How to Have a Really Good Day

I have been told by people close to me that I am mercurial.  This is an elegant way of saying I’m moody.  I have lots of moods, and they move through me really fast!   Happy, sad, mad, and all emotions in between and beyond, seem to occur to me at sudden and frequent intervals.  I never know who will show up, or when. Mercury is an element that is liquid at or near room temperature, it’s also called “quicksilver”,  I like that, quicksilver!  Mercury is the fastest moving planet in our solar system, and it’s closest to the sun. Mercury is fast-moving and changeable and so am I!  Quicksilver!

But there is something about me that is always the same, has always been the same for as long as I can recollect.  Something that isn’t victim to the frequent floods and rainbow chasing.  What is that?

Friday was a day full of struggle.  My mind was hell-bent on knowing when and how I would be getting the hell out of Phoenix before the hell came to Phoenix.  You know, the heat.  We are still hanging out in the mid to high nineties, but any day now……really flipping hot is coming for its annual visit.  This is what I tell myself; I must get out of here SOON, because I hate these long summers full of air-conditioned indoor living; my moods take on a faster, hotter, much more aggressive flavor when I am on lock down.  I spit fire!

 But just a few days before my mental wrestling match, I was quite content to be here. Content to just allow the natural flow of life to move me through it’s changing landscape. Ahhhhh…..and then….I started fighting with reality.  Fighting with the facts as they are showing up presently, creating so much tension and anxiety, and it all felt SO REAL!  I wanted something to happen now. Right now.   I had a  place to stay in the bay area, and a new offer to crash in a house on Carmel Beach!  I would just go NOW!  I would quit my job, give all my stuff away, pull my money out of the bank, and just GO!  To hell with planning, and worrying about a job and health insurance and all that shit, there is only NOW!   Carpe Diem! I felt like California might fall off into the ocean if I didn’t go secure it with my presence!

What changed?  Was it something I ate?  Something I read?  Something I said, smelled, thought, saw????

I noticed this shift.  I watch myself being thrown around by thoughts and emotions.  I needed to be still.

Here is what I did to come back to neutral:

I took a yoga class Friday night from a teacher substituting  for the usual Friday night teacher.  She was pregnant, and she taught in a slow sweet manner; her teaching was like honey.

For dinner I ate an organic baby spinach salad while flipping channels between a Scrubs repeat and a show I’d never seen called The Medium.

I meditated for 20 minutes, focusing on letting the out breath be a  conscious “letting go”

I wrote  three pages in my dark blue spiral notebook Shannon gave me last Summer, finally filling it up. 

I read from The Diamond in Your Pocket, by Gangaji.

I cried.

I fell asleep while listening to The Universal Mind on my ipod.

I woke up at 5 am.

I meditated for 20 minutes, the out breath a release from grasping.

I did 100 crunches.

I flapped my wrists really fast while my arms were extended for 2 minutes.

I fed the cat.  I fed the dog.

I drank half a cup of coffee.

I drove to work while talking into my hand-held tape recorder.

I ate a toasted nut and cranberry Luna bar for breakfast.

I spoke “Spanish” to my Cuban patient who was once a prisoner of Castro’s, enjoying the way my accent sounded to my ears.

I fed another patient 50mcg of Fentanyl every 2 hours, almost certain I was medicating existential pain.

I laughed a lot with the other nurses.

The moon was waning. 

Is Mercury in retrograde again???

Somehow, I let go.  Again. 

I had a great day.  I don’t know if any of my “interventions” made any difference.  I am so beyond knowing.  There are so many things happening all the time, seen and unseen.  So many things that influence us without our consent.  That’s how it feels for me. I don’t feel like I have any control.  My constant practice is to LET GO.  It’s so hard!! I want to manipulate and rearrange molecules just like all of us, but when I do, when I start moving against the flow of nature, I become possessed by energies that serve only to create suffering .

Who is it that wants to leave?  Who is mercurial? Who always stays the same underneath the crashing waves?

Beats the hell out of me.