Thankful Thursday V.7

"The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally getting it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart.

I know I am alive today because I woke up feeling strange, from a nightmare where I was being arrested for stealing a pen. Yes, somehow something funny that happened manifested itself into my brain and gave me an anxiety dream. I had to laugh at myself for this one!



I know I am alive today because later I spent/wasted the time from noon until 3:30PM at the Brooklyn DMV, pretending to distract myself from misery with Whole Living Magazine...and left sans license. (not "liscense" as my predictive text kept spelling out on my "smart"phone.)

I know I am alive today because when I tried to watch Modern Family after the DMV debacle to get a laugh, my computer kept stalling out and I was unable to stream video.

I know I am alive today because I took the train into Manhattan to go to Anthropologie to look around, and I walked to what I thought was 375 W. Broadway...I was at 375 something Broadway at least...and there was no Anthropologie there.

Without all of these little (or big depending on how you interpret each situation)...nuisances, I would have perhaps not have noticed the little things that happened today as acutely as I did.

First off, a BIG thing! Mark gave Missy the ring today! Now I can blog freely and openly about our adventures in covert Wedding dress shopping and planning out the ceremony!

I am thankful that my best friend has found a loving partner, and I am thankful for her happiness.

And now some little things, some of which may have gone unnoticed had the bad things not happened...

I am thankful for the sweet smell of tulips wafting through the air in the city.

I am thankful for a beautiful sister, inside and out, who will pick up the phone anytime even if she knows she is just going to hear me complain about the DMV and how incompetent they are.

I am thankful for past relationships blossoming into friendships, and for the ability to set aside anything that irks us in order to help one another out with advice and a friendly ear.

I am thankful for talented and hardworking people in my life, who I am consistently proud of and inspired by.

I am thankful for his wet nose on my hand in the subway, as I read wise words about accepting life, with all of its ups and downs. That little shared moment made all the more sweet by the pangs of today's mishaps.

I am thankful for both the ups and downs of life.

To Read

"We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart."
— Pema Chödrön

When I met up with my friend Jaime the other day, I noticed a huge difference in her overall affect, she just seemed to be glowing! We spoke about how she is working out each day, and she explained to me that each night she has been meditating.

After spending the day together, that night I couldn't stop thinking about how relaxed and upbeat she seemed, how calm and centered she seemed and how her overall mood was just so lovely!

She recommended the book, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, when I asked her how she learned how to meditate.

I am putting this book on my to read list immediately. Here is a synopsis from Shambhala.org.

When Things Fall Apart
Heart Advice for Difficult Times

The beautiful practicality of her teaching has made Pema Chödrön one of the most beloved of contemporary American spiritual authors —among Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. This book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when things fall apart —when we are overcome by pain and difficulties.

In this book she discusses:
Using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage
Communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down
Practices for reversing habitual patterns
Methods for working with chaotic situations
Ways for creating effective social action

"There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life."
— Pema Chödrön (The Wisdom of No Escape: How to love yourself and your world)

Here is a video of Pema:

She does speak a little slow in the beginning and adds a lot of pauses, so you need to slow yourself down from your fast paced life to really listen.



Her smile wrinkles are so amazing and beautiful! I love seeing that on a woman, it is the sign of a life well lived!