Oh, how things can change in a year. Not least the circumstances which surround, but the frame of view appreciated from inside.

It is tempting to believe that a radical change in circumstance will fundamentally alter the experience of reality. Turns out not to be the least bit effective. I still look at the world, surroundings notwithstanding, out of the same pair of eyes, bringing the same perspective to a new location. I am undoubtedly expanded by new stimulus, but still bring the collected wisdom and accumulated damage of my life along with me; I just demand that it cover more ground.

I am not a super-strong swimmer, and this event is in open water. It’ll be cold, and there will be a couple hundred other people in the water at the same time. I’m pretty anxious about the shock of the temperature as well as the likelihood of getting smacked in the head by a stray elbow.

And though swimming in the pool isn’t really going to mimic the experience very well, I have little choice when any waterways out-of-doors are running water temperatures that would induce hypothermia faster than you can say it.

I got in the pool last week for the first time this season. I was pretty worried I’d be rusty; uncomfortable and out of breath, but I decided to swim slower than usual and see if that helped at all. Trying to pace myself is something I struggle with. The default seems to be full steam ahead until all steam exhausted. Turns out, this can be a less than efficient way to get where you want to go. A more measured approach, though foreign to me, seems much more likely to help me achieve the results I’m after, which in this case are all about finishing, not about finishing fast.

I must also admit to running into another problem. Once I get into the groove set my breathing rhythm and stroke length, I find swimming kinda boring Laps are repetitive. On a treadmill when I’m running, I can listen to a podcast or music, but until someone invents waterproof headphones, I’m on my own, entertainment wise.

All that being said, my first swim was much easier than I anticipated. I wasn’t out of breath or uncomfortable. I forced myself to swim more slowly than is my tendency, and it seems to extend the number of laps I could complete comfortably. Considering I’ll have to jump out of the water and hit my bike, not wearing myself out entirely in the first event seems like a pretty key thing to focus on.

Slow and steady may not win the race, but I do hope it will help me complete it. Even if I am more of a barracuda than a tortoise.

Everything Hits At Once

And are they ever right about that.

In this case, and for a change, a considerable portion of events have been good. Really good. One might even say good without precedent. Others have been breathtaking and heartbreaking, and so it all falls together in the way that it will.

My mother, who I love very much indeed, has just lost her longtime lover and companion. He was as ornery a cuss as ever lived. He loved to argue, and most of all, to get a rise out of people. When I first met him, I knew already about his penchant for starting verbal tussles. I resisted his every salvo, ignored his every prodding, until at last he looked me square in the eye and called me Cupcake.

There. Was. Rage.

Ultimately, I decided this wasn’t the worst thing to have someone call you, and I learned to accept his pet name with better grace. He still teasingly called me that, the last time we spoke. He and I were never close, but I know he cared very much for my mother, and even more than that he took care of her, which is something that virtually no one else in all of her life has done. She has always been the breadwinner, the bacon bringer. John loved my mother, at her prickly, vain, harsh, and passionate worst, and in all the days they were together, she felt loved; well and truly, for the first and only time in all her life. I am very sorry indeed that she has lost him.

Other people, close and dear to me, are going through transitions of similar import. They are profound in their mystery, wondrous in the ambient power they exert. Those are not my tales to tell. But they work on me, in their way.

And then my own tumbling; this weekend quite literally. Still waiting to hear if my tailbone is just bruised, or if I managed to crack it. This all entwined with discovery and concordance, bliss and laughing-to-the-point-of-pain.

Amidst it all, I try to keep my eyes open to these wonders; my senses alive to the magic of this moment in time, which is even now, racing away.

the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality.

I have always subscribed to the notion that there is a universal gravity that works, not only on our physical bodies, but on ideas and events as well. We are called to the lessons we need through circumstance and the longing of our hearts. There is a magnetism that draws us together, and pushes us forward to the truths we most ought to learn, to know.

This force works on all things, but not in equal measure. Some people are stalwart and determined to stay astride the rails they have laid before themselves into the future. Others are more able to submit to the buffeting energy around them; to accept the call and heed the pull they cannot quantify, but can neither resist. Those who submit are sometimes dashed against the rocks; battered against the obstacles that they encounter. But they are also, at times, lifted from the mundane course of things, and exposed to a view of the human condition, and of their own truth, that is singular in its consciousness altering impact.

Time and again, when this state arises, a seemingly inextricable element of the condition emerges; an uncanny trend of correlation, parallelism, and concomitance becomes impossible to deny. That is to say, in the course of events there is a palpable and appreciable synchronicity.

Synchronicity is the notion of meaningful coincidence occurring in the individual mind, the collective unconscious, and with the energy generated thereby, enacted in corporeal reality.

Our friends at Wikipedia say: “Synchronistic events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework that encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems that display the synchronicity.”

This overarching framework can be much more difficult to interpret than the individually meaningful examples thereof; the sudden appearance of a heretofore unknown phenomenon in the lives of several close friends, the concurrence of a newly adopted slang phrase arriving from multiple sources at once.

Or, something like this:

A Life Of Its Own

I have owned my car for months, and cleaned it out any number of times. When I was doing so last week, I started thinking about the nature of magnetism, how and why we are drawn to the things that change us. While I was wandering in these thoughts I noticed, wedged into the seat, a flash of something shiny. I reached down and found two large beads made of magnetite. They stuck to each other, and anything else magnetic. I thought this was both odd and wonderful, to have come across these just at a moment when I was reflecting on the nature of unseen attraction.

My good friend Lyza and I have had an ongoing philosophical conversation about this topic for some years now; we present each other with our empirical data, and reflect on what we think this means in the larger scheme. I decided I would give her one of the magnets as a way of including her, in a tangible way, in this moment. She took the magnet along with her on a business trip just a few days later. She has recently overcome and lifelong fear, bordering on paralysis, of flying. As she sat in the airport lounge waiting for her flight, she took her new bauble out to play with it. She set it on the granite tabletop where it began to swing and turn, seemingly with a life of its own. She found the experience uncanny enough to take a video, and send it my way. Only a short time later, an announcement came from the National Weather Service that the town she was flying into was under a severe tornado warning. The winds would twist and roll, pull and turn, much in the same way the magnet did.

These things, they come together in this way. And it is coincidence; in this wide universe, that is inevitable. But that these things also have meaning, and impact, is undeniable. The forces that draw these occurrences toward us, also work to let them affect us. To, by their very fact, change what we would think, and see, and feel, and know.

[tem-per-uhns, tem-pruhns]

–noun

2. habitual moderation in the indulgence of a natural appetite or passion,

Also,

to temper:

via xkcd

To Argue is Impolite

To Agree is Insufferable

To Accept with Thanks is Ideal.

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

This, is tough. I dither, I worry, I fret, I mull. I chase myself around in my head with supposition and memory. Relentless questions about future and past…

Why did I do that thing,? What will I do next time I am in the same situation? What if I am never in that situation again? What does that person really think of me? Am I doing enough?

When I was in college I took a compulsory Theology class as a part of my coursework at the University of Portland. That series remains one of the most personally satisfying and enriching parts of my post-secondary education. It was fascinating and informative, but more, it was both pleasurable and practical. As part of the curriculum for the class, the Sister teaching the course had included Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh and this very simple text, using spare language and gentle revelation has helped me be a happier and more contented person ever since it first came into my hand. It remains one of the only textbooks I still own that I refer to on a regular basis.

Hanh speaks at length about breathing and smiling. These two incredibly simple things often get overlooked in the daily bustle of life, but they are, indeed, the very fundament of well-being. At one point in the text he exhorts one to smile even if you do not feel like smiling, and soon you will. The very decision to smile, and putting your face into the act, actually creates the concomitant emotional response. I was incredibly skeptical about this, but I tried it; it never ceases to surprise me, though it works every time.

The message of the book is simple to understand, but can be difficult to realize. That every moment is a wonderful moment if you are present and awake to the pleasures it has to offer; the sensation of feeling your breath, wearing your smile, the warmth of dishwater on your hands, the weight of your child’s head on your shoulder. These are all available in the quiet moments between the bustle and movement we so often consider our “real” life, but they are what make up the bulk of the joy we have access to at any given time, and are as easy to come by as deciding to do so.

And since now is all anyone ever has, it is comforting and joyous to know that now can always be a moment to notice the wonder all around us, and smile for it.