One of the great insights that has served me well is, there is no truth, only perspective, and perspective is subject to change. It's always possible that what I believe today may change tomorrow. There may be new information, or an insight into what something in my past actually meant, or the realization of how distorted my perception has been. I can always learn something new, about myself and about the world, and come to see things in a whole new light. I can revise my thinking. My consciousness can expand.
When I find myself vehemently declaring I'm right, I try to remind myself that I may come to doubt the rightness of what I say. When I'm feeling blue, I remind myself that I can find another perspective on whatever is bringing me down. When someone is spouting what I judge to be drivel, I remind myself that no one, least of all me, has a lock on the truth, and this drivel-spouting someone may turn out to be someone I admire and may have something to teach me.
There is an aspect of this insight that all beliefs can change which is very disturbing to some people. If there is no Truth with a capital T, what is there to hold on to? We want an anchor, to receive the message that than create it. We want something outside ourselves that is carved in stone so we can feel safe, protected, armed with the Truth. This is why some people fight so hard against the idea of evolution. The model of existence as a slow but constant flow, as an evolution that is random and not heading toward any particular end, means that there is nothing unchanging to hold on to. Nothing is eternal. There is no solid permanent ground. If that's true, what is there to have faith in and how do we justify faith at all?
I'm going to leave those particular questions for another day. In any case, there are enough philosophers, psychologists, theologians and ethicists preoccupied with getting to the bottom of them, as if such a bottom exists. I'll just talk about my own experience. Coming to understand that all of life is an evolution, that my own life is constantly evolving has liberated me. It has given me humility because I see that I might not have enough information and it's possible I'll turn out to be wrong. It's produced empathy for another person because once I say I may not know it all, it makes me able actually to see and hear the person standing in front of me, without judgment or the need to prevail. It leads me to compassion.
Basho wrote that every day is a journey and the journey itself is home. That is the insight at the heart of so many spiritual practices. My life is movement. Experience passes through me. The meaning of my life is in how I open myself to experience and stay open to learn from it.
I sometimes think about all the things I've gotten wrong. I used to be so quick to judge - those ideas are bad, that person is a hopeless jerk, there's no way that group will ever get anything done. So many views and opinions, about the world and about myself.
Most of those judgments come out of what I think of as fearful arrogance. If I approach that person, I might be rejected; therefore, it's better to tell myself that person is a waste of time. Those people are getting approving attention from the world; it's better to judge them, so I don't have to put myself on the playing field and show them I want to play. Maybe I'm making the wrong friends; what will the in crowd think of me? What if I do all the things I fear will shout loud and clear that I'm a loser? Much better to shield myself with arrogant opinions.
I told myself that I was strong, even invincible. That was the mask I wore to keep my fears buried in a place so hidden that I didn't have to admit to them. I was afraid that if I acknowledged fear, allowed one little chink in the armor, all the barricades against the things that terrified me would crumble. Better to judge the world first, before it judges me, especially because I'm afraid that judgment will go very much against me.
Judgments that come out of fear make me keep the world at bay, which is another way of saying that all that judging keeps me in isolation. The world can't threaten me, but only because I'm too defended to let the world in. And if I don't let the world in, if I don't allow myself to feel whatever is true inside - fears, desires, and other emotions - I'll never get down to who I am, to the things inside me that keep me from feeling free.
"There are men who seem to have started in life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed to their credit; whilst others seem to have been born close to the pain-threshold, which the slightest irritants fatally send them over."
-- William James
I know which one I am and I sometimes wonder why it should be so. I know that everyone struggles with their own particular issues, but some days I feel no one struggles as much as I do and no one has made as little progress as I have. I shake my head and fear there are certain knots in me that will never be untied, that even as I go to the grave I'll be dealing with the same resistances and cravings and negative voices as when I first started out. On champagne days, I think that's a good thing - it tells me there's no end to the depth inside and no end to the work that always leads me to energy and surrender. But mostly I use the fact that I struggle as proof there's something wrong with me. I beat myself up for not being perfect, for being human. In other words, some days I accept my struggles and even relish them, while other days, maybe most days, I struggle with the fact that I struggle.
Blaming myself for struggling is a way to keep me in the struggle, not making progress. Blame, shame, an anxious focus on self - they're bright shiny objects dangling in front of me, entrancing me, saying, "Dig in. Don't move. You know it's useless to hope so stay in this fog which requires nothing from you, never pushes you to take a risk and create the possibility of change." They keep me from even making an effort; they keep from willingness.
I can see the process of change has at least two aspects for me. First, I need to get free of my usual culprits so that I am willing to try, and then I have to gather the courage to act. For someone like me, mostly on the wrong side of the pain-threshold, getting free enough to act is no easy thing. And I realize that's the aspect I most blame myself for, having to find a way to surrender shame, blame and self-loathing, even at this late date. Why haven't I banished them, or at least made them into a low wall I can easily step over? Why is my stuff this stuff?
I've laid out an anatomy, a schematic of my struggle with struggling. These ideas are sometimes helpful but the fact is change never comes to me through rational thought or insight. It comes when something I can't grasp inside me shifts, when grace comes in and takes the veil off my eyes so that I feel new strength and clarity and see I'm in a different place. All the time I think I'll never escape blame, shame and self-loathing, wheels inside are turning; progress on my path is slowly being born. I become willing, ready to embrace my struggles and set free the energy to change.
Many times, as I move through my day, I find myself caught - by resentment or hurts or fear, any one of a list of feelings that stir me up and throw me off track. Getting caught is like boarding a merry-go-round that spins faster and faster; the more deeply I dive into the feeling, the more it whirls through my body, propelled by intensity and, as I go over it again and again, it revs my motor, wears a groove through my consciousness.
Certain feelings catch me more than others. Particularly hard for me - in addition to my general fear that my life is crumbling around me - are the times when I feel ignored, unseen, discounted. They too easily confirm what I always suspect; I'm not worthy, I don't have whatever it takes - to what? Live a life completely free of rejection? It's not possible. When you move through the world of other people, someone is bound to turn away. In fact, each of us has moments when we are the ones who turn away.
I used to look out at the world from behind my eyes and see everything as it related to me. Does that person like me, or see how superior I am? Am I with the in crowd? That friend has just had a big success - what does that mean for me? Narcissism makes it impossible to see the world as separate; I can't detach, or stop judging both myself and everyone else. I'm reminded of a cartoon I saw a long time ago. An atom bomb is going off and a woman is holding her head and saying "But what about my career?" That level of self-absorption is no joke; it keeps you caught in a constant anxious reckoning.
If it's impossible to live in a world free of all hurts, resentments, fears, if it's impossible never to be caught, I have to find a way to free myself. Sometimes it takes a while for me to realize that I'm running on negative thoughts and feeling, but eventually I awaken to the trap I'm in. I realize my equanimity is attached to something outside myself, something I have no control over, and reminding myself of that fact makes me want to detach because, just as I can't control anyone else, I don't want to be controlled by what anyone else says or does. If I feel that someone doesn't like me or has discounted me, if someone goes through a stop sign when it's my turn - and everything in between - I don't have to take it up and let it rule my being. And there's the key - understanding that I always have a choice. I can stay in uncomfortable or painful feelings, or I can work to let them go. I am always free to choose my own attitude.
For the last few days, the negative voices in my head have been very loud. It's the usual litany: it's too late, what's the point, you aren't good enough. By this time I know those voices don't describe reality; they aren't connected to any "truth." I know that I can detach, put space around the voices, distance myself so I can have a different perspective. I'm aware it's possible for the world to look very different if I turn my vision just a few degrees, lift it up to that place beyond my shame and fear.
But there are days, like the last few, in which I'm powerless over the voices of my despair. They produce feelings in me - oppressive, debilitating - and I can't rouse myself to act in spite of them. They have me in their grip and action, any action feels beyond me.
I no longer think something will happen or I'll come across the magic formula and somehow days like this will never come again. It may be my metabolism or genes or a hard childhood - whatever the reason, I accept that sometimes I stumble into, if not the abyss, then onto the stairway leading down into it.
The question is how to get through. One way is to keep repeating to myself things I know that push back the negativity: reminding myself it isn't "real," it's only a part of me, a part I can bring down to size; other feelings are possible if I turn away from the mesmerizing voices that want to bring me down. I can look for the places despair sinks down into my body, focus on them until I feel it dissolve away. I can close my eyes and look for the place of letting go. I can reach out to the benevolence I believe exists outside myself. I can try to connect.
The answer is always spiritual. I can act as if I'm not bogged down in the muck but it never gets me very far. Just as you can't cook a stew until you light the gas, so I can't get up and do until I feel deep in my body the connection to a power, a force greater than myself. Even to search for it is to begin to find it and although I may have to take minuscule steps I can be headed in the right direction.
My spirit wants to move that way. I want to be free.
Writing these words has made me feel better. They come from deep inside me. They move me toward connection.
My local post office has a very small parking lot and when it's full, cars line up at the entrance to the driveway waiting turns. A few weeks ago, I was the first in line. Suddenly, the car in back of me swung round me and jumped into the lot. I couldn't believe it. I honked my horn and the man driving the other car gave me a dirty look. I just shook my head. It happened that two spaces quickly opened and both he and I parked. When I got out and without thinking I said, "How could you do that?" He was very angry. "You were blocking the entrance," he said, and I heard violence in his voice. "You knew very well that was the line," I said, and left him muttering behind me. I was surprised at how calm I was in this confrontation. I wasn't afraid. I dropped packages off in the lobby and he went inside and that was the last I saw of him. I drove away congratulating myself for my calmness - well, I thought, I've certainly come a long way to be so detached.
But this encounter has stayed with me in a form that is familiar. What I feel when I think of him is regret, the regret that I didn't think fast enough to say the devastating thing to him. For instance, "If you didn't realize that was the line, maybe you shouldn't be driving at all." Not exactly devastating, I can see, but nonetheless it's what goes through my head. Now, weeks later, that line is what's left of the experience. It comes to me at odd times when I'm driving; I find myself almost compulsively repeating the words I wish I'd said.
Even now, thinking about my saying those words, I feel a distinct tightening in my chest, something sharp and intense, vibrating. I recognize it - it's what I feel when I'm defending my ego. When I'm trying to get my own back, come out on top, cut the other person down to size. Hurts, disagreements, feeling discounted, anything I feel as a lack of acknowledgement and appreciation can set off this search for the perfect retort, and it stays with me, gets repeated long after whatever set it off has pretty much faded. There are many other examples of this happening to me over the years. An odd line from something well in the past will suddenly pop into my head and, as I repeat and rehash it, I feel the same body clench as if it happened yesterday.
As I I think about it now, I realize that the inciting incident, the perfect words I think of later - those are interchangeable. They're just the match that lights the flame of ego defense and every once in a while I need to light that flame. I'm a junkie for the feeling defensiveness and the desire for retaliation give me. Incidents change, words are different - but the feeling is the same. It's sharp and intense; it gets my motor running and makes me feel alive.
But I've learned a lot about what resentment and ego cost me and I'm certain I don't want to pay the price. So I've learned a bit about how to surrender, how to let go of the need to be right. I can practice how to cultivate compassion, to look for the humanity in whomever I face. But like almost everyone else, I'm still caught from time to time. Less than I was, but still...
Someone once said that writing is rewriting. It occurs to me that living is reliving. We want to go back and revise, to arrange and rearrange the past so it conforms to our ideas of ourselves, makes us the star of any incident, allows us to come out on top. Who knows - maybe if I say the words I wish I'd said to the man in the parking lot enough, I'll come to believe I did in fact say them. Revision of the past will become only the past and each time I remember those words, I'll feel good about myself for saying them. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self- Reliance."
It isn't an easy thing - coming to trust myself. Years ago, when people said, "Just be yourself...trust yourself," I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was to be myself. My old conviction that I wasn't good enough, my fear of how I'd be seen in the world overwhelmed me.
That belief and fear produced a self-consciousness that inhibited me. I'd put myself out in the world and then retreat behind my eyes trying to assess what other people thought of me. Or I'd be afraid to speak and hate myself after for being intimidated. This happened often in small ways but every once in a while I'd stumble into a swamp and once again there was the old self-consciousness.
Once, I organized a panel with three speakers to talk about Los Angeles and the environment. I prepared an introduction, which seemed fine to me, but when it came to that evening, I left out something I had wanted to say. There was a familiar feeling in my body, as if a chasm had opened up inside me. I paused, only for a moment, introduced the first speaker, and after a few deep breaths I calmed down.
What I wanted to say about ecology in general: In Genesis in the Old Testament there is the story of the Tower of Babel. God punishes human kind; he scatters them over the earth and causes them to no longer speak one language but to speak many so that they can no longer understand each other. The reason he does so is because people have learned how to make bricks and think they will build a city and a tower up to the heavens"so that we will make a name for ourselves." God sees them and thinks if they do this, there is nothing that will be impossible for them. And so he stops them.
No one knows who wrote that part of Genesis, but what interests me is what the story reveals. There is a sense that learning to make bricks and using them to build cities and towns is in some way transgressive and subject to punishment. Even in very ancient times, there was an anxiety about what it means when humans alter the world.
That night at the panel I didn't tell this story and what I see in it because I was afraid that it wasn't cool, wasn't hip to mention the Bible. I was afraid that people would think I was a religious nut. And this even after I'd come deeply to admire what William James wrote: Whether you believe the Bible is the word of God or not, you can't doubt that it's the record of great-souled beings dealing with the crises in their lives.
It's ridiculous to me now to think about how intimidated I was. I didn't trust that what I found interesting could interest others. And why should I care what other people thought? The only thing of any importance is that I be true to myself.
When I remember who I was in the past, I try to be kind to myself. I remind myself that everyone has moments when they prevent themselves from saying what they think or doing something that might draw criticism. Other peoples' memories might be in different categories, over different things, but none of us is perfect. This is what it is to be human.
Years ago, I was in my car driving somewhere that took me on the freeway. I turned onto the entrance ramp from the south and another car, which has been heading north, turned onto the ramp at the same time I did. It was an entrance near my house, I'd been through it countless times and I knew there were two lanes for a good distance before the road turned into a single lane.
A woman was driving the other car. It had a sun roof and she was illuminated by the light. She was well-dressed, her hair in a bun, wearing a light colored jacket that probably was part of a suit. She looked like she was going to work. But all that registered later because when I looked at her, I saw her face was completely distorted by rage. I realized instantly that she thought I was cutting her off. Within a few moments, she must have seen the two lanes; needless to say, when they turned into one I let her go first.
As I drove onto the freeway, I myself was jittery - it was disturbing to be the cause of so much anger. I lost her in traffic, but my internal camera had taken a snapshot of her enraged flushed face and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I could feel in my body what I think she felt - the heart suddenly racing, a sudden clench in her belly and chest, intense agitation. I wondered how many miles she had to go before she came down and could get on with the rest of her day.
All this happened a long time ago, but I've thought of her, seen her face, many times since. I thought I recognized what it takes for someone to get that angry over thinking a car was cutting in. I spun out a story of a woman stifled at home or at work, someone who isn't getting what she thinks she deserves. Or someone whose husband just said he wants a divorce or someone who can't abide any kind of slight - can't you see me here and that I'm first?- and my driving onto the ramp at the same time as she was the simply more than she could take. Or maybe she was a person who was angry all the time.
Even that day on the freeway, I knew I never wanted my face to look like like hers had; I never wanted my body to feel the adrenaline rush of anger. But I had felt anger many times. How could I know what my face looked like when I felt it? Felt something close to pure rage at the many areas in my life that weren't going my way? If I didn't want my face ever to look like that woman's, I had to find some way to bring anger down to a very small part of everything inside me.
When did I become the person who rarely takes offense? Who says, "you want to cut in, be my guest." Who says when a car passes me on the right, then gets into my lane and drives at a snail's pace, "Okay, I guess I'll look at the scenery." When did I become the person who knows that taking offense is to take a step into a power struggle - with other people in cars or on line in the supermarket where no one moves fast enough for me or in any of the many places I go through the day where people don't do what I want in the way that I want it at the pace that I think it should be. Demanding that the whole world run around me is no longer an option for me. I can't afford to get caught in any power struggles, to let my impatience get the better of me. I can't let my equanimity to be tied to what anyone else does or doesn't do.
None of this came easily. Everything in the world was an object of my ego and I was in a power struggle with it all. When you secretly fear that you're puny and unlovable, you need every scrap of power you can get. But that kind of power is as distorted as that woman's face and there will never be enough of it unless things inside change.
It's another kind of power I've searched for and found, a force whose only expression rests in a calmness of mind, an ability to see the human being standing in front of me, an ongoing desire to keep walking toward as much liberation as I can know. It's a power greater than myself and I know now I can trust it. I started out as someone who thought only the accumulation of power in the world would make me whole. Somewhere along the line I learned that the only power I will ever have is power over myself and my attitudes and that's the power that will set me free.
The other day I heard myself saying, "As long as I'm heading in the right direction." That's what's important, a sense of momentum, of being on track, heading toward a place I want to go. I may think there's a particular end I'm heading to but no matter what I think, I'm only heading in a general direction.We don't arrive someplace and stay; we always move on. Life is constantly evolving, one arrival leading to another, one vista opening to a new one up ahead. "In the right direction"... fueled by the creative energy that comes from encountering the unexpected, from change and serendipity. My arms open wide, ready for anything.
I think of the times I was fixated on a goal and thought if I could just reach it my life would be different, I'd leave my problems, contradictions, doubts behind. There was an ultimate end point and, reaching it, I'd be transformed. Of course, there were plenty of times when that didn't happen, or didn't happen in the way I wanted it to. Then I'd feel like a failure. The feeling of failure is oppressive, a tight lid on energy, a sign that says, Why bother? That feeling pushed me back, more than ever distant from the energy I needed to come anywhere near my goals. Life showed me the damage that kind of magical thinking did. It turned my life into black or white, with nothing in between. It was too painful. Time after time, I refused to see that I couldn't control the results of my actions. I couldn't accept that my deepest desires, all the energy in the world might not deliver me where I'd decided I needed to go. I thought it was all up to me and if things didn't work out it was my fault. I wasn't good enough.
I didn't realize how hard a part of me was searching for another way to live, a way to be all right no matter what. Pain showed me that the only way to move out of pain was to surrender, not my goals but my fixation on my goals. It told me to give up labels like success and failure, and embrace whatever came to me. It taught me about acceptance - of both what I thought of as good or bad. I had to find a way to be all right with that, to give up labels like success and failure, to accept things however they turned out. I saw ideas of yes or no, good or bad, there and not there loose their power over me and be replaced by a different kind of power, the kind that comes from surrendering my ideas for control. And after a while I wanted those lessons. I wanted to surrender because each time I did, I felt energy was released, energy that had been tied up by my insistence on getting my own way and crushed if I didn't. With that energy I had a better chance of moving forward - of heading in the right direction. I relaxed; I began to feel free.
My life is a long slow evolution, a series of arrivals and departures, of learning and unlearning. It's a wonderful thing to have an ongoing sense of new beginnings, of moving from insight to insight and feeling what was fragmented and jumbled inside slowly becoming unified, whole, on a path that is no longer dependent on win or loose, success or failure. I, and all of us, are in an ongoing process of becoming that has no ultimate goal and will only stop when we do.
"The journey, not the arrival, matters."
"Every day is a journey and the journey itself is home."
I am always coming a great distance in order to begin.
Hui-tzu said to Chuang-tzu:
"I have a huge tree,
People call it a shu.
Its trunk is full of knots and bumps so that you cannot apply a measuring line to it.
Its branches are so twisted and crooked that you can use neither a compass nor a square on them.
Were I to put the tree by the roadside,
No carpenter would stop to look at it.
Now, your talk is big and useless.
So everybody alike turns away from it."
Chuang-tzu said:
"Apparently, you've never seen a wildcat or a weasel.
It crouches down and hides, waiting for its prey to drift by.
It leaps around east and west, venturing high and low.
Then it gets caught in a trap and dies in a net.
Then again there is the yak as big as a cloud covering the sky.
No doubt it has the ability to become big, but can't catch even a mouse.
Now you have a huge tree,
And you are worried that it's useless.
Why don't you plant it in the Village of
Nothingwhatsoever, the field of the boundless void, and lie back by its side, doing nothing?
Or doze off idly in its shade?
Axes will not cut your life short,
Nothing will harm you.
When you are of no use,
What misfortune will come your way?
-- Chuang-tzu, a third or fourth century BCE
Chinese philosopher, a follower of Lao-tzu.
Hui-tzu dismisses the tree because he thinks its useless; he can't make any money or any object from it. He accuses Chaung-tzu of being useless, too, spouting all sorts of crazy things no one is interested in.
Chaung-tzu is unfazed. Would you say a wildcat is useless because it will die? Is the yak useless because it can't catch a mouse? No. If you fear you are useless, do you think something terrible will happen to you? It won't. So plant your big tree in the Village of Nothingwhatsoever, where there is no thought of "useful" and "useless, of "this" or "that". Go there yourself and forget the world with all its value judgment and opinions. There is only the boundless void in which everything exists. Lie back in the shade of the tree - that shade is its use, after all.
Chuang-tzu's most famous story:
Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly...I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
What I like best is when my mind focuses in on an idea, a question, something, anything in particular. My mind wants to be engaged by something that takes me out of myself, out of one level of consciousness and into another. My thoughts can just meander, setting their own path, one following another. You could call it zoning out and that's a level of consciousness in which my mind is almost asleep, a computer whose screen is dark even though energy is feeding into it, keeping track of time or emails. Functioning but on the lowest possible setting.
Other times, my thoughts settle in and my mind comes awake. Everything in me sits up, alert and on the hunt. My thoughts don't want to meander - they want an object, a challenge, to follow an interesting trail, to create in words. Someone who studies consciousness may describe it another way, but to me it feels like becoming conscious on a very high level.
Despite having experienced many many times my mind coming awake, I still sometimes choose to zone out, to not think about anything in particular. To turn off my mind. But it's a paradox that taking time off to laze around doesn't replenish my energy; instead, it's enervating and has its own kind of perverse momentum, stretching itself out and flattening experience.
Choosing more often to focus my thoughts can become a habit - if I practice making that choice. I can ask the universe to help me be willing to make that practice day after day. I can make a new choice, the one that will always bring me awake and alive with energy.
Things I'm thinking about just now:
Endurance - the strength and determination to withstand whatever life brings.
Perseverance - to keep trying despite reversals, disappointments and difficulties.
Resilience - the ability to recover from the above: reversals, disappointments and difficulties.
The desire for hope - a willingness to search for a connection to a higher power, to a source of energy that can move me forward.
Memory - a conscious cultivation of what has helped me in the past, to call up the times in the past when doors have opened for me.
Courage - the willingness, the determination to move beyond old habits and ways of thinking, onto a road I can barely see, heading for a destination hidden in the unknown.
Gratitude - the elegant cousin of acceptance, the way to open up to the universe.
I know people who make lists. Of course, it helps them remember what's on the list, but it's also good for giving structure to the day. The list tells them what needs to be done. Some people feel good checking items off; it gives them a sense of accomplishment, of clearing the decks. I imagine it's like what I feel like when I clear off the dining table which is usually piled high with books and papers; clearing off the stuff, finding a place for the stuff, seeing the cleared table top - it's a very good feeling.
Articles about successful people often mention that they make lists. Why then don't I? Actually, I on occasion I do make a list but then promptly forget that I have and don't look at it. Other times I look at it and shrug - does that really need to be done today, does it really need to be done at all? I let myself off the hook of doing things that I myself want to do. I give myself a choice when making a list is already the decision. It's very odd.
Procrastination is certainly part of it. I have a theory that I always know where the last minute is and can meet the deadline. Do I actively seek out the pressure of leaving things undone? Why haven't I learned to silence the voice inside me that says it's all right not to do, to let things slide? Why do I still feel so resistant to anything that says "should" to me - even if it's something I want to do?
I also feel a strong pull toward oblivion, a desire to get out from under having to pay attention, most especially to my life. The fog is seductive -- a part of me wants to enter it -- and I can see a use for it; I never have to leave my comfort zone and challenge myself to think or act. More than odd - perverse.
I've been aware of these things in me for a long time and have struggled to get past the unwilled obliviousness, procrastination and desire to zone out. I've made progress - today I did my work in the morning, went to see a friend, came home and did some more work, and now I'm writing here which is something I want to do because it makes me feel good.
There's another voice inside and it's gotten louder as I've been writing here. Stop luxuriating in the fog; stop all your excuses, just get up and do. That's a good voice, one I want to listen to.
Here's what I'd like to do tomorrow. I'll get up early and make a list. I won't make it very long; it's counterproductive to make a list of things I can't possibly accomplish. I'll do the first item on the list and feel the satisfaction of an intention fulfilled. Then I'll return to the list to see what the next item is. I'll do it. There won't be any waffling in my head, no debate. I'll just go down the list.
