theunseenwordsproject.com
I came across this picture the other day and am trying to remember why the heck I took it. I didn’t take it with my phone but with my heavy, bulky, big-girl Canon . . . which further tells me that this was a special moment that I wanted to record with my “good camera.”
Weird. I’m not sure but I think that I was celebrating, having just moved into a fantastic temporary beachfront rental for what turned out to be four exquisite months. This transition was one of those ideas that had been on my Wish List for years: Live on the beach during the stormy winter months to write. This recent move Continue reading
I knew an old timer who thought of life as a poker game. His theory was that we are dealt only so many cards in life . . . that we have to discard the old for the new if we hope to improve the hand that we are currently holding. He believed that life was all just a gambling game of chance, predicated on our willingness to release something for something else. In other words: if you don’t like the cards you are holding, you might just as well go ahead and discard. The new cards that are dealt back to you might make for a better hand. And if that isn’t the case? Well, you discard again until you like the hand you are holding. I should probably add that this older fellow led a very uncomplicated life.
That’s the best part of taking a chance. Any chance. There is that little thrill that courses through our humanness right in that very second before we know that we have been dealt a bad hand or a good hand. Research has shown that this “thrill” is actually what compulsive gamblers are addicted to. It isn’t Winning that they are hooked on, otherwise they would walk away from the table when they have a nice high stack of chips sitting in front of them . . . it’s actually that feeling of not knowing whether they have won or lost that brings them back to the table.
In this age of mindfulness, abundance, and positive thinking, we can’t help but read and hear a lot about the importance of thinking positive thoughts. We read the anecdotes and the stories from those whose lives have been richly blessed by the positive effects of mindful manifesting, and we wonder if the same would work in our lives. Does positive thinking work? I believe so. Actually, I think so — with the most positive thoughts I that can create and think. And after all, the alternative — negative thinking — isn’t all that great of an alternative.
Can you remember that first time you were actually pedaling, steering, and balancing a bicycle all by yourself?
This truly struck a chord of sublime resonance with me. I felt completely busted — in a good way. It made me realize that rather than ignore or abolish these stuck spots in my life, maybe it was time to use them, like throwing down kitty litter behind a spinning tire in the snow, to gain some new traction: in other words, re-write my Repetitive (and oftentimes boring) Statements into Rev-Up Statements.
Next, I re-wrote my rants with a positive spin that was designed to get me up and going again. No more Stuck Spots! Putting the positive spin on things required ACTION on my part. I had to visualize and implement alternatives to just spinning into a deeper and messier rut. The great news is that I felt empowered by my own personal recognition of This isn’t good anymore. I want different. I caught myself and verbally stopped myself from launching into Rant Mode. It felt great! And I am guessing that my friends and family think that it is pretty nice, too! There is nothing like a broken record to put someone to sleep. It generates white noise that blocks a lively conversation exchange from taking place. Friends and family, I am trying to exercise new awareness!
The great part? This process works! I have been catching myself as I spin myself deeper into some repetitive statement . . . and I have been stopping myself right there.
Numbers.
There is simply so much cool stuff going on there. Quantity vs. quality. Count vs. noncount. We think of a life — a count noun — and we count the number of lives on the planet. But when we think of our our own life? We think “in terms of wholes that can’t be cut up into pieces.” It’s one whole life. It’s my life! And like grass, rice, and money . . . we don’t actually cut our own life up into pieces . . . even when we think in terms of annual events such as birthdays and anniversaries. It’s all one big whole that we truly prefer not to relegate to the Noun Category of Count. We want to make it count in the ways that are important . . . not in some grammatical or statistical way.
My advice to self: Just live and give it your best in the moment. You’ve got this. While I appreciate the concepts of mindfulness and how important it is to be aware and to be positive, there is more. There is life as a noncount noun. It’s okay to count the little things as long as I remember the bigger picture. And sometimes it is so hard to keep sight of this enormous, huge, ginormous Universe of which I am but a tiny speck.
Lest this become a lesson in the grammatical usage of gerunds and participles, I believe that there is more to this way of thinking: passion = noun –> verb. As in so many components of life and relationships, there is a heck of a lot of semantics attached to the way we speak, think, and act.
The Unseen Words Project 