Stop All the Clocks

What Do Sunshine and Botox Have in Common?

Nothing.  Sunshine and Botox have nothing in common that I can think of.  I just thought the question was a curious one.  This blog entry is really about decisions.

The conversation started like this, “I’m not going to eat chocolate for two weeks.”

And continued, “You can just decide to not eat chocolate and then not eat chocolate?”  I was sort of reeling, first at the notion of living without chocolate for 14 whole days and then at the notion of having that much super-human, self-control.  (Four days later, I realized that I have gone for three months without chocolate and lived to tell about it.  I simply choose to forget.)

“Yes, I can.  I’ve made the decision and now I won’t eat chocolate for two weeks.”

I rolled the idea around for a bit and responded, “I’ve tried that.  I decide all of the time to quit eating bread or chips or cheese.  The decision lasts until there is a bag of chips, loaf of bread or chunk of cheese in front of me.”

Oh Wise One responded, “Well then, you haven’t really made the decision, have you?”

Then the internal chatter began, “Yes, I make the decisions.  Don’t I?  I decide. I do. I really do.  Wait, then why do I find myself noshin’ on those delicious lays chips, savoring the ones that are folded because they are special?  Well, once the bag is satisfactorily consumed, I decide again, THAT’S IT!  I will not eat chips.”

Just deciding and committing to the decision are two different acts.  The first is a choice, to do something better, to improve your life or way of being.  For example, oh, say, choosing joy.

The real work is in the later.  Committing to a decision requires that we remain present to situations and behaviors so that we can change those behaviors.  Committing to a decision is about attending to the behaviors that we want to foster so that we reap the benefits of the major, or minor, tweaks that we have made in search of some level of improvement to our lives. 

One day, after remaining attentive, committing to a decision gives way to a new habit.  Like oh, say finding the small and large moments in each day where we revel in joy – the new and familiar experiences that make us grin ear to ear, feel the swell of happy in our chests and just be glad that we are alive.

As for the start of the whole thing: 

1. Botox requires the decision to tweak your wrinkles and the commitment to face down a needle in your face.
2. We have no control over sunshine but we get to make the choice to turn our faces to the light and grin.  Later we can attack the resulting wrinkles with Botox!

 

Sick is an UGLY THING!

Ok friends, I’m a wuss.  I’ve been sick for a week now.  I like to wake up and think, “yep.  I feel better!”  Get up, get dressed, and trot of to work and a fake it though the day refusing to admit that I feel painfully drained despite a full night of sleep, pretending that catching a full breath feels good when doing so inspires a series of coughs instead of calm, and faking an attention span that is commensurate with that of an adult who is not hopped up on cold medicine.

I have a poorly kept secret.  I can be somewhat irrational.  Well, stated in a more positive way, I dwell in the land of random.  I can start a thought with something small, like, oh… say… “I need to pick up celery on my way home” and skip down a line of thinking that ends with the Pythagorean theorem and its usefulness in laying tile.

How does this relate to being sick?  I went to work, feeling fine.  Did my job as best I could under the circumstances and fell headlong into a snotty, bawling mess of down right irrational.  At some point, someone made an attempt to make me feel better by reminding me that there are in fact crazy people out there and that on occasion we get to deal with them.  Rational Monica knows this fact and takes it in stride.  Too bad she checked out seconds after lunch. My virus infused brain matter interpreted that as, “h-h-he th-th-think t-that I’m c-c-crazy!”

Sooooo, I picked myself up off the floor, ran through a ream of institutional tissue, fired off a few emails to tape my work raft together for the rest of the afternoon and was escorted out of the door by the only woman in the building brave enough to kick me out.  Technically, she escorted me to my car, made me take a couple of deep breaths and watched until I left the premises.  Somewhere between work and home I used the back of my sleeve to sop up the snot and tears – so that when I arrived at the place and the person that I call home, I could collapse, relax and sleep of the sick, and the crazy.

Yep.  Sick isn’t pretty and today I did ugly sick well.  I’m hoping that a nap, combined with a good night of sleep and the high intake of fluid will make me work ready for the morning, because oh dear God! I can’t do another day like this one.