I once had a friend who would sit in a quiet place twice a day and meditate for 20 minutes at a pop. He used this quiet time to calm his mind and find peace in the chaos. He could find the places to do this in what I would consider the oddest places; for example, he could meditate on a crowded airplane. I don’t know that I could do that. I usually want to yell or something. Commercial flight makes me crazy.
While I have taken some meditation classes and I have found ways to calm my mind by simply sitting, I tend to wonder if I am truly wired that way. My true meditation involves movement. If I go on a car ride by myself I find my inner self quieting down. Things that niggle at the corner of my concerns seem to find a way of presenting an answer to a problem when I’m driving on a back country road. My mind goes into a happy place when I’m riding my bike outside of the city limits. The movement allows me to escape.
Each day when I sit in the Jeep at lunch time, relaxing as I sip at my iced tea, I try to quiet my mind a little bit. These purple flowers have recently made an appearance near one of my favorite parking places, and they remind me that I can find solace in the slightest bit of movement. These flowers dancing in the summer breeze help me find the calm amongst the chaos.
My mother called last night. I think she felt compelled to make sure that I was okay after posting my blog entry about the serenity prayer I had posted on my monitor at work, though she didn’t come right out and say it. I think she just wanted to touch base with me and make sure I was firing on all thrusters. She said I sounded tired. I was tired, but her call was very much appreciated.
One of the cool things about technology is that we can now share with many others what grounds us. By relaying these experiences through blogs, tweets and the like, we might help another find a way to sort the calm from the chaos going on. I recently read a blog entry from a friend who mentioned that while he knew he was capable of high grades back in high school, he was bored and settled for the lesser grade. This made me feel good in a way, because I did the same thing. Many proclaim that we should always achieve to lofty heights and how we should do it, but in reality some of us find different ways to reach our own goals. A broadening of the mind isn’t always accomplished the same way.
Purple flowers gently swaying in the summer breeze. I now feel ready to tackle another afternoon of conference calls.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
