Waiting For The Sand

On Tuesday, Tim and I drove up the coast to a beautiful beach with magnificent rocks rising from the waves.

We set out for a walk along the ocean.  We let Ducky off the leash to run, explore, … and chew on logs.

Although the view was stunning, the walking was challenging.  The beach was covered with a thick layer of smooth small rocks that grabbed at our feet and turned our ankles.  I was especially tentative as we picked our way over the rocks because I’m still recovering from a severely broken ankle and have NO desire to break it again.

Even though the going was slow and rough, we kept on.  We could see an outcropping headland in the distance, and we wanted to get to it.

It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to cover that distance.  While Tim and Ducky explored the larger rocks at the headland, I perched on a log and watched the ocean froth and surge.   Finally, we turned and headed back.  I wasn’t keen on all that struggling through rock for another hour and fifteen minutes, but what choice did we have?

But wait …

While we’d been walking, the tide had been receding.  And the ocean’s retreat revealed a new place to walk … on hard, only somewhat rocky sand.

Ahhhh.

It only took us 40 minutes to make the return trek.

Just because the path is rocky now doesn’t mean it will stay that way.  I’m holding onto this because right now, I’m looking for purchase on rocky ground … and I’m waiting for the sand.

Missing Pieces

Last night, Tim was checking a couple stations on the TV to see if the show he wanted to tape was on or whether it had been preempted by George Clooney’s benefit for the people of Haiti (way to go, George).  Tim had the TV muted while he did this.  As he flipped through the channels that broadcasted the benefit, I watched a woman (didn’t recognize her) singing.

She looked really stupid.  Opening and closing her mouth, contorting her face, closing her eyes, wrinkling her nose, clenching her fists—without sound, she was indistinguishable from a mental patient having a severe fit.

“You know,” I said to Tim, “singers look really weird when they sing, but you don’t notice it when you can hear what they’re singing.”

“Uh huh,” he said, completely uninterested in my banal comment.

Well, he may not have cared, but the observation helped me.

You see, I have trouble accepting.  When things seem to be going in ways I don’t want, I get impatient, frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged.  These, obviously, are NOT feel good emotions.

Even though I used to write a regular column about looking at life in an upbeat way, it’s not my natural set-point for processing my world.  So I make judgments about how things are going.  Of course, this is not a vibrational match to the things I want.

So seeing those singers made me stop and think.  They look just plain wrong without the sound that goes with all those facial contortions.

So imagine this extraterrestrial who has no physical apparatus that processes sound (he and his fellow little purple men use telepathy to communicate and have vibrational sensors that make them aware of what’s around them).  He comes to earth and sees someone singing.  He’s observed humans enough to know what normal facial expressions look like.  He thinks there must be something very wrong with this person singing.

See his erroneous conclusion?  Where does it come from?  It comes from the missing pieces in his observation.  He doesn’t hear the sound.

That’s what happens when I decide that something is going wrong.  I can’t see the missing pieces.  I don’t know how this situation will be impacted by people and circumstances I can’t yet see.  It looks bad to me now because I don’t have all the information.

This may seem like a “duh, OBVIOUSLY” thing to you, but it’s helping me.  I’m finding it easier to be easy about whatever’s going on around me.  I’m just watching it without judgment, reminding myself that I don’t have all the pieces yet.  The pieces I want are in my vibrational escrow.  All I need to do is feel good about what’s here now.

I was able to do that today, even though I was cleaning the house, and that’s not my favorite thing to do.

I’m not in a perfect feel good place, yet, but I’m making progress.