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wholenessblooming · 11 days

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"The primary focus of this path of choosing wisely, of this training to deescalate aggression, is learning to stay present. Pausing very briefly, frequently throughout the day, is an almost effortless way to do this. For just a few seconds we can be right here."

Pema Chodron, in Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears

#pema chodron #being present #pause #quote #taking the leap

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broadwayinabox · 2 months

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You know why live theatre is so fucking magical?

Because everyone has to be present together.

No fucking phones, no talking, no hitting pause… none of that.

We just don’t do that as a society anymore. Even at concerts everyone wants to capture the moment instead of experience it. Everything is at our leisure, everything is replayable, everything is stored with the intent to revisit a moment we never really lived in the first place. But, for the most part, theatre audiences all quietly agree to enjoy the show uninterrupted.

You sit your booty in that tiny little chair with hundreds of other people in their tiny little chairs and you form a community that lives in this one performance at this one moment in time and you all experience together. No matter how subtle the differences from show to show, yours is uniquely yours and if you miss something it’s gone forever.

Theatre DEMANDS your attention and for 2+ hours you remember that you’re capable of giving it, undivided.

#a love letter to theatre #the beauty of theatre #theatre kid #broadway #musical theatre #sweeney todd revival #being present #Damn it’s so nice to be reminded of how life used to feel before we all started looking down at screens #the millennial nostalgia is hitting real hard #and theatre is like a walk back into a simpler time

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chaosnoirjpg · 3 months

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Feeling Guilty about not being Grateful

In this entry I am typing about feeling guilty¹ about not being grateful “enough”. This topic is inspired by a lifelong friend of mine’s series of texts messages. This entry has been adapted from our conversations.

The last I remember feeling guilty about not being grateful enough was in a Black Woman spiritual circle I discovered on Facebook. I didn’t feel so much as guilty as I was more triggered by the whole thing. I remember growing up and being told to ‘count your blessings’ when an unfavorable situation occurred as if I was messing up and missing out on how truly worse the matter could have been. As if I had any control or responsibility over the random ill fated life-events that choose me.

As I explored my trigger, I concluded that I was disappointed and shocked that I found myself in yet another assumed safe space. I thought I had found a home within this online sisterhood. I let my guard down and misjudged. I understood that I could no longer trust to discuss other emotions outside of feeling grateful for everything in my life, including undesired situations.

Recently, my little family and I experienced a theft. One of my family member’s car was stolen out of a parking lot. The culprit was later apprehended, the car received severe damages from the pursuit and capture. While we awaited word from the police, the family was going back and forth between choosing to be grateful and feeling other emotions.

My mother, being the God-fearing Southern Baptist she is, chose to be grateful and made sure to spread her good will to us. She was grateful that none of her children were outside to greet the thief and got harmed. She was grateful that it wasn’t an even worse event, like a home burglary. She experienced that at her first apartment as a married young woman. To this day she remembers how violating it was to return home and see it’s been decimated by unwanted criminals. She gave her perspective to help us see our circumstance in a more positive light, to ease our pain and suffering, to make us more resilient somehow. Yes, I will agree that we were lucky that we were safely elsewhere while the car was being absconded. As well-meaning as mom is, there was still an air of blindness, denial and minimalization there, albeit unaware.

My sibling, the one with the missing car, felt differently. She felt many, many things. Being grateful was far from her repertoire of emotions. She was going through the seven stages of grief on a loop. One moment she was angry she was targeted and desired vengeance, the next she tried to cheer herself up by looking forwarding to shopping for a new car.

I caught myself feeling envy² and annoyance about how she felt so naturally open to express her anger and disaster-mindset whenever a surprise event happened because she felt safe. I usually chill in my car and take time to cry or scream away from everyone for fear that they’d give me advice on how to see the silver lining³. I don’t want to see the silver lining I desire to mourn and mourn deeply before I even think about the next move. I’d like some time to process how shitty this is right now.

If my grandma was still alive and well, I highly doubt she would worry about any of this. She understood something about life. Her mystery of her knowingness was something I always admired. She had a level of unwavering emotional security. Nothing and no one could get my grandma down.

I can hear her now, “They ain’t stopping nothin’”.

I often thought that it was because she experienced great loss with burying her two sons, a grandson and many more of her loved ones that allowed her the capacity to endure the hardships of life’s randomness. She was never bothered by people gossiping about her or plotting against her. She had an understanding that those people aren’t satisfied with life and she was busy being happy with her own. As a child, when she told me these things they didn’t make much sense. She’d tell me ‘to keep on livin’, you’ll get it one day.’

Why do we run to being grateful when life hurls lemons at us…or…let’s be real, at any minor inconvenience? I have some answers. Please keep in mind that there are many truths, contradictory truths can exist and have existed all at once. We live in a multidimensional reality, my good people. What a time to be alive.

As far as being thankful in all things, I understand the need to be grateful and feeling guilty about being ungrateful because it could always be worse. I was told to be grateful often. Hearing that didn’t break the curse of feeling cheated, like I am missing out on better and greater things. Instead, it felt like my feelings about the present situation and circumstance didn’t meaning anything. As though my feelings held no weight in making things easier, more productive and moving things along. That might be true. But would you rather be right or experience the fullness of your capacity to feel?

I remember seeing on tv family sitcoms where the family sit at dinner, the child isn’t inspired enough to clean their plate, the parent says the offensive idiom, “There are starving children in Africa Alkebulan⁴.” Well, I didn’t get that speech. I got the, “Remember who you are and Who’s you are. Remember where you come from” talk. This mindset of gratitude wasn’t reserved for the home, but this type of be-grateful reactionary thinking was based on the mental and spiritual survival of repressed peoples. I often had the talk about how my family were forced into slavery.

They want you to be sad. Don’t fall into the trap and give them your energy.

There wasn’t a lot to be grateful for if you were a slave or sharecropper or just Black and existing in the USA or anywhere. Understanding yields compassion. However, I cannot ignore other emotions for fear of being haunted by them in the foreseeable future.

With my rudimentary way of thinking as a youngin’, I conceptualized that I was fighting against this vague thing, for lack of a better term, the mindset that desired me to be sad. As an individual, experiencing my own life, I also think about how my ancestors found joy where they could. I imagine them finding community in spite of their terrible surroundings. I think about women holding hope for a better future and if they could ever imagine a distant relative like myself reading and writing freely, being able to drive my own car or having my own bank account and being educated. Then I think, I have time to slow down and honor myself by acknolwgding my emotions. I’m not in survival mode like my foremothers. I have time. I am allowed to feel ungrateful, sad, mad, abandoned, happy, and content all at once, be present with the ebbing and flowing waves of emotions. I’m allowed to feel the full spectrum of emotions. I’m allowed to process my guilt and shame⁵ about feeling guilty and shameful. Feeling is the most human thing I can do because so many may not get the chance to or even know how. I am allowed to be grateful and feel other feelings too. No emotion is better or worse than the other. I am worthy of feeling it all.

I still struggle as life is not without its difficulties. I’m allowed to be sad and grateful about being sad. I’m allowed to say there is no bright side to this and still be like,

I’mma survive this as I’ve done all my worst moments in my life.

I may not feel grateful now or ever. However, I know I will survive this and it will not last. I don’t have to be grateful just have faith that it’ll work out and I will be ready or as ready as I can be.

In conclusion, when others try to reframe your perspective by advising you to be grateful, as well-meaning as that advise is I don’t think they’ve ponder what they are actually saying. The end goal, if there must be one, is to be able to allow yourself the space and time to process the present moment at hand. When we react by searching for ways to be grateful, we rob ourselves of being present with ourselves. We silence, censor an lie to ourselves which keeps us from our own emotional journey for fear of being perceived as ungrateful and therefore worthy of even worse happenings. Forced happiness creates humans who aren’t in-touch with what they are feelings, what they truly desire, and eventually leads to feeling lost because they cannot distinguish what they like, love and dislike. When we shed the “Us v Them” mentality, the dualist way of thinking of emotions being good and/or bad then we are able to perceive the vastness of our human experience. We begin to understand ourselves, we form a deep intimacy within ourselves. Eventually, we will be able to see ourselves clearer and clearer and know that we can handle whatever life brings. It all starts with giving ourselves permission to exist just as we are, moment to moment. Release yourself from the limiting thinking of being grateful is the only solution to being enough, feeling fulfilled and contented.

You are enough, just as you are, right here, right now. There are many truths out there. Believe the truths that empower you.

Guilt, Guilty: i.e. I did something wrong.

2. Envy: Someone has what you desire or do not have

3. Silver Lining: seeing the good in a bad situation

4. Alkebunal: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop: History of Afrika, ALKEBULAN | THE ORIGINAL NAME FOR AFRICA. link: https://www.awaytoafrica.com/know-african-roots/

5. Shame, Shameful: i.e. I am wrong.

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yourdearheartspace · 3 months

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Everything will be all right / being in the present

When I treated my depression and when suicide thoughts were my normal kind of thoughts, I made a promise to myself. I promised that I would survive, that I would make it through and endure everything, that my life would be happy and great, and that I would be happy one day.

Even in my darkest times, I had a sparkle of hope in the hidden corners of my heart: everything would be all right sooner or later. I was drowning, and that thought was my straw.

My mantra was: I feel bad now, but in the future things are gonna change. Although every new day became “now,” now was bad, and my bright future was still far away. I felt as though I’d been on a pause for years, putting my life in the “later” box. I’ll do it when I feel better. When I become an interesting person, I’ll sign up for dancing or drawing classes and make new acquaintances. I’ll start it when I’m ready. And my favourite: I will relax when I’m done with something (and then another something, another something, another something). And so on.

I delayed my “all right” to the better times instead of trying to make it “all right” at this very moment.

My hope drove me to the problems I’m currently working on. From time to time, I’m not here.

My thoughts are either in the past or in the future. There have been pain, mistakes, and regrets in the past. The uncertainty of the future scares me so much that I feel anxious about it. I’m not good at letting myself relax, allowing myself to rest, because my brain, out of habit, thinks, “Not now.” Now I have to do ten thousand tasks, I have to decide on something, I have to rush somewhere, and the amount of things I need to do often feels threatening and overwhelming. Rest? Nah, some time later. Thus, constant exposure to stress, tiredness, and the inability to fully relax.

I try to live at the moment now. Good music to start my day with after I turn off my alarm. A movie in the evening. The taste of green tea in my cup. Happiness because my bed is soft. Feeling of love when I give a pat to my cats. Skincare routine. The delight of physical exercises. My breath during a meditation. It turned out that meditation can help me soothe myself a little bit. Here and now. Close my eyes and breathe. You are only here and now.

You need to live now too, not to be on pause. 🕊

#mental health #thoughts #letting go #being present #do it now #relaxation

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tryslora · 9 months

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I hate advertising/marketing myself (as a creator).

I feel like I'm intruding.

But I also feel weirdly like using Blaze on Tumblr might be okay? In some weird way?

If I start using Tumblr properly as me. A fan. Too. That's important.

I miss social media and communities.

This post did not end where it started, did it?

Does anyone care what I'm reading/watching these days?

#tris talks #media #social media #being present #being a human #thoughts on marketing

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gentlespiritgirl · 3 months

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New video on my Tiktok about being present!! ☺️ You can find the full video below 👇🏽

#christiangirl #christian blog #godisgood #christian faith #christianity #gentle reminder #trustgod #prayer #being present #presence of god #presence #staying present

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dropintomanga · 3 months

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What We Could Do More of

I've been thinking about this panel from Volume 14 of Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie. There's a lot of people who have no one who will truly listen to them.

I don't have much else to say at the moment, but I hope you can be the same and be present towards those those you care about or someone who's dealing with a lot.

#Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie #manga #Miyako Shikimori #Ria Hayase #friendship #companionship #mental health #being present

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savagechickens · 2 years

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Today Might Be Different.

And other cats.

#life #cat #meow #translation #trust #being present

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azukilynn · 1 year

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Reminder to myself…

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Focus on your next step. Don't get too far ahead of yourself. There's nowhere you need to be besides where you are right now, in this moment.

Whether you are at work or at home or walking through a park, remember, that is where you are meant to be.

#mantra #be here now #mindfulness #zen moments #being present #spilled thoughts #azukilynn #poets on tumblr #writters on tumblr #humans of tumblr

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rosielindy · 7 months

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👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻This! 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

#being present #sobriety #feel the feelings

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vizthedatum · 4 months

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being present

I have little control over future things - like future interactions, accidents, outcomes, conclusions, etc.

I do have control over being more and more true to myself - even if I realize I'm judgemental or something that I don't think should affect me... is affecting me. I *can* take accountability. I can be more aware and self-aware.

I can make decisions that set myself (and others) for a better future, but I need not obsess over the future if I have done what I can.

I have control over how I love myself and how I love my people. That's how I can be present today.

My feelings are there, but I'm not just a human body with feelings. I have more autonomy and presence than just that.

#healing #trauma #neurodivergence #queer #love #self love #harm reduction #being present #control #relational love #trying to reduce heartbreak within myself

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