around loosened things up, too.

And here's another thing loosened this morning.  Got notified by my phone that my grandson had played on Words With Friends, from 50 miles away.  It was 8 a.m. and my idea of this morning was to get in the shower about now.  Then stretch and meditate, and so on.  But I love this new additional contact with him.  First thing he did was post me on chat, Tom played a 74 point word last night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know, I wrote, pure evil.  Tom can't help being smart sometimes.

In case I momentarily forget, love is what matters, connection matters.  Not goals and schedules.  It's singing in the choir, it's tea with a comfortable friend, it's letting the cat lie on your shoulder for a while if she needs to.

An interesting thing about playing Words with Otto is that it's just fun to play, and I don't care if I win - and in fact, he just won one of our games by a hair (he always wants to play at least two at once).  Now, the other people I play with don't hesitate to beat me by multiple hundreds of points.  That tends to make a person nervous.  No, it doesn't.  My mind, it's my own reaction.  Maybe I should turn it around and say, Let's see if I can get Laurie to beat me by 500 points.  That's what I like, a goal I can reasonably meet.

On New Year's Resolutions, Including Mine

I have not been posting much because I've been having fun - maybe too much fun, playing Words With Friends on my new iPad with 4 or 5 people at a time, including my grandson, who likes to play two games at a time.  I tell you, grandmas who don't do the new technology (and I know people who won't even have e-mail) are missing out.  It's made being old and less active much more fun.

But I thought I should post something today, so here is a child's view to think about as you make your resolutions -

(If you friend me on Facebook, I pass along good things like this once in a while, but not too often.)

I called my dear friend Teena today when she didn't show up in church.  We were in meditation groups together all those years ago, about ten years now, I guess, and you form a bond there with people that is warm and lasting.  In fact, this morning two other women came up to me who were in those groups, and who I hadn't seen for years.  There is something terrific about sitting in silence with other people.

Teena says her resolution is "Be open-minded and don't get too attached to anything."  Very Buddhist, I told her. She didn't mind.  She likes to read Buddhist books.

I told her my resolution, arrived at spontaneously a few days ago, is "I'm not going to let this shit get me down."  Can't help it, that was the language of the soul.  And what I meant was this sickness and aging stuff.  It just keeps coming at you, throwing curve balls.  I am already much better with it all than I was, say, 10 years ago, when I practically had a nervous breakdown before my thyroid surgery.  (It is possible to have your vocal cords damaged by the surgery, though unlikely.)  Might as well get used to it, I think now, because aging is inevitable, and this is what it means - things breaking down.  I maintain my current commitment to exercising and doing my various PT exercises, too, for my back, neck, and now right arm.

I hope you don't overwhelm yourself with a whole bunch of self-improvement ideas going into the new year, although we can all vow to be kinder and more generous.  If you must form a healthy new habit, I recommend daily meditation.  It's been good for me in many ways, the best being to have it in place to help you when you're lying awake in a hospital bed.

And of course, no hitting or biting.  Not even doctors, tempting as it might be.