There will be messes...

I used to hate commuting to work. It was wasted time between space, from here to there always in a hurry. Especially when I lived in LA the traffic is horrible all the time everywhere basically... it sucked. Even a short 5 mile commute from a Venice Beach neighborhood to Santa Monica was plagued by PCH backups. Later driving from Long Beach to Santa Monica even with my newly purchased "commuter lane" approved Prius it sucked... not a fan of "THE 405"... they predicate all highways with a "the" in LA because they are a basically members of the family... "how was the 405 today?" "Backed up between the airport and the Santa Monica FW... " "Again... yep..."  blah blah... 

The best commute ever was from my place on the boardwalk in Venice to Santa Monica... beach bikeways & the SM pier overpass are only crowded on weekends! Any who... I'm reminiscing again... apparently I'm in that mode. The point is I'm commuting now from Saratoga Springs to, our fair capital city, Albany. Not bad really... no REALLY.. compared to the 405 it's a luscious piece of Tiramisu! There's one little section that's a bottleneck near the twin bridges over the Hudson River... otherwise unless there's some sort of emergency situation it's pretty smooth sailing... about a 30-40 minute affair. SO>>> the point is I've eased the passage of time by listening to a book on Audibles. I listened over and over to the book of Joy... now I'm listening again to Becoming Wise. It's funny how you have to be in the right mood for some books. I didn't enjoy listening to it the first time.. the language and ideas were a bit overwhelming and felt untouchable. Now... for whatever reason I'm inspired.

Yep, so there's a chapter on hope and some thought provoking - eye opening observations worth sharing and that I would consider worth remembering and further exploring... =) a distinction... hope vs optimism... I hadn't considered before.

"Hope is a cognitive, behavioral process that we learn when we experience adversity, when we have relationships that are trustworthy, when people have faith in our ability to get out of a jam." (page 250)

HOPE IS BROKENHEARTED ON THE WAY TO BECOMING WHOLEHEARTED.

HOPE IS A FUNCTION OF STRUGGLE.

The next paragraph goes on to describe the process, I've just noticed as well, regarding remembering and relearning things we have already been through before... and, in my case, written about in poetry or journals. "There is another way to talk about the move from intelligence to wisdom - seeing basic realities again, finally, but for the first time with consciousness: evolution reflecting back on itself." 

The most fun section helped me learn about life... myself reflecting back and beginning to become less resistant... everything involves struggle or bad times or waves, as I would say, of disturbance... the fact that I am persistent has been a golden light. She calls this resilience...

"Resilience is a successor to mere progress, a companion to sustainability. It acknowledges from the outset that THINGS WILL GO WRONG. All of our solutions will eventually outlive their usefulness. WE WILL MAKE MESSES, and disruption we do not cause or predict will land on us. THIS IS THE DRAMA OF BEING ALIVE... It's a shift from wish-based optimism to reality-based hope. It's akin to meaningful, sustained happiness - not dependent on a state of perfection or permanent satisfaction, but a way of being that can meet the range of emotions and experiences, light and dark, that add up to life. Resilience doesn't overcome failure so much as transmute it (gracefully), integrating it into the reality that evolves (life)."

I paraphrased a bit... there was another quote at some point that struck me...

"We are not here to save the world we're here to live in it Fierce and humble..." Courtney Martin. I'll have to find the exact quote... it was stupendous! I've got to run.

Still miss you guys! Damn! And, I was thinking maybe I'll cut back on the swearing. Gram wouldn't approve... AT ALL! "it's unladylike."

---