Early mornings you can often see me prowling around the house bare foot in my nightgown, camera in hand. I love the light in the sky just before and after sunrise and often photograph it through the windows.
Just Before Sunrise
there were pink clouds in the sky this morning.
As soon as it was light enough to see, the birds were flocking to the bird feeders. Yesterday I saw no birds at the feeders. I’m not sure if a few braved the cold then. But this morning when it was still at least 10 below zero, the birds were busy at the feeders.
I haven’t been outside for a walk for about a week now. Between some pain issues and cold cold weather I haven’t ventured out. I miss my time outside in nature. But I know that when it warms a bit and my sore heel feels a bit better I will be back out for my walks which bring me such joy.
Virtuous and Not So Virtuous Habits
This morning I began reflecting on some recent changes I’ve made and how sometimes my habits are not joy bringers. For the past year I have played a lot of solitaire and other mindless games on my old Kindle Fire table that I no longer use for reading.
Whenever I sit down to watch the news on television or a show on public TV I pick up the Kindle Fire and begin playing games while listening to the television. Sometimes when I am reading a book and the plot of a book gets intense or boring, I put down the book and start playing games.
“TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to” 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and “always in control”
― Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.
The irony of it is, that I don’t think I’m getting real enjoyment out of playing the games on my old Kindle. Because I’m not paying full attention to what I’m watching on TV I miss a lot that is being said. And the repetitive movements of swiping and dragging cards and objects are causing increasing pain issues in my wrists and shoulders.
Still I kept playing the games for a period of time every day. You could call it a kind of addiction. Maybe my brain craved the dopamine hits I got from playing the games. Or maybe I was avoiding feeling all of my feelings about current news in our world. Who knows?
A Way to Numb Out
The exact reasons for the habit don’t really matter. It was simply another way for me to be less than fully present and feeling my feelings. It feels a little like time spent on social media, not fully satisfying or joy bringing, but hard to stop doing. I decided to stop playing the games on my Kindle. But stopping was not as easy as I imagined it would be.
A few days ago when I realized that I was having very little success breaking my game playing habit I asked Jon to put my old Kindle Fire tablet away somewhere out of sight. Without asking any questions or making any snarky comments, Jon took the device and put it away somewhere.
Sometimes we need to ask for help.
In just a couple of days not playing the games my wrists are no longer painful. And I”m no longer waking up with tingling or numb hands in the morning.
I might feel a little habitual reflex of missing playing the games but really I don’t miss them at all. I’ve decided that if I want to play solitaire I will use a real deck of cards and it will be all that I’m doing instead of dividing my attention between game and listening to TV.
“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
― The Gifts of Imperfection
Small Things
It was a little seemingly harmless habit. Our modern lives are filled with similar habits. But I don’t think this kind of habit is harmless. Besides the physical pain it was causing, I was using it to numb out. There may be times when we all need to take a break from reality. But I don’t want to sleep-walk through my life or deny what is real. I want to be as awake, alive, and present as I can be. If I numb out the uncomfortable feelings, I also numb out the joy, wonder, and gratitude.
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
― The Gifts of Imperfection
How about you my friends? Are these cold months combined with pandemic fatigue, climate change grief, and life in general causing you too, to want to numb out a bit? What do you need to help you through these challenging times? Can you reach out and ask for help?
May you walk in beauty.
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