Well, it’s Saturday and I’m here alone in my office working furiously on several things at once.  It seems like I’m always working on several things at once and I really don’t know why that seems to be the case.  My friend who lived with me for a while was forever making comments about how I was up and I was about and doing things. Yah, that’s me, always up, about and doing things otherwise, what’s the point of life?  Ah, I can hear it already from those of you like her who move slowly, to a different rhythm than I do.  Hers would probably be one of those big timpani drums with the slow, constant beat and mine; well I’ll guess it’s more like a military march, steady but swift.  There is much to be said from both I suppose.  Me, I’m a “get ‘er done” kind of gal.  Need a job taken care of to completion?  That’s me.  Want it done quickly and efficiently?  That’s me.  Want me to take a break and have lunch in the middle of that?  Well, that’s NOT me!  I used to work part time for a school district here and they were forever and always telling me it was necessary for me to go into the lunch room and take an actual lunch which I never did because it made absolutely no sense to me.  Why would I waste my time sitting in a cold, sterile, unwelcoming space that people I don’t know were constantly traipsing in and out of for a half an hour of my precious time which could be spent getting work done just because someone says I have to? 

Nah, can’t do it.  Now, in defense of my friend and her timpani existence, she asked me one day,

“Do you ever just be?” 

“Be what?”  I responded.

 “Just be, don’t think, don’t do, just be.”  She coos back at me, her voice carefully modulated for maximum expression.

“No…” I say with barely suppressed derision at what I’ve judged a “new agey” catch phrase while in my mind I’m thinking “Be?  Phooey, who can possibly only “be”?”

She then goes on to try to explain this “being” by gesturing upward with her hands as though urging me to contemplate the heavens while describing a place of nothingness, a place to relax and just, well, be.

“Hm, well, no.” I say while in my mind I’m saying, “Relax and just be?  Sounds like a colossal waste of time to me.”

Since then I’ve had a little time to think about that conversation and that state of “being”.  Not a lot because I’ve been very busy (big surprise right?), legitimately, with the loose ends of my divorce, the loose ends of her divorce, trying to launch this website, trying to maintain some kind of relationship with friends and family, babysitting my granddaughter and…..LOL!  Yep, here I go again!  Anyway, back to “being”.  Let’s see if I can stay on subject.

Being nothing, that’s what it sounds like to me but it isn’t really being “nothing” in the conventional definition of that word.  Instead it is being something in nothing; just being me in the middle of a great big universe of nothing.   Not forever, just for a little space of time in which to catch my breath.  Okay, so I’m going to try it as I sit here writing this article…does that defeat the purpose do you think?  Well I’m going to try it anyway.  Alright then, breath, relax my shoulders (wow I didn’t know they were cinched up so high, hah!), release the tension from my eyelids (who knew you could have tense eyelids?), lower my ears (hm, that feels good), slack my jaw (wow, lots of tension gone from there!),relax my back into the chair… let my legs just lie there, feet flat on the floor….oops, lower those shoulders again….now my arms feel heavier..like weights, can’t type now…..sto…p…th…in…k..i……

Tagged as: being, letting go, meditation, relaxation, relaxing, releasing, self awareness, tension, yoga