Rooster in the Road

Sometimes I wonder if being sane is worth all the trouble.

The psycho-spiritual work is endless, flashes of insight dim under the daily grind, and the load just gets heavy.  I catch myself schlepping along the sidewalk like an old woman, hobbling with one pain or another, dragging two or three bags everywhere I go.  Sometimes I catch my reflection in the big mirrors at the Y, and the pinched, scowling face shocks me.

Holy crap.  Where is the Joy?

Today I drove to the post office, deposited at letter (another attempt to qualify for Medicaid), and when I stopped at the intersection, a red rooster looked at me from the middle of the road.  What? I watched him cluck-cluck his way zig-zaggy across the street, and then burst out laughing.

Joy is a Rooster in the Road.  It drops off a Cosmic truck or escapes from a Holy coop to land—splat—a few inches from your tires.  All you have to do is turn toward it and say hello.

Last night I watched some hilarious videos on UTube that made me laugh so hard I lost urine (as we women of a Certain Age like to say).  It had been awhile since I laughed that hard.  My face ached, my belly hurt, I whooped and hee-hawed until my cats ran for cover.  And I had just stumbled over those videos.  A rooster in the road.

Some mornings, when I go to Haven (my coffee shop), my friend Joyce will treat me to coffee, or give me a muffin she thinks is too stale to sell, or ask me to try a new kind of truffle.  Her generosity makes me feel rich and loved.  Like speckled eggs, her gifts are joy and hold the potential for more as their warmth stirs a shift in me.

When I lived with my friends, Tom and Cheryl, I also lived with their dogs, Sage and Gracie.  If cats are a subtle pencil sketch, dogs are a slap of high gloss with a sloppy paintbrush.  I loved their largeness.  Now, nine months after moving out on my own, Gracie greets me like she can’t stand to live without me.  A fierce watchdog, she barks at kids walking on the other side of the street.  But, if she hears me, she starts whining while I’m still out on the porch.  And when I finally open the door to her, her black and white torpedo body wiggles uncontrollably.  Snorts and grunts and snufflings accompany the whining until I can love her thoroughly and apologize for being gone so long.  Her unabashed, unconditional high regard clucks like a chicken.

Marianne Williamson says, Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

I get tunnel vision, Watching and Working every day.  I forget to look up and out, to place myself on the earth, to take a breath and relax into who I am now.  I forget how far I’ve come, how well I am and all the things I’m capable of.  But, then, a rooster crosses the road, and I remember.

 

Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity?

Why would you refuse to give

this joy to anyone?

Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups!

They swim the huge fluid freedom.— Rumi

 

Feeding Frenzy

At some point in my childhood, I figured out that food could ease the immediate pain of my mood swings.  Not just any old tidbit, though.  It had to be  the good stuff—high fat, high sugar stuff.  I don’t know when self-medication turned into compulsion—early on, I think.  I’ve followed every diet, read every book on compulsive eating and food addiction, joined support groups, monitored, weighed and measured, looked for the psychological pain behind the eating, used willpower, relied on God and still when the Feeding Frenzy rises up out of the Swamp, I cannot stop it.

This winter I launched another effort to hamstring the monster.  I started keeping track of my calories in and out, I beefed up my routine at the Y to include some cardio and strength training along with my water aerobics classes.  I faithfully followed Geneen Roth’s Eating Guidelines in her book Women, Food and God.  I bought healthy groceries, prepared healthy meals, ate healthy snacks.  I bought Bob Greene’s book (he of Oprah fame), The Life You Want and Marianne Williamson’s book, A Course in Weight Loss.  I went to The Haven and faithfully worked through the books’ exercises with the hope that I’ll finally find The Answer.

Unfortunately, no-one has ever addressed the combination of food addiction and mental illness.  Sigh.  The most these authors will say is if you have a mental illness, get it treated.  Duh.  I was on medication, fellas, and gained another 100 pounds.  Medical treatment doesn’t seem to be The Answer, either.

So, okay, I can’t let that be an excuse for giving up on all the Paths to A Slimmer, Happier You promised in these books.  So what if no-one can explain why, when the Feeding Frenzy strikes, I would eat my cat if he had ice cream on his head.  So what if I can follow all the rules when Calm and Steady Mind is in residence, but when the depression moves in I jump in my car when it’s below zero and zip to Kwik Star for Cheetos and Ben & Jerry’s.

Something Marianne Williamson said in her book seems true for me.  All the self-knowledge in the world won’t fix this.

What’s left after self-knowledge, willpower and “good choices” is beyond Time/Space, or at least, it’s beyond my experience and the collective experience of experts in this field.  There has to be another way, a simple way, a solution so easy and profound I’ll laugh when I get to it.  I believe it has to do with alignment, but more than that, I don’t know.

So, while I explore, I’ll do what I can and be gentle with myself.  I’ll do all the right things when Calm and Steady Mind shows up, and I’ll do my best when it gets preempted.

And I’ll keep you posted.