Many Paths

While an undergraduate student, I attended a presentation by a visual artist who was speaking about some of his work. A member of the audience commented to him that he noticed there were a lot of star images in his paintings and he wondered if there was any significance to them. The artist commented that he liked stars including how all the points lead to the same centre when drawn figuratively the way we often do. I have never forgotten that line. Further, it became a metaphor for me of a philosophy I hold about wellness and about people's life journeys (for example, of growth, healing, transformation): there are many paths.

I believe there are  many paths that can support the same centre or movement toward it. Sometimes we alight along one that is just the right one for a particular thing. Often in the bigger sense of our journeys and life, many elements and angles support our growing, rather than one, and these can include seeming contradictions: movement and stillness, opening to and closing from. 

Finding Your Own Rhythm

This morning, I went lane swimming alongside a feisty aqua-fit class. Really, the class was inspiring. There was potentially a wide range of ages in attendance although my quick scan indicated seniors heavily dominated the class and rocked, I might add, with their earnest and energetic participation. Of course, mostly I observed the class from underwater out of the corner of my eyes. I saw a multitude of legs running on the spot, legs jumping forward and back, arms pushing "weights" into the water, building endurance and strength. I was impressed. I was also distracted. 

It was not the jumping legs that had me distracted. It was the music the legs and arms were pumping to. If I were to be exact, the music itself was not really the problem either. The music was lively, fun, and fine. It was that the music's pace and rhythm was not my own (at least not for swimming) and for a while, it was so loud that I couldn't hear myself breathing or my body moving through the water: I couldn't connect to those indicators of my own rhythm and pace. This jarring or "rhythm interference" did not prevent me from swimming but it did make it harder to feel like I was settling into some pace or to even decipher what my pace and rhythm was, to hear it and find it. 

And so the expression, finding your own rhythm, visited me while swimming, turning over in my thoughts as my arms turned over, one following the next in repetitive fashion. I find I encounter the same type of challenge while running: mostly that for me running and music don't really mix. I like to be able to hear the sound of footsteps predictably tapping, the sound of my quiet breath. It is almost as if I need to hear these. Being able to tune in has an orienting function.

The first song this morning was the most exuberant, and then the sounds softened down so that I was able to tune in and relax into the rhythm--my own--that I found there with the interference substantially diminished or gone.

I have written and talked about this sort of thing with people many times before--about learning about your own rhythm, your own pace, your own needs and proclivities and (for the most part) honouring these. Yet I find I might wish to write about this topic in different and similar ways a hundred hundred plus times. That, and questions of what pulls us away from our most authentic selves and rhythms and dreams, and what helps to bring us back. 

Are you experiencing "rhythm interference" these days or are you nicely in step with your own?

Idea-byte No. 4

There is a book I read half of a while ago, likely within the past year or so: The Mindful Way through Depression
by Williams and others (2007). For those who live in Kingston, it is in the public library's collection so you may explore it free of charge. It comes with a cd with short guided mindfulness-type practices, which is another good reason to know about it. On another 5 x 7 cue card from my desk, I found some jots I had made while reading the book including text from page 29:

"If we're convinced we're 'no good' or unworthy, how likely are we to pursue the things that we value in life?".

The invitation (and challenge for some, if not all) is to offer to one's own self compassion, kindness, gentleness, caring--to offer warmth to one's self, the way we offer warmth to another. You matter and so do your dreams.

Idea-byte No. 3

I'll stick to the same cue card as from the last post, which features jots taken from What Is Your Life's Work? by Bill Jensen. Today's idea-byte (in this instance a question to ponder):

"What is the legacy of your choices?"

Building on this, I might add:

"What do you want the legacy of your choices to be?"

Consider your vision for that and do something today that supports that vision--something that makes it lived and real.

Idea-byte No. 2

Today's idea-byte is taken from a white cue card, 5" x 7" in size, with text written on the lined side:

"What deserves your precious 1440 minutes every day?"
"What doesn't?"

from What Is Your Life's Work? by Bill Jensen.

Sticky-notes and cue cards: Introducing Idea-Bytes...

I've been spring cleaning this January. One of my goals--an on-going one--was to make headway with the papers that have been collecting on my desk. As I was saying to a friend this evening, I really enjoy having a clear desk yet in my home office of sorts I find this difficult to accomplish, and even more difficult to maintain.

I did make progress today on the organization front, which is great, although my desk does not fully reflect the accomplishment. While tackling one section of desktop about 6 square inches in size, I began looking through a collection of cue cards that have gathered: cards on which I have jotted little notes, questions, bits of information to remember or ponder. Over the next while, I might use them as inspiration for the blog, providing samples from this well-established habit of mine of jotting little bits of ideas I think of or encounter onto little bits of papers when they come. Cue cards, sticky notes, little notepad papers, and those letter-sized yellow note pad pages are common receptacles for my latest jot.

(As a sidebar, I might mention that I really don't enjoy writing on those yellow notepads but they are a staple in my workplace where some of my jotting down inevitably happens.)

Selected from no particular order, here is today's sample, which I will call Idea-byte One:

Forget about perfection. The object is to set in motion a higher order for your life. --Cheryl Richardson, best-selling author of the useful book, Take Time for Your Life.

My cat circles the coffee table counter-clockwise...

For at least a few months now, my beautiful, loving, aging white cat has developed a new peculiarity. In my home, the main daytime living area aside from my workspace is a medium to large sized rectangular room divided into two by function. Approximately one half of the room (the south) is dedicated to the kitchen and the other half of the room (the north) is dedicated to the living room. It is in the north half of that room where you will find in my home a blue loveseat that was passed on to me from family who no longer needed it, and a few feet in front of that, a solid wood coffee table (I think it is oak) that was also passed along.

Sadie, my cat, has had many favourite lounging places over the months and years. These seem to change like seasons with old ones fading and new ones coming into view. (This, to me, is similar to some of my own preferences and habits that stay for a while, then fade, with new ones inevitably emerging.) Lying on a cushion on the loveseat or on the back of it, on either the north or south side, has been among those favoured places in Sadie's repertoire over time. Currently, it is the back of the loveseat that draws her interest more than the seat. Why she prefers this, I do not fully understand, since it is cooler up top, being right beside the west facing window against which the winter winds routinely blow. (In contrast, my own preference is to largely avoid sitting on the loveseat for leisure during winter as I find I often feel chilled while sitting there.)

Sadie's current preference for the back of the couch, however, is not the peculiarity. It is the method that has evolved for her getting there. Before making an ascent from the hardwood floor, she circles the coffee table counter-clockwise...several times. She saunters around the table's perimeter and when she arrives at the south side of the loveseat she pauses and looks up toward the seat or the back. I am not sure what happens internally at that point but most often she continues on her walking way, circling the coffee table's perimeter again, then pauses and looks up, then circles again. My observations have not been astute enough to determine if she circles the table the same number of times each time before jumping onto the loveseat or if the number varies.

What this routine is about, I have no idea, though I am intensely curious. Is she assessing when it is the right time to jump? Has she set a goal to get more exercise and these are some of her strategies to do so, something like baby steps in the implementation of the total goal? Is it a feline method of paying homage to... to what?

What are your thoughts? I invite you to share your own hypothesis or explanation for this. All creative, funny, moving, and scientific ideas are welcome.

January greetings!