It’s a Now Thing/Don’t Torch the Cake

It’s a Now thing, this living.  Like, right, now.  Breathing deeply helps.  In, and out.  I have a kind of active, vigilant mind, the kind of mind that would have been really, really useful to a nomadic tribe living in constant peril of myriad predators.  

But this kind of mind is, perhaps, too robust to bring to bear on the usual challenges of my day-to-day as a stay-at-home mom.  Like, “Will it be rigatoni or tortellini for dinner?” Do we have milk? Has my kid outgrown his shoes, again? Where’s my headset? My car keys? My purse? His backpack? Is that sniffle allergies or a potential deadly virus? Chocolate smear on the new white sofa, now what?

And other stuff — family suffering, friends’ suffering, overspending, overeating, underexercising, end-of-summer-itis, political stuff, human rights stuff, back-to-school stuff, we’re all-gonna-die-eventually stuff, overworking, underworking, clutter, quality time, scheduling, Being Conscious, getting enough sleep, getting enough love, giving enough value, being in the flow, Okay I really, really need those headsets, those car keys, now.

Anything I can think of, and I can think of a lot, I can turn into a Big Problem in my mind.  And then, and then, it’s like using a blowtorch to light birthday cake candles.  Wrong tool, wrong result, cake, bye. Waah.  Sad.

And I meant so well.  But in this case, a match is better than a blowtorch.  So I gotta put the mental blowtorch down, and get a match, or a lighter, or one of those long gas stove lighter thingies.  

Get into a less impulsive, smarter mindset: There are lots of good options for how to light a birthday cake candle that aren’t necessarily where I’d go first.

So it’s a training thing, figuring out a strategy to get to the second thought.  The less fired up thought, that comes from the less fired up part of the brain.  And gives me more appropriate options for this life, this lovely life I get to live right now.  I like cake.  I’m gonna keep going.

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