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What We Gain

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What’s important to take stock in is literally everything we have around us, frankly.

There are a lot of conveniences available to you if you are in a condition where you are being ‘forced’ to work from home instead of having to go into the office.

However, I don’t deal well with transitions.

Transitions from sleeping to waking, transitions from working all the time to playing and, now, transitioning from playing to stillness.

I have a full week left before I have to return to work, which just means I open a different laptop that day.

I’m having one hell of a time adjusting to how life is these days and I think I’m speaking for a lot of people when I say things have never been so anxiety triggering than this year has been.

We wonder if things could get any worse, but then each day paints a bleaker future for ourselves and those around us.

Life is crazy right now no matter where you live.

So why bother give a fuck about anything when the world seems like it’s going to shit?

I would say because it only seems so. It’s not all that’s it.

Our minds are addicted to seeking out information that will help assure survival of self.

We perceive what we want to see, what we project, in any situation.

If you look for a problem to have, problems you will find.

If you look for a solution to try, problems will be what you had.

There’s a difference of outcome when your thoughts are grounded from feelings of scarcity over those of growth.

When you view what is in front of you as a challenge, then you will only make your perceptions of it as overbearing to the point of being too much.

When you view what is in front of you as a new way of being, then it will make the journey much more bearable as you journey to find out what that means for you.

There has never been a better time to create space for yourself by looking inward in the form of meditation.

Meditation is what prunes the weeds in a mind’s garden that grow from what we are exposed to throughout the day as negative influences to the ideas we are otherwise trying to grow. It raises our awareness to the fact we have them so we can make the choice of uprooting ideas that hold us back.

Meditation is simple to do and comes at no cost. It has been one of the most practiced methods of anxiety and stress reduction since as long as humans could even write about it.

I will encourage anyone to take up meditation as a way to center your thoughts or at least get to a point where you can see around some of them. When we are too close to an idea and cling to it too much, we can’t see if for everything it is. Giving distance to ideas is important in ensuring we don’t live into ones that aren’t real for us. This does not mean we shouldn’t hope for anything, it just means we should remain unattached to the outcomes of our efforts.

Even in matters that work in our greatest favors, remaining unattached to the results can help the ego navigate situations with more humility.

Saying that sounds great, but it also sounds like letting go of feeling great. It sounds like attenuating the pulses of life that come through when they do drip down in the form of new dopamine and serotonin. But when what you seek is just great and what you get isn’t that great, are you really feeling great?

Great would be not running into ditches of thought.

Great would be being quick on the spot.

Great would be having passionate thoughts.

But I’m not.

Not feeling great about feeling a little bit lost.

Not feeling great about wondering about what could be all for naught.

Not feeling great about judging myself for having the thought.

Time is the one true currency you have to spend and how you spend it shows everything about you.

When you allocate time to a person, you are diverting attention you could be spending doing literally anything else to instead grant energy toward a connection with another human being. When you allocate time to a person you are showing them their value based on the time spent maintaining the conversation.

Isn’t it cool when you see a startup company’s stock price suddenly rise as it releases some blockbuster product? Isn’t it awful to see the same company’s stock price drop as a result of a shitty follow-up? Doesn’t it suck to see things fail before it seemed they had a chance to get started?

Yeah, it does. But wasn’t there also amazing things to be had?

Perhaps that’s what meditation is teaching me.

Stop comparing reality to what you idealize it to be.

Compare it to nothing, which tomorrow it could be.

We’re only entitled to our very next breath and even then that’s saying something.

So what if things don’t pan out. There’s still good things to behold.