Bedpost #1

The Daily B.E.D.

This foray into daily posting is conceived as a sort of bedtime evaluation of my day, except that I will probably write it the next morning, after everyone else leaves the house. Might be only on weekdays.

B: for Being. Being here. Here in the eternal now. Mindfulness - the "attention" of Timothy Miller's "Compassion, Attention and Gratitude".

E: for Emotions. My emotions. My very own. Somebody quoted somebody the other day, saying (roughly) "The only things that are truly your own are your emotions. Use them well." That might sound frustrating, except for this: in the one week or so that I attended a university psychology class, I learned how to own my emotions. They don't just happen to me. They are not the automatic result of some outside factor. That factor acts on a belief, to trigger the emotion. Change the belief, and you change the emotion. Any emotion arising, then, is a clue pointing the way to the belief behind it, and thus pointing the way to change. (Thanks, Paul.) In the same vein - did you know that Happiness Is a Choice?

D: for Day. This day - and only this day. Day by day, bit by bit - but for now, just this one. This moment of this day.

I was thinking all this yesterday morning, and it felt good, felt hopeful. Got up with good intentions. Found myself at the end of the day with not much to show except a very sarcastic blog post. Much the same sad situation as I'd sat in all last week.

Why?

Well, it could be partly this thing that's going around, but still.

This morning, as I slumped through another utterly pointless computer-simulated card game, I asked myself why I was doing it. And the answer made sense. The game represents a clearly defined and limited problem, with a high probability of successful resolution. (I play FreeCell, and I nearly always win. I do allow myself unlimited restarts.) The reward comes quickly.

Faced with a choice between the messy, no-quick-fix problems of daily life, or the straightforward, get-'em-done problems of a computer game, I've been choosing the latter.

Similarly, I've been blogging a lot, tackling big problems, except not really tackling them, just talking about them. I love to write, and it doesn't even matter if anyone reads it (that's a bonus). Again, the satisfaction is that I get a quick resolution to the problem I set myself: writing a blog post. It's a comfy substitute for doing some concrete work on an infinitesimal bit of the real problem.

It's funny, though. In a teamwork situation, I tend to pick the hardest or most unpleasant tasks for myself. Why pick the easy stuff when I'm alone?