Day 066a: A most private Pep-Talk … (06/19/2019)
I woke up pretty early and cranked the radiators up full-blast to finish drying the still-damp clothes I had hand-washed* the night before. It didn’t take long to have them relatively dry & toasty, and then I performed the usual pre-walk routine (packing up my things, chugging some water, and then giving my chest a few enthusiastic thumps with my fist – both to jump-start my body physiologically, and to emotionally motivate me for the coming day) and headed out the door and back towards The Way. The latter was easily accomplished, and yet the start to this particular morning was still a very slow one, with not a lot of energy and with a relatively “down” morale – with me feeling extra mopey about how tired I was, and how much my body ached, and how I wasn’t making enough daily progress, and how no one seemed to be paying any attention to my efforts … 🙁
And so it was that I chose to pretend that I was one of my own players back in the days when I used to coach basketball – a player who wasn’t having a good game and was moping about the same at the end of the bench. And so I basically started doing what I had done as a coach hundreds of time – I began loudly & somehow sternly telling myself to quit my selfish whining and remember what this whole Walk was about – to quit bemoaning my circumstances (which were indeed admittedly quite unpleasant at times) and to get back to what was truly important – the Team; in my case, walking for others – for humanity – for the world – for Peace. And it didn’t take but a few sentences of this drill-sergeantesque rant to get me to laughing at the silliness of it all. And it didn’t take long after that for my focus to shift fully back to who was truly important – namely, all of my sentient brothers & sisters for whom I was walking; every single one of them, regardless of their race or their gender or orientation or their nationality or their religion or their species. I remembered that I truly Loved them all, and I remembered that this Walk was for them – every single step of it. And so it was that my mood soon skyrocketed, and so it was that my gait soon lengthened, and so it was that my Way was soon powerfully walked once more … 😀
“As your detachment from personal desires and ingrained fears intensifies, you will find that there is no longer the need to control condition or circumstance. You will find that you striving ceases (and your suffering along with it), and you will find that your reckless caring for others increases (and your Joy with it) as well. You will find that you begin to flow easily with all your life’s happenstances – doing what you fluidly can to make them more harmonious and peaceful, and then simply moving on thereafter to adventures other & next.” ~ inspired by Emmanuel Teney
;