Monday, August 4
I was asked by an editor of a local food and wine publication to write an article on the gluten free, Celiac experience, highlighting which restaurants are best prepared to accommodate the gluten free diet, to include the safe beverages to imbibe, by way of wine and spirits. I am excited to get to work on the story.
While at work, I got a message in my Facebook inbox from a guy I hardly know who I met when I first moved back to Oregon in October. He was actually responding to a random message I had sent him the night before…
There are those flickering moments of slight inebriation that just happen to happen to some of us every now and again. I really don’t drink that much. I limit myself when it comes to alcohol consumption. Mostly, to be easy on my stomach. But, I had people over for dinner last night and drank a few glasses of wine in the safety and comforts of my home.
And sometimes, in those flickering moments, the firecracker in me comes out. She can be at times a little confrontational, part revolutionary leader, part underdog and part feminist Queen. She’s a trip. She’s stoic but with a sense of humor.
Yeah, she came out on Sunday night after the dinner party dwindled down, after a few bottles of wine had been shared. Some people drink and dial. She drank and Facebooked. A discussion came up about who was that random guy who’s face emerged in the “Friends” section set amongst the faces of a few of my female friends – all who were actually, well, friends. I laughed and said I hardly knew. Truth be told, I know all 198 people who make up my friends, except for this guy. Which is no biggie, but it is pretty random. And last night I wrote him to let him know I thought it was weird that he was in my group of Facebook friends. Which, today, seemed pretty funny to me. I really don’t care one way or another about his status in my friendship list, but, well, he just so happened to be the guy who’s photo showed up in a mix of my friends, so he got the roulette message.
What can I say? We’re all fallible. We’re all a mess, really. That’s human nature. Not the neat perfection we’d all like to be packaged in. We’re complicated, layered and unpredictable. And, often, it’s in our stumbling moments of our most painful or embarrassing and obvious imperfections that we get to really know ourselves better, more intimately and most authentically.
Am I mixed up woman who drank and Facebooked, or was there something else going on?
Well, for one, I can laugh at myself. I don’t usually make such an ass of myself. I mean, I didn’t exactly Amy Winehouse myself. This minor goof was funny, not pathetic as one might find it to be – though the smug, judgmental person out there might think otherwise. But I’m really not concerned about that person. No, I prefer to not be so uptight or mortified. And, thus, I have learned that I have a sense of humor about myself. An ability to laugh at and forgive myself. If there was a pattern of bad behavior, well, I might consider therapy. But this was random and for that, even more hilarious to me. It really was my very own Sex & the City moment – the funny, humiliating ones like when Carrie Bradshaw does something over-the-top ridiculous in the name of love. It’s endearing. It’s human. And we have all been there.
This also forced me to look at what was going on in my head, aside from the wine. In my conscious world, I am not lonely. But, maybe in my subconscious I really am. That’s a hard thing to admit or to discover, and it rocks the boat a little. I confess that this unsettled me a little. I could get past the silly behavior. I wasn’t so sure about the abstract self analysis.
I left work at 6:40, a long day, and changed into my workout clothes when I got home. I headed over to the gym for a good 30 minute run. I stopped over-processing the latter thoughts about my drink and Facebook action last night. I allowed myself to get pulled into the latest news of Brangelina’s new baby names. Good God.
Back at home, I made the left-over foccaccia pizza for dinner, with a lovely mixed greens salad topped with more gorgeous heirloom grape tomatoes. I finished with a nice cup of Yogi chamomile tea with local honey and 3 Glutino mini chocolate cookies.
While preparing my dinner, I kept looking at my flowers – which I loved! The purple and orange tulips looked so pretty, fully open as if commanding look at me! I never buy myself flowers and was delighted to have them in my kitchen. I want to give myself more delight. Less disappointment, judgment, criticism, the stuff that is made up of a chorus of negative voices that can bruise and damage. Instead, I think of Randy Paush’s widow’s wise words – not helping. What does help – bringing yourself flowers. Bringing delight into your life, delight or the light.
Before going to bed, I had picked up my copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose and I found myself re-reading the parts about the ego. There’s the section about Identification with Things (p. 35-38), highlighting our attachment to material things, to consuming.
Tolle writes, “when you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore.”
He also writes about our obsessive preoccupation with things, attachments created by the ego. He goes on to write, “Being must be felt”. He explains that “[most people] were looking throughout their lives for a more complete sense of self, what they were really looking for, their Being, had actually always already been there, but had been obscured by their identification with things, which ultimately means identification with their mind (p. 43). And that “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment” (p.41).
I continued reading the sub-sections about Wanting: The Need for More, Identification with the Body and Feeling the Inner Body. What’s great about this book is that it makes me slow down and really think about my ego, my obsession with material things and consumerism, and my trials with finding my Being, and, ultimately, how this behavior prevents me from getting and having what it is I really want and need in life – whether it’s regarding financial security, success in my career, success with my writing, and my relationships or lack thereof.
Heavy stuff. I should probably meditate on it. Instead, I’ll bring my flowers into my writing room and enjoy them for the moment. In the moment.
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