Category: Brownness

It has been a surreal few weeks. Friends that I haven’t seen in ages came around, and one after another, I got to reconnect, and recharge those relationships. I am up to 8 miles running even though if you had asked me the  year before, I HATED running. And now adding to the excitement I am promoting a Jassi Sidhu club show with my favorites Sandeep Kumar and Dhol Nation. On the writing front, I am getting to 100 words a day, but the story is going slow.  Yet, I am still unfulfilled, still hungry. There is so much today in terms of volunteering, meditation and over all health including my relationships with my loved one. I am not stopping. I can’t stop. S

I am tempted constantly to respond on social media to people I disagree with, but I remind myself that I cannot control others. I can barely control myself.  The  urge to correct and fix things as we see fit is an innate part of us.

But, and this is a big but, whatever is meant to happen will. There is no point in fighting others and their viewpoints. I try to be careful and not jump on the bandwagon of bad mouthing. It has become ridiculously easy so to mock, denigrate or nag others when they are doing something we don’t agree with. There is also a pattern of holier than thou-ism that drives me crazy. Take for instance the recent posts on Gaza, Ferguson, and the ALS ICE Bucket challenge.  While my timeline exploded with hashtags of #prayforgaza and #alsicebucketchallenge, there were so many quick to disparage people for “slacktavism.”  The challenges were mostly to do more than post images or to worry about the drought, yet I couldn’t help wonder what drove them to criticize. Again the need to control others came. The reality is that we all do things the way we want, and tell others how they should feel about thing is a common fallacy as well as a waste of time.

The negativity emanating from Facebook makes me want to quit it often, and I do take sabbaticals as we feel compelled to tells others what to do all the time when we, in fact, don’t want others to control us. See the contradiction?

It has been an exhausting but strangely fulfilling week. I am learning finally what it means to take a vacation although I probably over did it by booking 5 different things to in 7 days but that is part of the fun. Some vacations are about relaxations and others are about discovery.  I also know that there are parts of me that still require a lot of work. The lack of patience I have for some people’s selfishness as well as cheapness drives me crazy. One person I will speak to, and the other is not really my place. I am sure even the first person is not my place, but I would like to nip their bad behavior in the bud before the friendship is ruined. The old me would tear them a new one in this blog post or on social media, but I like to pretend that I have matured a bit. The new me wants to let it all go as part of my new habit this month with Zen Habits. This month’s module is letting go of expectations of myself and others, but I have this need to fix things and people. So I am going to risk it even though I am pretty certain the news won’t be take well.  The other, well, I just need to not be around that person which means I am not around a certain group of people. And I am OK with that. Or I could just let it all go. Just let life be.  Keep repeating that it’s not about me. And maybe, just maybe, I may do the right thing and keep quiet.  But don’t count on it.

This month is also the month where I go all out to get ready for the Spartan Beast. Wish me luck!

Yesterday,  I texted two friends of mine and told then they were over posting on Facebook. I mentioned that I had 87 notifications about Gaza and their random thoughts. I tried to do it in a funny way, but instead I managed to hurt both their feelings. It hit me that if their posting bothered me so much that I could limit their profiles. But instead I chose to be confrontational where no conflict existed. It was inside my head. I chose to make their alleged actions my focus when in reality it is none of my business what or how they do things. In fact, I didn’t even have to go on Facebook if I was going to take things this personal. While I immediately apologized, the guilt of saying anything stayed with me a long time.

Part of my meditation practice is the focus I place on letting go. Obviously, I don’t aways succeed, but I have learned to be self-compassionate and forgive myself. Intentions aside, there is so much time and energy we use berating and punishing ourselves. My friends almost immediately forgave me, but I didn’t forgive myself for hours on end. It’s really because I don’t like how I am sometimes. There is a burning desire to be the best who I can and have been in the past. Yet that’s not always possible.  My intention has always been to do good, but my words and actions get in the way.

There are so many things burning inside me.  Meditation calms me down. In those 15 minutes, I am grateful for all that I have. I thank as many people as I can. And then I send compassion to others. It’s not always easy, but I know it’s really more for me. When we show kindness to others, we become kind ourselves.

This month’s Zen Habit of waking early has so far been a disaster. I am actually waking up LATER than my normal time, and it hit me that I am putting too much pressure on myself to wake up because I want to exercise, meditate, write, read, lean spanish and do Lumosity and then get to work and then at night do something cool with my wife as well as perhaps cook a nice meal. So the first two days of the past weeks, I was able to do most of the tasks, but then life happened and then next thing I knew work became crazy, and then I volunteered to submit a story. I kept adding when in reality I should have been subtracting. I felt overwhelmed for the past few days until Fathers Day and my niece’s graduation from UCLA made me realize that sometimes watching that little girl who grew up into front of you turn into an adult has more meaning than any other habit.  The structure is really just that, a framework, but it’s not the backbone. And so I let go of the anxiety, let go of the worry for the things I wanted to get done, and just was.

I struggle everyday with not getting caught up in the structure of my day, but what it actually contains. Each day, I look forward to holding my wife and just being, yet my OCD-like tendency to get everything done makes that difficult a lot of the times.  I have to remind myself that the habits are to help me realize my dreams, but they are not my dreams. Ultimately, I am reaching for the same thing all of us are which is happiness. And then I have to remind myself once again that it is not a destination but a journey. Watching my wife sleep, my niece graduate and hugging my dad Happy Fathers day meant just being.

And you know what, that was more than good enough. I was awake and present.

So I have noticed a slipping away from the weekly postings that I had committed to myself on this blog. There’s a lot lately I have been slacking on, and frankly in some it’s a good thing, and in others, it has made life more difficult than it needs to be.  As much as I say that I don’t like bringing up my surgery, I now accept that it was a HUGE wake up call from me. I had become complacent in several key areas. I thought it OK to skip exercising or writing or even reading. I also struggled with waking up early and kept telling myself it alright to sleep in on the weekends, but deep inside I knew I was betraying myself.

The tough part of taking on a healthier lifestyle in any aspect of your life is that it doesn’t take vacations, it doesn’t care that you are tired or unmotivated.  It just resides in your mind nagging you, telling you what you could be. It’s tough to turn off that negative talk, except that it’s not negative. I gave strength to my dreams and aspirations. I gave power to the words that had collecting dust inside my soul. I began building muscles that had gotten so used to not being used that they had atrophied.

Change is hard, and it’s constant, and there are days I have failed. Yet, instead of berating myself, I chalk it up to as a lost opportunity as well as a lesson learned. I also noticed that it’s easier to start back up. I see now that some days I want to skip ahead to the part where I am a published writer, a marathoner. a peaceful husband as well as happy NOW. Yet all of these guys happen step by step, and are not destinations. They are journeys.

So like in Rocky 5 when Rocky goes down and then Mickey comes to him in his haze, and says “Get up, get up. Micky loves ya you son of a bitch” and then Rocky rises again. So I take the knocks, but I get back up.  That is my only option.

End of a work day, and I am counting down to when I go home and…work out?!  It’s a strange world that I inhabit now.  From meditation, to writing to trying to connect with loved ones on a deeper level, I am now on a journey that I never thought I was capable of taking. I do smile inwardly when I think of the parties I did as well the cross-country trip I took from LA to New York, racking up 6 speeding tickets along the way.  That same Sanjay also did Americorps in Lexington, Kentucky and made some lifelong friends.

There is plenty for me to regret, tons of mistakes I could unmake, remove the hurt that I inflicted to undeserving people. And then I take a breath, and look around me. The quietness of the office with me the only one here reassures me. It tells me that this too shall pass. Each moment is but a compilation of the past, and perhaps a possible future, and I have spent too much of time reflecting and living in the past instead of just being.  Here. Now. So I look up, and I may not be the best version of who I want to be, but I am damn sure trying to not be the worst.

And for now, that’s just good enough.