Over the winter, I started using the sauna at the gym after my workout. A moment of calm respite in dry heat. No one ever seems to use it but me. It is serene, quiet, with the muffled sounds of showers, women’s voices, footsteps, and the whir of an occasional blow dryer.
I try to clear my mind of its incessant chatter. A mini-meditation. As I sit there, eyes closed, palms up with middle fingers to thumbs, I hear the door open and two women enter. I open my eyes and find two women fully clothed coming into the sauna! I look at them and smile. One smiles back and says they like to warm up before their workout, coming in from the below freezing temperatures outside. (Note to self: not a bad idea on really cold days!)
Their chatter, at first a bit disruptive to my attempt at meditation, soon brings me drifting to far-off continents, with warm sands, djembe drums and a rhythm of time I haven’t experienced since the arrival of children. They were speaking French with an accent that spoke of spices and dancing, laughter and music. I was far away, the heat of the sauna impersonating the heat of distant lands.
One of the women left and after a moment of respectful silence the other and I began to talk. She said she was tired, having just finished her shift. It was early yet and I rightly guessed that she had just pulled a night shift. And now she was at the gym! Brave girl. Then she was going to a computer class. Then home to take care of her family. I shared my recent thoughts of how the seasons no longer carry the meaning they used to. We no longer use the seasons as nature had intended: winter, a time for going within, for meditation, for repairing and mending, for preparing for spring. Winter used to be a time of quiet. But winter now seems as frenetic as spring, and there is no respite. With technology allowing us to work and live 24/7, we no longer have an “excuse” to just stop, or at least slow down. She agreed that life is incredibly fast-paced. She said you’d have to leave Canada for a quieter country if you wanted a calmer life.
This was the irony. I had left France for a healthier lifestyle, a slower pace. And it is this very reason I came to Canada! Where people actually finished work at 5pm, and it was widely accepted that you had a life outside of the office. People here enjoyed outdoor activities, a physical lifestyle, and fresh air. There were four seasons, and it was here that I fell in love with winter. The quiet the snow brings. A hush outside with the muffled footsteps, warm lights burning in windows, the monochromatic landscapes through the city and country. A time to go inside, be with friends and family. Darn my socks (if I knew how to), cook hearty soups (that I can do), dream big dreams in preparation for spring.
That is my image, but my reality is far different. Old socks with holes get made into rags, I’m lucky if I get one hearty soup a month made (to be frozen in single servings for later), and every day is a mad dash that doesn’t seem to change from any other season except for the layers of clothing and amount of salt on the shoes.
There seems to be a constant rush of a million little things running through my head: lists of things to do, to buy, to fix, to schedule, to research, to choose from, questions to answer from my 4 year old, diapers to change from my one year old. And it never lets up. I can walk down my little stretch of hallway (about four steps), with a task in mind, get stopped twice mid-stride by each child, once by my husband, go on several detours, to find myself asking the age old question, “what was I doing again?”
And that thought seems to be lost in that intangible space-time continuum, floating there waiting for me to shuffle through my brain to catch it again, but more often than not, it is lost. Just like that shoe I was looking for... oh, wait! That was it! Ah... and there I go, looking for a lost shoe, or finding a place to stuff some toy that no one ever seems to know where to store, or to get the laundry, or fold it, or... yeah... you get it. Everyone gets it. Because no matter what your life situation, everyone seems to have gotten caught in the “million little things” that occupy our minds and bodies. Whether you’re four or ninety-four, with kids or single, working or retired, everyone seems just as busy.
The art of doing nothing really is a lost art. We used to have the winter months to practice it. Or the time of the “siesta” during the long hot days of summer. Now those rhythms have gone missing. We no longer stop and listen to them. To the heartbeat of the Earth, its pulse quickening and slowing down, like waves in the ocean. I wonder if it’s all those wireless radio waves that are filling our heads with ceaseless chatter. Can we learn to cut through it all and come back to the healing steady beats of nature? Can we learn to stop and be silent? Isn’t it in the pauses that we really hear the music? The silence in between sentences where we gain understanding.
I had gotten so lost in my “million little things” that it has taken me until the arrival of spring for me to write my musings of winter. I guess I have a whole year to practice my new-to-me yet old-as-time-itself art of doing nothing. The art of Being. Ah yes. That is it.
The art of Being.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
(American) Mentality or the Need for Compassion
Just before New Years I went out and bought myself a new pair of booty-style slippers at Winners. When I went to put them on later that night, I found shards of glass in the right shoe – little pieces, clear and colored, like from some ornament or decorative piece. I was shocked! I had cut my thumb earlier that day taking a shard of glass out of my sock. Now I knew the source. Images of glass falling out and onto the floor, where my son or daughter could cut themselves gave me shivers, so I wrapped them both back tightly in the bag and planned to return them to the store the next day.
I was angry and scared. How did glass end up in my slipper? Trying on slippers is something we consider relatively safe and don’t expect to end up bleeding from the encounter. Were more slippers “contaminated”, or was it just the pair I had bought?
On the way to the store I thought over about what I was going to do once I got there. Make a big stink? Call over the manager? Be angry? And, shouldn’t they owe me something other than just a new pair of slippers?
When I got to the counter, I told the teenaged clerk what had happened. Her colleague at the next counter leaned over and said, “Someone must have put it there on purpose” (oh, that’s reassuring!), then asked, “are you sure you don’t want to just vacuum them?” “Ah...no.”
Luckily, my clerk was slightly more understanding and took back the slippers. She asked what I wanted. I went and got another pair, checked to make sure there was nothing lurking in the bottom, then simply exchanged them. And then I left.
But what did I want? I was thinking a free chocolate bar, or a 5$ gift card would have been nice. Something for my pains and troubles. I mean, wasn’t I owed something for what I went through? Ah. Why is it that I think that? Is that my “American-ness” shining through? My American mentality? You OWE me! You have to PAY! I realize that this is what I had learned growing up. When something goes wrong, then people owe you...something. Suing people left and right for the slightest slight to our persons. Okay, I wasn’t about to sue Winners, and in the end I didn’t even call over a manager or insinuate a little gift of chocolate would ease my pains. But what would have been enough? What was it I was asking for? Hmmm. How about a sincere apology. Compassion as compensation. A heart to heart connection. I believe it would have been enough. Compassion. An understanding. A connection...
Just yesterday I was in the supermarket. I had to go to use the bathroom, and when I’m about to leave, with Phoenix in the cart in the front, and Kian in the bottom tier of the grocery part, I start to back out. Kian, I realize much too late, isn’t quite in yet, and he flips over and hits his head hard on the floor. A huge egg-sized lump appears instantly. Both kids crying. I’m not quite sure what to do, so I go down to the pharmacy and ask if they have an ice pack. The gentleman gives me a hard frozen plastic rectangle. Nothing to wrap it in, and it’s too hard to cradle my son’s head. I tell him it’s not working, and offer to pay for something if he has anything that could work better. He goes and gets me something, drops it on the counter, and doesn’t even offer to help me with it. He tells me it’s a pharmacy and not a first-aid station. I leave the item on the counter, go back upstairs and over to the gym where I'm a member and where luckily they have a daycare. I go in. Now I am in tears, and immediately I have three or four women helping me give first aid to my son. One of them is even a first responder who tells me step-by-step what to do and what signs to watch for in case of concussion. My tears flow, as I cry out all of my tension, my fear for my son, and my frustration from the rudeness I was received with below.
After a few minutes the swelling recedes, my tears have dried up (Kian stopped crying about thirty seconds after the incident). Kian seems to be out of danger, so we go back downstairs to finish our shopping. I run into the pharmacist. He asks if my son is okay. I say he is, but then I yell at him, “couldn’t you have helped me, just as a human being?” He replies that he didn’t have the supplies necessary, that he only works in the pharmacy and does not know where I would go to get help. I lay into him and tell him that he still could have answered me with kindness instead of brushing me off. He could have been a little more human. Now he is on the defensive and leaves before I can unleash any more of my residue anger and frustration.
What if all the suing, the demand for compensation, the need for retribution, was really just a need for compassion? What if at the root of all of this is the need to be seen and heard?
And, if in the US we have replaced true compassion with the American dollar, what does that say about us as a society? We wonder about this new generation growing up, feeling they are owed something. Gee, I wonder where they got that? I am shocked by their attitudes, yet when I look within, there lies the seed. So maybe what I owe myself and my children, is to engage. In life, with others. To have the courage to see them and feel them. Because it is a scary thing. We don’t know what to do with all that emotion. We don’t know how deep runs the well, once it’s been tapped.
I finish my shopping, then go back a third time to the pharmacy. The man I spoke to is not there, but I explain to the other pharmacist, the owner this time, the situation. I realize that when the other pharmacist had approached the second time, he was trying to show compassion, and I cut him off with my rage.
Now it was my turn to apologize.
I was angry and scared. How did glass end up in my slipper? Trying on slippers is something we consider relatively safe and don’t expect to end up bleeding from the encounter. Were more slippers “contaminated”, or was it just the pair I had bought?
On the way to the store I thought over about what I was going to do once I got there. Make a big stink? Call over the manager? Be angry? And, shouldn’t they owe me something other than just a new pair of slippers?
When I got to the counter, I told the teenaged clerk what had happened. Her colleague at the next counter leaned over and said, “Someone must have put it there on purpose” (oh, that’s reassuring!), then asked, “are you sure you don’t want to just vacuum them?” “Ah...no.”
Luckily, my clerk was slightly more understanding and took back the slippers. She asked what I wanted. I went and got another pair, checked to make sure there was nothing lurking in the bottom, then simply exchanged them. And then I left.
But what did I want? I was thinking a free chocolate bar, or a 5$ gift card would have been nice. Something for my pains and troubles. I mean, wasn’t I owed something for what I went through? Ah. Why is it that I think that? Is that my “American-ness” shining through? My American mentality? You OWE me! You have to PAY! I realize that this is what I had learned growing up. When something goes wrong, then people owe you...something. Suing people left and right for the slightest slight to our persons. Okay, I wasn’t about to sue Winners, and in the end I didn’t even call over a manager or insinuate a little gift of chocolate would ease my pains. But what would have been enough? What was it I was asking for? Hmmm. How about a sincere apology. Compassion as compensation. A heart to heart connection. I believe it would have been enough. Compassion. An understanding. A connection...
Just yesterday I was in the supermarket. I had to go to use the bathroom, and when I’m about to leave, with Phoenix in the cart in the front, and Kian in the bottom tier of the grocery part, I start to back out. Kian, I realize much too late, isn’t quite in yet, and he flips over and hits his head hard on the floor. A huge egg-sized lump appears instantly. Both kids crying. I’m not quite sure what to do, so I go down to the pharmacy and ask if they have an ice pack. The gentleman gives me a hard frozen plastic rectangle. Nothing to wrap it in, and it’s too hard to cradle my son’s head. I tell him it’s not working, and offer to pay for something if he has anything that could work better. He goes and gets me something, drops it on the counter, and doesn’t even offer to help me with it. He tells me it’s a pharmacy and not a first-aid station. I leave the item on the counter, go back upstairs and over to the gym where I'm a member and where luckily they have a daycare. I go in. Now I am in tears, and immediately I have three or four women helping me give first aid to my son. One of them is even a first responder who tells me step-by-step what to do and what signs to watch for in case of concussion. My tears flow, as I cry out all of my tension, my fear for my son, and my frustration from the rudeness I was received with below.
After a few minutes the swelling recedes, my tears have dried up (Kian stopped crying about thirty seconds after the incident). Kian seems to be out of danger, so we go back downstairs to finish our shopping. I run into the pharmacist. He asks if my son is okay. I say he is, but then I yell at him, “couldn’t you have helped me, just as a human being?” He replies that he didn’t have the supplies necessary, that he only works in the pharmacy and does not know where I would go to get help. I lay into him and tell him that he still could have answered me with kindness instead of brushing me off. He could have been a little more human. Now he is on the defensive and leaves before I can unleash any more of my residue anger and frustration.
What if all the suing, the demand for compensation, the need for retribution, was really just a need for compassion? What if at the root of all of this is the need to be seen and heard?
And, if in the US we have replaced true compassion with the American dollar, what does that say about us as a society? We wonder about this new generation growing up, feeling they are owed something. Gee, I wonder where they got that? I am shocked by their attitudes, yet when I look within, there lies the seed. So maybe what I owe myself and my children, is to engage. In life, with others. To have the courage to see them and feel them. Because it is a scary thing. We don’t know what to do with all that emotion. We don’t know how deep runs the well, once it’s been tapped.
I finish my shopping, then go back a third time to the pharmacy. The man I spoke to is not there, but I explain to the other pharmacist, the owner this time, the situation. I realize that when the other pharmacist had approached the second time, he was trying to show compassion, and I cut him off with my rage.
Now it was my turn to apologize.
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