Betsy Hill

**I am trying to be more present, which is a big problem for me. I tend
to escape in reading, I am working on this.**

I'll confess to this, too.

I've been thinking about mindfulness this week, since I've tended to
skip on it, and I think I'm starting to see the light.

My mind jumps around, and I'm often thinking about what I still need to
do and which thing I'm going to do next, instead of thinking about what
I'm currently doing. (Hey, even as I'm typing this, my eye is falling
on the To Do list next to my computer. Distracting. I should really
have started the baked beans already.)

An example of this is when I'm reading to my kid. If I'm not totally
engrossed by the book, which is rare, then I sometimes count the pages
remaining in the chapter, surreptiously, while I'm reading (and mentally
reviewing the other things I want or need to do.) Reminds me of all the
time I spent in school looking at the clock. (When I'm really bored in
a lecture situation even as an adult, I'll actually calculate the
remaining minutes as a percentage of the total class time, over and
over. Or I'll daydream. But I find it difficult to attend to something
that is tiresome or confusing.)

So, I'm fairly terrible at the mindfulness thing, uh, so far.

While reading aloud to my son (and thinking), it finally struck me how
much my son loves the books we are reading and loves being read to.
(Duh!) And I realized that I could be putting my love into my narration
and really feeling it. Beaming at him in my heart while reading. Being
in tune with him.

It's a little odd making the switch from thinking of love as a
spontaneous feeling that pops up sometimes, over to thinking of it as a
continuous presence that just needs to be acknowledged. (And I wish I
could say that better.) I just felt I could be thinking "Here's some
love" with every word I was saying. (And I thought feeling the love was
a great alternative to feeling antsy.)

Anyway, it was a half-step towards mindfulness for me to think "Here I
am, doing something that he loves, with the son that I love. This is
love." (I'm not sure I was truly *mindfully present* since apparently
I was being so darned analytical, but it was a "click" of mindshifting
for me. And some of the analysis came afterwards.)

Those of you who have been in a loving good mood all along, or at least
whenever you remembered to try to be, can take a minute and go "Wow,
she's slow". <g>

I want to notice that I don't think I'm going to ever feel an
overflowing love for my To Do list <g>, so I guess I'll try to give it a
smaller share of my attention! (Oh, and my point is that I think I can
"tune into" the love, on purpose, even when it's not the loudest voice
in my head.)

Betsy

Sandra Dodd

On May 4, 2006, at 11:54 AM, Betsy Hill wrote:

> -=-But I find it difficult to attend to something
> that is tiresome or confusing.)
>
> -=-So, I'm fairly terrible at the mindfulness thing, uh, so far.-=-

I'm terrible at it sometimes, but the trick (my trick) is to see
being with kids as non-tiresome and not confusing. My clarity is the
idea that I want them to have lots of pleasant memories and not much
to block out. I want them to go to sleep happy and wake up happy, as
much as possible. I find the idea that I might be able to do that
really exciting. I went to sleep crying LOTS of times as a kid. Can
I fix that by seeing my own children go to sleep peacefully? Seems so.


-=-It's a little odd making the switch from thinking of love as a
spontaneous feeling that pops up sometimes, over to thinking of it as a
continuous presence that just needs to be acknowledged. (And I wish I
could say that better.)-=-

I'm not sure anyone could say it better. That was nice!

-=-I just felt I could be thinking "Here's some
love" with every word I was saying. -=-

And with every pot of baked beans you start, and every To Do list you
write.

-=-Those of you who have been in a loving good mood all along, or at
least
whenever you remembered to try to be, can take a minute and go "Wow,
she's slow". <g>-=-

That only took me a tenth of a second, way up earlier in the post!

-=-(Oh, and my point is that I think I can
"tune into" the love, on purpose, even when it's not the loudest voice
in my head.)-=-

I kinda feel the Lion King soundtrack welling up inside me, all Elton-
John-errific.

Pam Sorooshian has said a time or two that because her own family of
origin was not authoritarian, spanking, or mean, that she might not
find it as easy as some others do to know what not to do, or to see
so starkly what 'the opposite' would be. (It's clear from that
muddle that I don't remember exactly what she said, but I just have
an impression of what it seemed I thought she meant.) Maybe it's
that way with mindfulness, as a goal. If someone's life isn't in any
great shambles, and unschooling is going pretty well, maybe
mindfulness will seem like sprinkles on the frosting on the cake.
But then if someone does figure out why people keep talking about it,
the whole cake and frosting thing seems unnecessary. Every bit of
life is like cake. Cakes don't just pop up on birthdays and
anniversaries. (I must be hungry.)

Sandra