My 43rd birthday

Development

Baz went on the big-boy swing for the first time today. It was awesome. You wouldn't have caught me dead saying that a few years ago, but I don't give a damn. It was crazy cool to push him and watch him hanging on tightly with his little hands, his feet swaying as he figured out how to kick to make himself go back and forth.

All kinds of amazing.

Self-Absorption and the Dharma

“People can seem like total jerks on the road. They can cut you off, drive dangerously, and be inconsiderate. This is challenging to deal with if their selfishness is directed intentionally at you. But even if it is, what does it ultimately have to do with you? Even if they are being completely confrontational, even if they have just sped up and cut you off and are screaming at you with veins bulging from neck and forehead, they have chosen you randomly.

“This means it has nothing to do with you. So why be reactive?

“Sam was actually making an error we all make at one time or another – the error of taking anything personally. The sad truth is that most people going through the day, actively pursuing their business, don’t have any idea you’re alive. Nothing is personal. They aren’t trying to wound you; they’re too busy protecting their own wounds. Often their behavior is unconscious. They are talking on the phone while driving, involved in an argument with their spouse, or overtired from working the late shift. You are incidental, inadvertently experiencing their ‘jerky behavior’ as a by-product of their inattention. It is only in referring every event back to “me” – what that person did to me, how they cut me off – that one’s personal suffering is created.”

- Arthur Jeon, City Dharma

Energy, Returned

After two and a half years, my mojo has returned. It happened suddenly and after a serious period of energy drought. One day I was dragging myself out of bed; the next I was talking gardening and travel.

I attribute this to a few things:

- Bazzy is holding his own more and more. He's becoming his own little person (not that he hasn't always been; just now he's capable of climbing into his high chair, into his car seat, onto his changing table) and it takes pressure off of me. Not to mention that it's rewarding.

- I'm finding the strength I always had plus the resolve of being a parent.

- Something else that I can't remember.

It's nice. Seriously.

Love Versus Anger

More and more I'm convinced that love is the way. So why do I still hold anger and speak in angry ways? And is this anything I really need to work on? And why do I have more questions than answers?

I'm not even sure answers are answers so much as they are sort of guidelines in the moment. Those guidelines tend to be flexible. Flexible in the moment, hour, year, whatever. They move with us. They change with the seasons.

None of this is an answer. It isn't meant to be.

Posted on Facebook this morning

Just because someone is a soulmate doesn't mean you can't tell them to go to hell.

The long-lost friend who never was.

The emotional affair.

That's just naming two. Go to hell, boys.

"I now pronounce you ..."

On April 6, nine years!