What constantly challenges my expectations, in a good way?

The sense of flow in my life. By that I mean the natural progression of each moment to the next unfolding in a way that is fine and works out. Deep inside I seem to have a default position that the opposite is the case, that disaster is imminent, and heroic efforts are going to be required to survive. As a general rule I dislike ‘surprises’, and yet, in fact, all of my life’s surprises have been amazing. So short answer: Surprises challenge my expectations.

I am operating with so many filters. There is no doubt of my being overwhelmed and exhausted if I were to steep in the bath of noise that surrounds me. As a matter of protecting myself, I am avoiding Facebook (have for months now) and listen to very little news. Does this help me listen more fully? I suspect not in some ways as I must be missing something. And yet, it is the only way I can focus and bead in on a select genre of sounds and energies. As I experience listening as a multi sensory event. And which genres am I listening for/to? The ones I use to navigate at sea. Like walking through the woods on a moonless night along a path you know well without a flashlight.

Touch provides connection. It is the frontier between my conscious self and the real world. For instance, rowing on my rowing machine every day ‘simulates’ the experience of rowing. It triggers sensory memories of what it is like on a boat in the middle of a body of water. But it really is nothing compared to the way the resistance of the water on the blade of the oar and the combination of the momentum, the sense of balance and movement, the dynamics working through your hands and whole body as you pull the boat forward and feel the wind on the back of your neck and the gentle rocking of the boat under you as you slice the surface. You are not just ‘in’ the water, you are connected, to the water, the oar, the boat, your crew members (hopefully!) rowing synchronistically with you. You are all suddenly One.

There are several ways community enriches my life. First it delineates and characterizes my individualism. I become more me when I am a part of a group. The contrasts and likenesses makes the detail more obvious. Community helps define me and my values. It is where I interact with culture. It is the medium in which I am planted, and so it naturally colors my psyche and personae. It provides support and the guard rails I can use or rub up against. It provides, perhaps most importantly, fellowship. It is a place I belong

This is a difficult question for me in the sense that I experience it as a need to be open always. On the occasion that I have a sense of having closed my heart to anyone, I immediately shift into the reconciliation mode. Now the second part of the question is trickier. I have a few touchy scars from rejections in my past that have never really been resolved. Where I have been rejected, and while I would love to have closure on a few of them, I will not initiate the communication. We have all ‘moved on’ so to speak. It saddens me in the sense that I dislike it when someone may be walking around with a negative thought about me, and yet it is none of my business. Let me be clear that I do not owe them amends or money or something. So they are in my heart, just not all tied up with a bow and sorted.

The difficulty I face when confronted by someone radically different from me, as in ethically and morally at odds, who therefore seem to be working against everything essentially important, is in my face every day. I have to overcome my deep sense of isolation and exclusion, my being ‘other’ than them. This is a stretch, to welcome forces that threaten me in a real sense. Is that really the best action to take? It feels so much not. And so I must suspend belief and thread that needle. Energetically I feel better than when I struggle and reject them. And so deeply sad.

There seems to be a challenge in my Uber work that revolves around the process of recognizing the financial needs and my needs for some kind of life outside of the car. Like a daily puzzle. I am a person that craves routine, and this is somehow not exactly fitting my model, and so acceptance of what is, combined with the sense of adventure in not knowing where I will end up (quite literally) once I start work. Over all of this is a definite sense that this is what I am meant to be doing in the moment. It’s a dance more than a wrestling match.

This is a good idea for me as these days I tend to consider myself essentially invisible in the moment to moment sense. I am not as aware as I might be of how I touch the world as I move through my day, and so it is a welcome reminder. Not that I think of myself as lacking in value or better put ‘potential’, as much as a laziness in not treating consciousness as necessarily participatory in and of itself. My thoughts and attitudes ripple out like sound waves doing their part quickening harmony or dissonance as they go, so it is more strategic if I do that creatively.