My general attitude today is I don’t want to.
Don’t want to what?
Anything.
From the moment the alarm went off at 5 o’clock this morning, I’ve been mentally saying no. I reluctantly threw my legs over the edge of the bed, grimaced and stood. I made my way into the dark living room, turning on the small kitchen lamp as I passed by and sat down on my meditation cushion as I frequently do in the quiet early morning hours. My mind bargained with me to go back to bed, I didn’t want to meditate. After a few minutes of negotiation and bribing myself with promises of a future nap, I opted to stay and do the work that I’d come to do. Thirty minutes later when the bell chimed and my meditation time was over, I got up and made coffee. I didn’t really want to.
It happens to be Monday but this is not a case of the Mondays; I don’t get those. I actually like Monday just as well as any other day. No, this is just one of those days where I don’t want to do life, for no particular reason at all. You can’t always be inspired, motivated and full of energy, which to my good fortune, I usually am. What goes up must come down and when it does, it may just want to eat ice cream and take a nap.
Even the things that normally call to me like mandala making, painting, pinteresting … have no allure today.
I started some laundry and got in the shower, loaded the dishwasher and sat down to sort out my email, all with minimal enthusiasm.
It’s not really a problem, this I don’t want to thing. It used to be.
In my younger years, I’d have a day like today and it would send me into an overdramatized fit of self-analysis. What’s wrong with me? Where is my life going? What am I doing here? Even now as I write that I laugh. Such a naïve expectation that I had of myself, and of life, to always be wonderful (whatever that meant) and a limited capacity to open to my own experiences. Now I know (the deep-in-my-bones kind of know) that it’s just not possible to always be something. How could it be – and would we even want it that way?
No. It’s not a problem to feel like this. I know, like everything else, it’s temporary. And, if I allow myself to really indulge in the experience, embrace it, even wallow in it a bit, it feels good and I’m content.
Days like today stand in contrast to my norm and serve as a great reminder that the quality of my life has very little to do with what I’m experiencing and so much more to do with how willing I am to fully experience it.
And it helps to know that tomorrow I’ll likely wake up and want to again.
