I share my thoughts and feelings, hoping that also helps you in some way.
This is the place for me to say this: before you step into 2020, be sure to cancel your subscriptions to other people’s drama and negativity, but please do not cancel your subscription to The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally.
Life is a shared experience and I was very grateful to share it yesterday with Sandra Colman, the proprietor of the fabulous store where I found the perfect earrings for my wedding on Friday.
Beautiful Sandra and I shared experiences of Swampscott, the North Shore, the South Shore, courage, ideas, chances, what we love to do, showing up, problems, marriage, our wandering minds, and our hearts.
Life is a shared experience, and I was grateful to share it yesterday with Bruce and Meryl Manin of Grono & Christie Jewelers of Milton, who had helped me figure out a solution to my problem of a too-large wedding ring.
When you share life experiences with wonderful people, that’s where fairy tales begin.
Life is a shared experience and I love sharing my experiences with you.
Now, I’m celebrating my upcoming marriage to Michael with you!
That celebratory card is from my thoughtful and celebrated co-workers, who celebrated with me yesterday by giving me these cupcakes.
I am celebrating with you that cupcake ring, which I might need on Friday since one of the his-and-hers wedding rings we ordered online IS the wrong size, just as I feared. I like celebrating mistakes, but some mistakes can be a shock to the system. If I get the wedding ring resized quickly, I’ll certainly be celebrating that with you!
As usual, I’m celebrating with you many moments from yesterday:
Emotional Reasoning.
We take our emotions as evidence for the truth. Examples: “I feel inadequate, so there must be something wrong with me.” “I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, therefore the situation must be impossible to change or improve.” (Note that the latter can contribute to procrastination.) While suppressing or judging feelings can be unhelpful, it’s important to recognize the difference between feelings and facts.
My definition of “Emotional Reasoning” does NOT include examples of the negative aspect of that, as in “I do NOT feel that way, therefore it’s not true.” I’m reasoning that I could have written that definition with this example: “I do not feel adequate, so there must be something wrong with me.”
All this came to my emotional mind this morning when I read this news headline:
That is all emotional reasoning. I know that two of those statements are true, no matter what I’m feeling. And I have many emotions about the third statement, so who knows if it’s true?
Do you see emotional reasoning in any of my photos from yesterday?
While artfully couched in the iconography of the Christian nativity, the songwriters were making a political statement: a plea for peace, and a reminder of the ravages of war.
The song opens with the night wind speaking to a lamb, long a literary symbol of peace. Soon we hear the line, “A star, a star, dancing in the sky//With a tail as big as a kite.”
“The star was meant to be a bomb,” said Gabrielle Regney.
Later we hear the lyrics “A child, a child, shivers in the cold,” which Regney said is a reference to the “real children” who inspired the song.
And the line, “Let us bring him silver and gold” was a reference to “poor children,” said Regney — a reminder of the human cost of war.
But no matter how you interpret the song, Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne left no mistake about the central message at the climax of the song.
“The biggest part for them was the ‘pray for peace’ line,” said Regney. “That line, ‘pray for peace,’ was very big for both of them.”
When I was driving to work the other day, my attention was attracted by a story on the radio about how Christmas lights on a vehicle are illegal because they distract and attract too much attention. The reporter said, “The animal in us notices everything that moves.”
Yesterday, when I was distracted by all the activity in the hall outside the group room (which I could see through the glass door), I invited the group members to do a mindfulness exercise where we noticed what attracted our attention and then stayed with that. What attracted my attention was not the activity outside the room, but rather the little ripples in my water bottle that was standing on the table and reflecting the movements in the room. Those ripples totally kept my attention throughout the mindfulness exercise.
What attracts my attention these days includes:
movement,
danger,
anger,
loud noises,
mysteries,
stress,
trauma,
pain,
politics,
faces,
the unexpected,
color,
light, and
the things in these photos:
That giant Santa cookie might have attracted my attention, but I didn’t buy it. However, I did buy some black and white chocolate drizzled popcorn, which attracted my attention way too much last night.
Yesterday, I heard a nice presentation by the very nice Woody Giessmann, founder of Right Turn, which provides innovative, creativity-based treatment for addictions. It’s nice that Woody was inspired to create Right Turn after his personal experience with addiction when he was the drummer for the Boston 1980s band The Del Fuegos. It’s extremely nice that the Del Fuegos reunited in 2011 at the Paradise to raise money for Right Turn.
Now I’m going to be nice and share a photo from Woody’s presentation:
While I watched Woody be nice in his presentation, I decided that our beliefs about treatment were so nicely similar that we were “siblings from other parents.” After his presentation, I told him that and also said that it would be nice if I could visit Right Turn during my nice week off from work, later this month. It was nice that
Woody agreed and
was nice enough to take my card about this blog.
Here are other nice photos from yesterday, in nice chronological order:
It would be nice if people could be nice to each other during this time of the year, as we discussed in both my “Coping and Healing” groups yesterday.
Now I’m going to be nice and share these nice YouTube videos of The Del Fuegos (here,here and here):
Be nice and leave a comment and I’ll be nice and respond later.
Now I’ll be nice and express my sweet gratitude for YOU.
I enjoy the ordinary coincidences and synchronicity of life. Do you?
I hope you enjoy the ordinary in my other photos from yesterday.
Enjoy the ordinary signs of the season, the Daily Bitch Calendar, and, if possible, the skill of doing nothing.
Here and now, we’re enjoying the ordinary weather in Boston, which was 58 degrees F yesterday and 31 degrees F and snowing as I write this ordinary post. Enjoy the ordinary repetition of this:
Here’s “How to enjoy the mundane or ordinary moments in life!” with Little Woo:
How do you enjoy the ordinary?
Enjoy the ordinary ending of another Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally post, where I share my ordinary thanks with YOU.
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 