Off the Hook

The first few days of school this year have been filled with hectic pacing, meetings, scheduling, paperwork, challenging phone calls, difficult e-mails, and driving. Through the day-to-day reality of working in school districts, tension and anger have been creeping back into my life baring giant yellow teeth and smelly demon breath. I find myself back in old habits and patterns of thought, yet more deeply aware to them and present to them as I feel them inviting me to further release my grip on them.
I'd really like to write this post in a way that will meet everyone's approval so that I can look really good, really wise, really enlightened, really spiritual. It's not gonna happen. The truth is that I do great work of trying to shut certain feelings out of my conscious awareness with active resistance. I'm finding the process of getting the fact that separating from my felt experience of life from the rest of life gets me nowhere to be a really, really, reeeally slow one. Sometimes my feelings are overpowering in their negativity. Other times, I feel overcome with neediness and the longing for someone else to notice what I do. One moment, I'm singing along to David Bowie, the next minute I've flipped off and cursed out someone who's gradually easing their way in front of my car for the fifteenth time that day. In my attempts to grow and learn spiritually, I am sometimes harder on myself than anyone I know. I try to master it and get it right in the same way I used to practice times tables or shooting on goal or pulling off vibrato on the trombone that doesn't sound like a seizing elephant. I rarely let myself off the hook in the way that I do for others, and then I wonder what I am so angry about. I marvel at people who claim not to judge themselves. I figure they're either lying, oblivious, or nuts. I imagine that I would feel blissful if I were one of those lucky souls.

Since I've had an empty house this evening, I've been able to work with the tension and anger I feel around being in a helping profession where I sometimes feel like I'm helping absolutely nobody. How can I be supportive and helpful to others if I treat others as though they were more precious than gold, while discounting and dismissing my own value as a human being in the process? The answer I came up with this evening (like all the other times I've explored this) is that I simply can't. Maybe I can instead treat myself with just a little more kindness with my next thought, with maybe just a touch more compassion. Maybe I can accept that the transition into a new school year after summer vacation, minor as it may be, is still a transition and requires acceptance and surrender.

Plunking myself down in a chair in the living room, I wonder, now what the hell do I do? I glance out the window, where I can see the sun beginning to set over the hills in the distance. The birds are chirping and a cool breeze blows in through the open windows. One cat creeps delicately by my feet and jumps soundlessly into the window; another curls himself up at my feet. As the leaves rustle and the wind chimes ring, I find myself grateful for the beauty around me in the moment. While I'm not exactly happy or energized, a little wisp of peace rises in my heart. For right now, that's plenty good enough.