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Back to Work

I'll be damned, but it seems as if I have eliminated the trojan horse from my machine even if for some unknown reason the reformatting of the C: drive did not erase my .wpd, .doc, or .jpg files. I am keeping my fingers crossed, my pipe near, and am hoping the damn viscious beast of a virus is not simply snoozing and will pounce from my gentle unsuspecting hard drive once again.

So, now that life seems back in order, let me try to get my blog back in order as well:

Being Forsaken

In life it is all too common to feel abandoned, be it by those you love, or by your co-workers, or even by your own mind. To have that wretched feeling of chaos and loss that results from being abandoned is one of life's harshest emotions. However, the initial sting of this emotion is (fortunately) often far worse than the long-term reality. Most times, what feels like being forsaken or abandoned is simply a gentle nudge we receive that is meant to tell us we need to re-examine some aspect of our life.

During this Lenten season, one of the gifts I have worked on for my family, friends, and for myself is to become more tolerant and less frustrated with the incongruencies in the behavior of others. My mind is organized in such a way that I find comfort, deep comfort in patterns and predictability. I think of most aspects of life in that frame of seeing, identifying, and anticipating patterns. The pattern can be the simple ritual of filling, firing and enjoying my pipe, or it can be more complex... such as the way I walk to class, the materials I bring, the seating arrangement of the students, or it can be enormously complex... the emotional responses of the one's I love in various situations.

I have always had the tendency throughout life to feel comfort when I recognize those patterns, and varying degrees of discomfort when those patterns are disrupted or broken. Mentally, I would know and understand that these deviations from expected patterns are perfectly normal and wholly acceptable, but in my emotional mind, the changing or breaking of these patterns would feel like I was abandoned.... forsaken. And, if the emotions were strong enough, I would often become frustrated, grumpy, and even sarcastic towards those who were breaking the patterns of the fabric of life.

During this Lent, one of the things I have strived to learn AND implement in my life is to become more tolerant of change and to quell my frustration, grouchiness and rancor towards change. It is not easy. However, I can report that I have made progress. I have strived to keep at the front of my mind, the idea of squelching my trigger-like response of becoming aggitated, and instead, when confronted with the breaking of a pattern, I search as well as I can for something positive from that change. Some times I find the positive aspect, other times I do not.... but even when I do not find something positive, I have diffused my immediate response of rancor, and instead have in the majority of cases, found a way to relax and not be a slave to that emotional response.

PipeTobacco