Signs Around Town (and Purna)

Yesterday, in response to the question, how was I doing, I responded that though I was personally fine, I was mourning deeply those suffering from the wars and disasters around the world and anxious about the state of this country and what was to come. I feel most ok when I am making efforts to make things better and to contribute less to future harm.

I was told I was being unreasonable; real grief was only if one has just lost a relative or a close friend. This might have had something to do with the fact that this person believes in Israel’s unconscionable aggression and needed to justify their position.

I’m here to tell you that it is nonsense to say that grief is only real if so narrowly circumscribed. It was not as though I said my grief and anxiety were keeping me from helping; to the contrary, they inspire me to give more of myself.

Everyone’s grief is valid, including grief for the climate and society and our ideals. And grief does not have an expiration date.

Meditation and yoga may help you stay with the full range of human experience and better see and appreciate what joy is there is to be had. It has for me, but I already have my basic needs covered.

May you be happy and safe and healthy.

“Write more, that’s all I have to say.” There were several more lines of text, but none so coherent or compelling as this.

Yes, spammer, I would like to be writing more imaginatively and more about the yoga here and elsewhere. I am fully occupied, though, with a technical writing of quite some magnitude if magnitude were to be measured only by the number of words and ideas included. With the social and substantive complexity relating to the project and how it fits within the fabric of creating the rules that govern our society, it is a creative in its own way, but it is more draining than inspiring.

The exercise involves many drafters who come from a wide range of perspectives, training and background, and who have different responsibilities and senses of responsibility.  Most everyone is feeling stressed and under-supported in their own way and acting in the multifarious ways people act when that’s how they are experiencing things. I am struggling to stay compassionately present for myself and all who are engaged in the endeavor.

Reminding myself of reasons to be grateful always helps.  The yoga and meditation practices, in addition to my creative pursuits, are at the top of the list.  The practices are the only truly steady back up that I have. Perhaps that is true for everyone to a greater or lesser degree.  The philosophies that inform the practices–whether renunciate or tantra–ultimately would not, I think, disagree.