The Voices

Now what?  How do I make future entrees interesting after relaying pieces of my convent saga?  Do I continue writing with a soul-bearing honesty providing a window into the inner workings of my mind?  Or do I lighten up and keep things short, sweet and informative and try to focus on the Just 10 idea?

Writing about my convent experiences while somewhat cathartic also proved to be a bit of a downer.  There are things waiting in my present life that need attention.  At the top of the list, this morning was dealing with the feeling that my current life is too small.  It pinches and binds in all the wrong places.  It was making me uncomfortable. 

Yesterday, I asked my husband a question.  "Don't you wish you woke up in the morning eager to begin your day because you had something to look forward to?"  With a dreamy, wistful voice he replied, "Yeah".
So as I stumbled into my Monday, I wrestled with the weight of this question.  I'd fallen in a trap.  I've been waiting for something outside myself to magically appear and lift me out of my too ordinary an existence.   I've been slackin' off.

Saturday, I bought three different lottery tickets in hopes of the almost impossible happening.  Paying a few bucks for a dream is a pretty good price. Yet,  it bothered me that I would actually invest the energy into daydreaming such a solution to lift my life out of the doldrums.  Money while solving many things doesn't solve everything.    Parts of my life have left the doldrums and are busy running round the entrance to hell.  At least, that is how it felt this cold winter morning.

As I walked through the cold fog across the school parking lot, I heard a familiar quote echo in my brain, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
Inside my head the words began to loop.  It had become my Monday mantra.  It was responsible for getting my feet across the lot and into the building. As my mind spun the words 'round, I remembered how much time I spend "jousting at windmills."  (Well,  not literally, I'd need a horse, a suit of armor and a scary jousting thing and none of that is going to happen, ever.)

I did have to concede that some of my best ideas have come in opposition to some one's bad ideas.  This was a dynamic I wanted to change early on this foggy winter Monday morning.  "Why can't a good idea stand on it's own and not be formed as resistance?"  Oh, great, I'm arguing with myself,again."  I say to no one but myself.

Once this chair lift on inner debate was opened,  how quickly I found myself sliding down the mountain of internal debate zooming past arguments for dialectical materialism.  Landing at the bottom of this inner mountain, I struggle to pull myself out of then nasty swamp that clutches at the base of this my mountain.  I thrash about looking for rescue.  "Be the change you wish to see in the world" throws me a lifeline.  I regroup and start again.  It's too early for so much action, inner or outer.

Maybe a good idea in opposition to a bad idea is still a good idea?  Inside my head, a voice whispers, "It's the focus that will make or break you."
Yes, I sometimes hear the voices of my own thoughts.  Actually, they are more like the voices of someone else who just sounds like me providing me their bits of inspiration.  But, it's a foggy Monday and I'm getting tired of all the chatter.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."  Thanks, Gandhi. 
"Isn't it a little early to be talking to me?"  I ask him, knowing that he'll never answer.  I do like having the last word.  I groan inside.  It was so loud, I'm almost sure someone really could hear it. 
"Come on, Gandhi, you are really annoying me this morning.  Here I am walking into my day wearing a heavy mantle of self pity and you want to chant platitudes at me.  How dare you?"
"How dare I, indeed?", Gandhi answers back with a wonderful Oxford/Indian accent and a smile.  Can't forget that smile first thing on a Monday.

I was in no mood to appreciate that smile.  Sitting in a funk of self-pity would have felt a lot more familiar on a cold morning.  Driving to work, I wanted only to be back in bed under the warm covers.  Blocks slid by without my seeing them.  The ordinariness of this day, of the days past and of the days ahead was a heavy burden.  Thoughts of a grander, larger life taunted me.  I uttered a small curse inside my head.
A new voice says, "Don't you wish you woke up looking forward to your day?" 
It's me.  That new voice is me.

Lately, I've felt a little wounded.  I've been laying out on the battlefield trying to play dead while nearby windmills continue their lazy spinning.  I so want to have at them with my horse, armor and stupid jousting thing.  It's easier to play dead.  But the day is cold and wet.   Laying on the grass waiting for the battle to be over doesn't seem like a very good idea either.

For a few minutes, I lie still and let the words of all the inner voices sink in until I begin to let them warm me.  "I am my own greatest casualty," I decide.  This I accept without resistance.  It is at once the easier and the more difficult path.  Holding these two opposites inside at the same time fills me with an odd peace.  The voice of David Carradine as Kung Fu says, "Now, you begin to understand, Grasshopper."  Now this voice of an actor in an old and somewhat weird tv show,  really engages me and I respond with, "Life is what it is.  No more no less." 
"That's how it plays, Grasshopper" he says.
The voices and I work out an easy peace.  My day begins.