Just pondering

Day 11 Of My So-Called Retreat

Yeah…..It’s more like I’ve been retreat-ish; still have my toes in the water…

The damn news. News of what’s going on “out there”. It’s an itch I can’t quit scratching.

I’ve been good about not getting on FaceBook or Instagram. But I’m still in the habit of scrolling through my news feed on my phone and of pulling up YouTube on my computer. It’s a terrible habit. It’s a time stealing, sleep-delaying habit. At least I’m just reading the headlines (for the most part, though some articles will draw me in…argh); I’ll hit “save” to read later…I can tell just from the headlines whether or not it’s gonna stress me out and that’s really the thing that I’ve been trying to retreat from: the stress. I’m specifically retreating from the anger and frustration and dismay and anxiety that inevitably results from that stress. The stress that humanity gives me.

I’m happy to report that my stress actually is down though – just from the little bit of retreat I’ve managed so far.

I think one big factor in reducing it has been getting outdoors. What they say is true, people! Touch that grass!! Get out into Nature!!! Even if that nature is your tiny, oddly shaped backyard in a city neighborhood which needs a lot of work. But only if it isn’t swelteringly hot and humid…because that situation will just wilt your psyche and make you cranky as hell. I’m not so sure, now that I think on it, that the zombies in “The Walking Dead” became zombified because of a virus or more because of the god-awful climate of the South. Anyway, I’ve been taking advantage of the cooler temperatures of Spring and trying to “make hay while the sun shines” as the old saying goes. Trying to work towards creating a little backyard oasis in which to…yes…retreat when needed … not just for me, but for my family. It’s something positive to do.

My psychologist observed something about me in my last visit, that I don’t think I’d ever realized fully about myself. She said, while encouraging me on this path to cocoon myself in order to repair my mental health, “I know, you want to save the world…” She called me an “activist”, because I care about social issues.

A couple of friends of mine and I have joked in the past about us getting together at our little klatsches in order to fix the world’s problems, but it’s funny that I’ve never actually thought of myself as someone who wants to do that. And I know that I’ve never thought of myself as an “activist”. But my psychologist is onto something about me. In my mind, and in the words of other people throughout my life, it’s more like I’ve always just been overly sensitive, a “goody-goody”, taken things too seriously, just cared too much. But, the way she put it…”wanting to save the world”. She distilled it out of my well of distress. That has been my “problem” for a long, long, long time, I think. And maybe I’m starting to feel a bit lighter because it’s finally sinking in that I can’t do that. There’s no way I can do that. There’s no way any one human being can do that.

“But I can do something about the one in front of me…” My dad’s favorite line from a story about someone who was told they couldn’t save all the lost and distressed creatures they ran across…

Yup. It is true. You can do something about the life that crosses your path. And the life that is most immediately in front of me is mine.

Car Thoughts

My husband is one of those people who cannot drive anywhere without music playing. Before he pulls out of any parking space, he has to make sure he has his playlist synced with the bluetooth in the car; and if he can’t have his own music going for whatever reason, he has to have a radio station on. It can’t be talk radio though – it has to be music. He needs a soundtrack.

I used to be one of those people. But as I got older, I got sick of the music stations and all of their schticks – commercials, banter, suckier music, etc. – and sometimes found myself wanting to listen to the news instead. Even after I joined Spotify, figured out the car bluetooth thing and had my song playlists, I felt pulled more toward things like NPR, Podcasts, and Audio books. Why the talk and not the music?? After all, I love music and just about all genres of music, in almost any language and culture, with only a few exceptions (really heavy metal and most country…but even then, I can find a few songs I like…) Music is one of the wonderful, enjoyable, beautiful things about human life. Music has been a comfort throughout my existence. But more and more, I don’t necessarily need it playing in the background, whether in the car or even at home. And more and more, I find myself not even listening to anything at all…not even the talk.

I drive my teenage son back and forth to school. He still doesn’t have his driver’s license for a couple of reasons right now (nothing criminal, no). He usually wears his headphones so he can listen to his own playlists, and more importantly: not have to interact with me. But even with his headphones, he used to turn the car radio on, and he can’t understand why more and more, I drive with silence. He finds it weird. Though he prefers it to when I attempt conversation with him. And my husband as well can’t understand not having anything playing at all. And one reason occurred to me this morning: my brain is like a radio when I’m driving. Well, also anywhere else, but mostly when I’m driving. Whether I’ve got some song on repeat in my head, or I’m having some sort of dialogue with myself, musing about one thing or another, it’s constant chatter, constant noise. So, no, I don’t need the extra…I’m just chasing thoughts around and those thoughts are loud and distracting enough already.

Anyway, one thing that has always bothered me about my thoughts while driving is that I can’t stop to write them down. And I don’t know why I have had this need to write down my thoughts, get them out of my head, discuss them with others, even way before I ever learned to drive…I only know that I have. And the thoughts I have while driving always seem to be the thoughts I want to explore further…the epiphanies, the connections, the curiously odd ones, the philosophical ones…. and by the time I get home, it feels like I’ve been down so many rabbit holes already, through all the connecting tunnels, that I’m already forgetting what I wanted to hold onto.

So, here I am, grabbing a coffee, after returning home from dropping him off at school…and documenting the fragments to maybe explore at a later date: God as Consciousness, Consciousness beginning with Language, or is it the other way around? The Word manifesting (as they say), Humans need to constantly communicate, Why do we do it, Misinterpretation of language, The problems of conveying feelings through words, back to God as consciousness – How our brains process everything, The universe looking like a network of neurons, God as Universe, The impossibility of humans being Godly or God-like, though we keep striving because our religions say we need to, but the impossibility of that because…Human, Why do we regard some people as more intelligent than other people? Why do we think of some people’s opinions more important than other people’s? The constant human need to Understand Things, to Connect…Communication being a process of sharing and judging thoughts, Thoughts leading to actions or to inactions, The physical world vs. the intellectual world and the interplay between the two, back to the Intellectual being part of Consciousness, back to God as consciousness, reason….The Macro and the Micro, and what lies in between….Life is everything being connected and yet everything being separate experiences at THE SAME TIME….Time and Consciousness being related…Parenthood…(Yup. Mind jumps around like that…but it IS related)…Creation…Universal creation…What effects what? What do we really know? Why do we keep wanting to know? Everything matters and nothing matters…Human beings as Thought Sifters…..Thought Sifters, hmmm….God as Thought….back to that….Energy….Where Energy fits in…My father’s theory of God being Gravity….Humans are weird, Human experience is weird, (as opposed to what other living organisms’ experience, right?…or as opposed to God’s experience?) and we’re all just trying to get each other through it….

Everything Everywhere All At Once. There’s more than one reason that I loved that movie. The title alone describes my mental state.

But why does it always get activated most while I’m in the car, when I should be paying more attention to the road?

Anyone need a ride?

Day 5 of Attempted Retreat

I caved again last night to scrolling through my news feed. But I only read the headlines. I guess that’s a compromise.

I was really good about not looking at my social media. That seems to be the easiest for me to have let go of. It could be because I’ve had some practice with it, as well as the fact that there’s only two platforms I have used: FaceBook and Instagram. I’ve left FaceBook in the past for up to three months at a time. It puts me in mind of the process I went through when I quit smoking so many years ago. It took me many attempts, but I finally managed it. (Though, getting pregnant with my first child was really the nail in the coffin on that habit…)

But the news….UGH. So hard to stay away. Part of me is like, what if there’s a major natural calamity that will be affecting me where I am? What if missiles are headed our way? What if war breaks out here? What if the unimaginable becomes very possible? In which case, I have to wonder with my newfound unsentimental objectivity, would it matter if I knew? Because we are certainly not preppers. What would my family do? Where would we go? I think about that movie, “Don’t Look Now”, and the ending, and feel like, yeah…honestly, what does knowing really help? And it puts me in mind of my father’s death….(My mind goes off on tangents that way. ADHD, you know…)

Oh, and YouTube….

Yeah, YouTube, which I also tend to turn to for news (Don’t roll the eyes! A lot of news outlets have channels, including foreign ones, like Deutsche Welle…And there are YouTubers out there with pretty good informative content…) Anyway, YouTube has these travel channels with walking tours of various places that I like to watch sometimes. There’s no commentary, just the audio of the walking environs, just the visuals…and that’s what I enjoy about them. It’s like getting to travel virtually when you don’t have the luxury of traveling. It’s like having a nice quiet walk to yourself…which is something I’ve always enjoyed…and I like to see the places I’ve always wanted to visit, and the places I’ve already been that I miss terribly.

BUT….I realized as I was watching this one video while drinking my coffee this morning….I’m doing it again. Not being present in my own life. Because I’m NOT there. I’m here, with things I really should be taking care of for me and my family. Like taking a walk myself…with my dogs, who are in desperate need of more exercise, as am I….Yes, the YouTube video of a nice, quiet, rainy walk in Brooklyn, NY is somewhat relaxing, feeds into my typical daydreamer mind, but ultimately, how does it affect my life right this minute, aside from taking up my time?

And on that note…..

Morning Pondering Over Coffee 9/27/23

On the whole “gender assignment at birth” thing….

So, if we are all simply allotted a gender identity when we’re born, based on our genitals…

That means, essentially, that the doctors are taking a guess…

Which means that sometimes they guess correctly! …

Because a lot of us do grow up to identify as male and female without any confusion in our heads…

(even though many of us don’t conform to all the gender expectations….
I mean, I was “assigned female” when I was born, but I didn’t, and don’t, completely conform to stereotypes and yet I still identify as female…)

So, are doctors really these manipulative, agenda-driven, cis-white-hetero-male figures they’re being portrayed as, chaining innocent babes to identities of “society’s” choosing?

(Because, let’s not forget, doctors are not all male, nor all white, nor all heterosexuals, nor all American, nor all Christian, nor all conservative..)

Or are they just going on the outward clues that Mother Nature (to use a gendered stereotype) has given them?

So does that really fit the definition of “assigning” or “bestowing” or “forcing”…???? Or is it more like taking an educated guess?

Where My Mind Goes

Surely, this is normal.
It is, isn’t it?

To begin with, I am not an morning person AT. ALL. I also do not work outside the home.
And, my children are older and in school.  So, I do have the luxury that I am aware others do not, of waking up around 9:30 a.m. or so and taking my time, for better or for worse, to slowly ease into the world.  This ritual is facilitated by many, many, cups of coffee.

(Well , by that I really mean a whole pot of coffee, at the very least).

And since I’ve got the itch to make things again, I found this morning that continuing a knitting project while sipping my warm and dark cure for grogginess was what I needed to get me going.

And this is where my mind ambled…..

“What did the philosophers and writers and artists of yore do to support themselves whenever they weren’t philosophizing and writing and painting?  I’m talking about the people who became known forevermore as the “great thinkers’ and the “great artists”.  What were their “day jobs”?  I must look into this.  I’m curious.  I can’t imagine that anyone was paying them to sit around and do what they did.  I doubt that much has changed in attitudes about that sort of work over the ages.  Artists were paid, maybe, by commissions from the Church or from Royalty…but in between gigs?”

Then, because I had a news program going on my phone whilst knitting and sipping, and because they were addressing the Noble Prize and some scientists’ achievements in studying bacteria, and because they were showing pictures of bacteria and cells under a microscope…..

“I find it extremely interesting how the tiniest organisms on Earth, and the tiniest brain systems in our head, are so visually similar to the massive systems of stars and galaxies in the universe.”

Which somehow led me to remembering what my my father, never a particularly religious person, likes to say from time to time….

“God is Gravity”.

And this sparked a thought about religious beliefs…

“I always hear from religious and spiritual people that we are here on Earth to learn lessons.  That God has a greater plan and that there’s a reason for everything.
Some even say that we choose our lives before we’re even born.  Or that God does.
As if Life on Earth is some sort of amusement ride.  As if Life on Earth is a product in a gigantic universal vending machine from which we choose to sample.

And if it’s the case that humans simply have to have Faith, that we simply have to believe in an afterlife or in a higher power, does that mean that our own brains are what control our lives? I mean, that certainly seems to be the implication.

Like, if you believe in Heaven and in God then you will most definitely go there and see Him.  But if you don’t, then you truly DIE – as in, completely cease to exist anywhere anymore. No passing Stop and moving on. You chose one ride and now it’s over.

Bill Hick’s quote about Life being just a ride pops into my grey matter…

‘You are what you eat’ as the saying goes….
You are also what you believe ??

If our brains are so powerful that all we have to do is believe in something, then is it maybe the case that we are actually God?? (Wasn’t there someone famous who expressed that idea?).

Sometimes I see the proclamations about saviors in my mind’s eye as Tinkerbell saying the magic words and sprinkling around some pixie dust….

I mean, I certainly don’t feel like God.  Or a god. Trust me, things would be a whole lot different if that were the case! I know I haven’t seen any sort of magic in my life that makes everything okay….Well, with the exception of wine. Or chocolate. Or cold, wet dog noses.  Or a baby’s laugh. Or good music. Or a cat’s purring in my ear. (And I can just hear my husband whispering…”Or ME purring in your ear, right?”…ha!)
BUT none of that sort of magic makes your problems stop.  Doesn’t cure your ailment, whether it’s financial or physical. The objective world remains the same.

But I won’t say I haven’t seen or experienced things that resembled miracles….

Hmnnn…… They say ‘God is One’, ‘We are all part of God’, “Connectivity is what is important to humans’, ‘Treat others as you would have yourself treated’, ‘We are all brothers and sisters’, etc……

Try substituting “Mind” for “God” and for “Humans”….
Why is it that neurons and cells and bacteria and synapses resemble a snapshot that Hubble takes out in space?
Are we really parts of the whole? Parts of one Big Power??

Is this how prayer is supposed to work? Everyone thinking and hoping for the same thing continually or at once?
But then why is it that so many people who are sick, who do have Faith, and have devout friends and family praying for them in large numbers, nevertheless die from their disease? Why do some make it and some don’t? Why is it that a missing child for whom many people pray to be found safe and sound…isn’t??

Does this go back to the idea of the giant vending machine in the sky? That existences are truly planned out before birth, as some believe? That our experiences here are simply parts of the whole Deluxe or Prime or Individual or Wild Card Life Packages that we CHOSE???  Like, somehow YOU picked “The Wild Card Life Package” that resulted in you ending up homeless just so you could feel what it’s like and to learn something from it. Or maybe the “Deluxe Package” in which you go from rags (with all it’s struggles and pain) to riches (with everything which that implies to you.)?
I think that maybe the idea of reincarnation fits in here somewhere….”

And then I realized that I’d had enough coffee to wake me up, and that I wanted to write this down, and that I need to go out to see my dad today.

And I wondered, “Is this what other people think about as they go on with their day too? Is this a normal train of thought”?

What sort of thoughts bounce about your skull as you make your way through the day?