February 6th, 2017

February 6th, 2017


Affirmation: Today I dare to look within to see what is keeping me stuck.


Word of the Day: paralogize (v):

1. to draw conclusions that do not follow logically from a given set of assumptions.

(i.e. something I do on a daily basis, it seems!)

Unfold Your Own Myth

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his lost son
and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down and brings up
a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, so everyone will understand
the passage, We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy
and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling
the wings you've grown, lifting.

____


De-escalating Overwhelm

Going into this week, I felt - to put it mildly - overwhelmed. I knew that this semester would be tough going in, but I didn't anticipate the sheer number of hours my classes would require. It certainly didn't help that my energy was lower than normal and I haven't been getting as much sleep as I would like. Though I don't think that I bit off more than I can chew, I was feeling the sense that I was barely breathing. I felt that if I were to sink even an inch, I would be drowning.

It was a fortunate coincidence, then, that I came across the following story posted by Marc Chernoff:

Once upon a time there was a woman who had been lost in the desert for three whole days without water.  Just as she was about to collapse, she saw what appeared to be a lake just a few hundred yards in front of her.  “Could it be?  Or is it just a mirage?” she thought to herself.

With the last bit of strength she could muster, she staggered toward the lake and quickly learned that her prayers had been answered: it was no mirage – it was indeed a large, spring-fed lake full of fresh water – more fresh water than she could ever drink in her lifetime.  Yet while she was literally dying of thirst, she couldn’t bring herself to drink the water.  She simply stood by the water’s edge and stared down at it.

There was a passerby riding on a camel from a nearby desert town who was watching the woman’s bizarre behavior.  He got off his camel, walked up to the thirsty woman and asked, “Why don’t you have a drink, ma’am?”

She looked up at the man with an exhausted, distraught expression across her face and tears welling up in her eyes.  “I am dying of thirst,” she said, “But there is way too much water here in this lake to drink.  No matter what I do, I can’t possibly finish it all.”

The passerby smiled, bent down, scooped some water up with his hands, lifted it to the woman’s mouth and said, “Ma’am, your opportunity right now, and as you move forward throughout the rest of your life, is to understand that you don’t have to drink the whole lake to quench your thirst.  You can simply take one sip.  Just one small sip… and then another if you choose.  Focus only on the mouthful in front of you, and all your anxiety, fear and overwhelm about the rest will gradually fade.”

This anecdote reminded me that any task or journey, big or small, is accomplished one step at a time. It reminded me of the old adage, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!" (I'm not sure that I love that metaphor, but it makes its point).  Ultimately, we can each only do what we can do, whether it accomplishes everything we want or does not. Getting overwhelmed only serves to keep us from taking our steps as effectively as we otherwise could.

For me, overwhelm and perfectionism (the latter being a topic for several hundred posts that I could write!) often manifest in procrastination - an inability to start or do anything because I am paralyzed by the amount that needs to be done coupled with a fear of not being able to do it well enough. In these moments, it is helpful to remember that I need only focus on the smallest step that I can take. Whether it works out or meets my expectations is less important. Focusing on the smallest, immediate task at hand helps ground my mental angst and also stokes the flames of my creative and productive energies. It helps me actually get things done as opposed to allowing the stress and worry to mount, giving way to ever-increasing amounts of guilt and pressure for not having started.

Just writing about this state of being gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because I know it all too well and dread it profoundly.

Thus, I shall try to keep in mind that it is the small, positive actions towards a goal that I take in each moment that eventually add up to something meaningful. And that something may be different than what you had hoped for or intended, but it is also often better than what you had imagined.