Awareness and Presence

From the time we are born our clocks starts ticking away..... the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years of our lives. If we are lucky enough to live into "old age" we begin to realize how quickly our time is getting shorter. We have had lots of time to ponder this truth over the last few weeks .... and appreciate our lives up to this day. It is sad that it takes getting older or a drama like a life threatening experience like cancer, heart attack or even the death of someone close to us for us to really get to the wake up call. It is a wake up call on many levels. The one we have been contemplating for the last few days has to do with choices. So many of the choices we make throughout our lives have to do with the path of least resistance, whether it has to do with pleasing others or a choice that seems less scary than some of the choices that are open to us. 

We have been fairly fearless about our choices throughout our lives. Many would tell you that we often "took the road less traveled". We have been blessed by making that choice. We are in the fourth quarter of our lives and we are wanting to be more conscious and contemplative about the choices we are making today about how to spend the rest of the time we have on earth. Are we making our day to day choices to please others? Are we making them to please each other? Are we making them because we are afraid and if so what are we afraid of? Our fears are about what might happen in the future. Are we missing out on blessings that might be available if we simply jump and trust that the net will appear? Each day is a precious thing.... we fear that we are not always conscious of just how precious the moments of each day are. Are we making choices that bring us joy or making choices that bring others joy?  We want to ask the question "why are we making this choice?" and find an answer in our hearts. At the end of each day our goal is to be able to say "we lived today well". None of us knows how many days we have so each one is precious. 


Your whole life is a continuum of choices, so the more conscious you are, the greater your life will be.” – 
Deepak Chopra

Charlotte - I came across something I wrote on January 25, 2003 and it seems to speak to us and our situation today.....

The thread, the current, tugs at me and beckons me to let go. I am reminded to always remember that it is NOT about the destination but rather the journey..... I keep expecting to be led somewhere but maybe we are just led to way stations, the next sign post, or bent leaf or crumbs left for us to follow and sometimes perhaps we need to just trust a feeling.

Snowy days provide much time for contemplation. I want to talk about aging: As they say, "Getting old is not for the faint of heart." On the surface, there doesn't seem to be an upside to aging. We lose hair from where it's supposed to be and grow hair where it ain't! Our physical attributes such as strength and endurance begins to wane. If we haven't adequately prepared, we live on a fixed income, etc., etc. 

But hold on a moment - I want to talk about the upside of aging: I'll speak for myself: I no longer feel the need to compete; I'm working on the ability to be non-judgemental, ie. less critical of others, after all, aren't we all fellow travelers? I appreciate the little moments more often, relishing the simple pleasures - a child's laughter, a sunset, a rich conversation over a glass of Pinot Noir.

I've learned not to fear getting old, after all, what choice do we have in the matter and it's preferable to the alternative. As an old gold miner, I am determined to "mine" each golden moment as often as I can, always seeking that precious gem or that golden nugget. My only concern at my age is running out of time - so much more to do and experience, so little time. Breathe in, breathe out, life is good.

Memories

Jan. 21, 2020  L. Bacon

I own one of the largest collections of "DVDs" in the world, my memories. We are currently house/pet sitting at a lovely home, six miles east of the little town of Rogue River, OR. It has wood heat which requires re-setting the fire each morning. We also have an old fashioned coffee pot. This morning after getting my fire going and tuning on the coffee, I sat down and smelled the coffee, literally! Add in the fragrance of a new fire in the stove and I was transported back to 1944. My mother had passed away and my father was away in the war so my sister, Mary, and I were living with my Grandparents in Crawford, Nebraska. They  had two large Regulator wall clocks, one in their bedroom and the other one just outside my bedroom. They chimed on the quarter, half and full hour so that everyone knew what time it was. They were not synchronized so they often competed with each other!! My Grandmother arose each morning to light a fire in her enormous kitchen range and to put the coffee on and start breakfast with sausage or bacon. I awoke to those sounds and smells each morning and felt comforted. As I returned to the present, I was astounded at the intensity of the memory, sights, sounds, smells and all.

Pondering the Process

We have been blogging for many years and have decided that we need a new space for sharing in our "4th quarter" of life. Going back through our journal entries to see what we have gleaned from the process. In 2017 we were preparing to move into a 24 ft. travel trailer, where we would travel and live full time.

December 18, 2017 - C. Bacon

As we get rid of all of our furniture, many family "heirlooms" and just about everything one needs to live in a house, we are looking for the deeper feelings of this process - something that resides below the stress and exhaustion. Up until now that is about all we have felt but we know there must be something going on at a deeper level. We have read about folks feeling freer and lighter but that has not happened for us yet. I think we are staying too busy to feel the deeper feelings - the emotions of what is going on here. We are going to miss the greater blessings of this process if we don't find a way to be present with what we are doing. This whole process is a big deal - a huge transition and we are missing it because we are focusing on getting from here to there - way down the road somewhere. What about today? What about now? But that has been a ongoing challenge - being present because as my sister, Sherry, used to say "Today is the gift" -living in the now so we don't miss it before it's gone. We only get this one shot at today. 

Sometimes we have emotion around a particular item. Yesterday a bedroom wardrobe that we have owned for over 25 years left. I spent hours painting that wardrobe when we were going through a difficult time. There was a lot of anger and emotion in that paint job LOL. It felt like there should have been a little ceremony or something, but we are too busy to take notice of things like that. I did break down when my beautiful hydrangeas left but at least I can go visit them. And I am having difficulty parting with a pair of moccasins that Larry bought for me about 30 years ago with holes starting to show on the underside. Oh, did I mention that he just bought me a similar pair. I am more attached to those shoes than many things we are parting with LOL. I think it is because they have been part of my life for so long. 

We have downsized before and are currently living in about 900 square feet, which is pretty small by comparison, but after the first of the year we will move into 190 square feet. It is difficult sorting and deciding what to keep and what not to keep. We have pretty much passed off anything that anyone else wants. Being in our 60's and 70's certainly has a bearing on this process. We are getting rid of more than we would if we were in our 50's. Sometimes it sort of feels like we have already passed away and someone else is going through our "stuff". Actually, thinking about that does help our decision making sometimes. It has been a very interesting and educational process. Since we need the money for this transition we are finding ways to sell most everything we own and we have been blessed because so many items have already left for their new homes. I have tossed out items that we have been hauling around for years and years - items that no one else wants. Now that I think about that, it feels pretty good. I have about 3 more small boxes to go through. One big project was all of the recipes and cookbooks but I am realizing that I will never live long enough to cook all of those recipes. It took me two times of going through them but I finally whittled them down to just a few. I have one more pile to go through. I want the meal preparation part of our lives to be simpler and healthier, too. Well, as much as I would like to continue this conversation. We have to meet someone back at the house around 10:15 who will pick up a huge load of driftwood. As some of you know we had huge amounts of dried driftwood for our Etsy business. We went through it all and discarded all of the big pieces. We simply cannot keep them all - no place to store them. We packed them into boxes and hope that someone will come take them to a new home or they will soon become firewood.

Larry will give notice when he pays our rent today. I look around and think "can we get moved, have a couple of sales and have the house and yard all cleaned up in a month?" OMG, I hope so, but when I look around I must say I have my doubts..... that is where some of the stress is coming from. All we can do is keep chipping away at our projects but wanting to also take time to feel the deeper emotions of this process. I talked to someone a couple of days ago who said they had so much stuff in their motor home they felt buried sometimes and we don't want to do that! We want to take our longing for minimalism into our new home with us. We want to live a simpler life on so many levels with more time for just being, reading, fishing, bike rides, canoeing..... I have this image in my mind of sitting in front of the trailer at Klamath Wilderness Area on a warm afternoon, looking off at the distant hills, smelling newly mowed hay, listening to geese in the distance and maybe a frog our two, an occasional plane flying over and just sitting there taking it all in.

Follow Your Bliss

If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.

When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else. People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life.

I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

— Joseph Campbell