Tag Archives: Personal

On My Mind

The Middle of the Night

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On three separate occasions last night, I dreamed that I was screaming. Screaming, other people around, no one looks up. No one seems to notice even when I’m looking right at them.

I woke up after the second dream, which seemed to immediately follow the first, and placed a hand over my rapidly beating heart in order to let the rhythm lull me back to sleep. I awoke after the third dream surprised to find myself on the other side of the bed.

There’s a lot on my mind.

I am reminded of that when I wake up and all is quiet with the exception of whatever happens to be going on in my head. I live near a highway and you can faintly hear it above the white noise of the fan, but you could just as easily ignore it. Sometimes the dog who lives upstairs pads around, nails scratching on the floor. It only bothers me when something else is already bothering me.

I don’t have nightmares very often, but I’m a lucid dreamer (admittedly of the self-diagnosed variety) when I do. I am clearly making decisions, thinking about something else in the background, and I make the choice to wake up. In that sense, it’s a bit like knowing you’re going to fall when lead climbing – you move towards the next clip and as you’re reaching, you know you’ll miss. It gives you just enough time to call, “Falling!” to your partner. Lucid dreaming gives me just enough time to decide to wake.

What settled me back to sleep was not having woken from the dream itself but for admitting fear, uncertainty, a sense of moving without seeing into something resembling outer space. I say resembling because it’s not the kind of space you imagine when you’re young. It’s almost like moving under water into a blackness that folds, expands, contracts, shifts in colour and form.

It is not of this world.

And I think that’s the part that my senses do not like. There is a feeling of moving within something that I don’t understand and that my brain cannot easily classify.

Yes, this is right.

And I know it because as I write this, I find myself smiling.

There’s a world out there that may or may not be real, and it’s a world that I want to know and explore. But it’s the dubiety of this that leaves my mind playing with possibilities, and these possibilities do not fit easily into boxes.

There is also, however, a desire to have a single answer to a litany of questions.

This is impossible and it’s no wonder I’m screaming.

A storm gathering over Singapore – July 2020
On My Mind

Getting to Tomorrow

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I met up with a former student last week and it was a delightful, gratifying, and energising experience. It is a real pleasure to see how much a young person has grown in a very short amount of time and to have conversation about, as a friend would say, life and the universe.

I’ll paraphrase and modify here, but we talked about what it means to be grounded and about believing in something to get through a difficult time. Some people rely on faith in a religion or religious figure and for the rest of us, well, there must be something, right?

I know what has carried me through times of difficulty in the past and I know there will be more of those times. After all, that’s living. In many ways, overcoming a difficult time has come down to perspective. Where am I really in the grand scheme of things? What can I cling to that will remain constant no matter what else is happening? What images need to be in my head while I concentrate on my breathing until my heart rate slows and my mind ceases racing?

There are several things that I find helpful and this post will share these. Perhaps you will find them helpful, too.

Tiny little me with a very tall tree in Berkeley, California – June 2018

One thing that I know is that the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow. It might be cloudy and I might not be able to watch the sun disappear and reappear along the horizon but I know it’s happening. I know that today will end and tomorrow will come. Even if I’m dreading tomorrow, I know that, like today, it will begin and then it will end and I will walk tomorrow like I walked today.

Deliberately cultivating a certain attitude matters a lot here, too. I have spent the last seven or eight years writing down three things I’m grateful for every single day. There have been extended periods when this lists consists of a roof over my head, a hot shower, and a full stomach, but it helps to remind myself that I do have these things. I have something rather than nothing. And I have been lucky enough that those things are also constants for tomorrow. Regardless of what it is, the perspective of having something to be grateful for has calmed my mind.

Another image that helps me find my footing when the world is spinning more quickly than I can grasp it is to look at the trees. Really look, look carefully and silently and deliberately. Mentally trace the patterns on the bark, the shapes of the branches, the growth of leaves and flowers. Trees are strong and tall and solid and they withstand all sorts of weather conditions and human activity. The trees, too, will be here tomorrow and through the next storm and the next one. Touch the trees if you can. They hold a special sort of warmth.

I’m not a religious person but I think there’s an element of spirituality here, an understanding that I am part of a wider universe that spins and moves. The best I can do is spin and move with it rather than remaining rigid and uncompromising. Complaining and waiting have a time and a place but they don’t always get us very far. As my pen holder mug proclaims:

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. – Unknown

Peace can be hard to find, there’s no doubt about that. Peace can also be fleeting. It can engulf in one moment and then completely desert in the next. But the important thing is being able to find it again, to develop those moments when peace is easy and fluid. This also means you need to look for it, actively seek it out, especially when everything is all right. Watch the sun. Write down a few things. Look at the trees. When all is well, the world has given you time to find who you are and ground yourself in the present. Doing so eases the transition to whatever world we awake in tomorrow.

On My Mind

Living Gently

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A long time ago I encountered the idiom, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I didn’t understand it then but have since lived within its meaning. Yesterday, I referenced glass houses while ranting to a friend about people who fail to treat others with dignity and respect. One breath later, I realised that this idiom goes much deeper than that.

We are all fragile beings and encase ourselves in fragile lives. At any moment, we can lose or gain someone or something very meaningful. We don’t know whether we’ll make it home from this errand or that day of work and we don’t know what we’ll discover on the way. We don’t know what a doctor will find during a routine procedure. We don’t know, upon hanging up the phone or clicking send, whether we’ll indeed speak again soon. And furthermore, we don’t know how others’ lives entangle with ours and how that many affect us.

In short, we are fragile and so are our lives. Losing sight of this can lead us to interminably waiting for the right opportunity or the right time. There often is no “right”. Instead, there are opportunities and there are times. Take them when they come because life, because living, is fragile.

With this understanding, it is easy to appreciate how quickly a stone can shatter who we are and how we live.

Treat others gently because they, like you, are fragile. Treat others gently because they, like you, deserve dignity and respect. Treat others gently because they, like you, are only human.

As we walk in the world, it is important to remember that it is not enough to avoid throwing stones. We all live in glass houses. Life throws enough stones and our energy is better spent lifting each other up rather than tearing each other down. Instead, let us acknowledge the fragility of who we are and behave in ways that demonstrate that we accept the same about others.