Doing things and making things makes me feel alive. So to practice feeling alive, I need to be in motion, or at least making something for the sake of creation.
Practice also means we do things repeatedly. And these are the things we get good at, with multi-dimensional understanding. Maybe we even gain mastery. Like Zen practitioner Paul Reps said,
making a cup of tea, I stopped the war.
So, I practice writing, and I practice parenting, sleeping, putting things away, walking in the woods, and relating with other people. I practice Buddhism sometimes, by trying to be like Buddha and ‘full of emptiness’ which as a concept will stop your brain dead in its tracks. (So that works). I practice the precepts too, but find “right speech” a glorious sticking point.
Sometimes I practice the ever-touted being too, which is hardest, because I’m at my best in motion and my brain equates being with non-motion. So becoming is a better word in my book. Plus it includes an idea of the future, which I love, and feel I must work on.
Becoming feels like being in motion. The word also holds the continuity of before>>now>>later all in one. So becoming feels dynamic. Like a train on a track, or perhaps even, the track itself.
Who are you becoming? What track are you?
And what kinds of practices bring out the best in you?
I also practice middle-aged menopausal womanhood too, because I must. When I pay attention, I find the process exceptionally interesting though it’s rarely talked about in terms of becoming. If you think about it, when buckets of one’s body chemistry turn over quickly, while your role in society shifts all at once – well, that change is quite a “thing.”
Menopause seems to me, the equivalent of transitioning your car from gas to electric without a mechanic, a lit garage, or a plan, and somehow keeping it running the whole time.
Women my age can handle transition on the fast track. Dynamic, practiced, and becoming the future fast. I’m thinking my demographic is one of the more powerful, least understood, and most rapidly manifesting groups around. So I’m hoping we are practicing hope, kindness, sanity, civility, and when needed, rebellion too.
