The Thing About Meditation...

As you may have guessed from my first post, I don't like doing my research before writing an article. But, I do like to write from experience. So, here goes for my thoughts about meditation...

The thing about meditation is that there is a myth that, to be able to successfully meditate, you have to completely clear your mind. What I have learned in the past year of taking classes, using apps, and even watching guided meditations on TV, is that there is no successful way to meditate. I have always believed that I would never reach self actualization until I introduced mediation into my life. I have now begun this quest, but feel more lost and unsuccessful at it than if I had never started! Let me tell you the key takeaways I learned about what mediation really is and how to move forward in your journey, if this is the path you wish to take. For me, it has always felt like a lifelong journey, even though I only started to try it seriously last January.

First off, you need to find your groove spot. I had imagined setting myself up with a spiritual room, Zen Buddha Temple and all, but, it turned out that all I could afford was a meditation mat. The fountain with calming chimes would have to come later...However, when you start your first guided meditation, you might be told to find a comfortable chair to sit in. This changed my whole perspective of trying to create a relaxing atmosphere to find peace. This was further reinforced when I took a class last year and we sat at a board room table to meditate on what one could technically call a mediation circle. Not sure why the environment was not made to feel more Zen. But, they did assure us that there was a rock in every corner of the room to protect us. Ok...what?

So, here is the meat of this article. It is not a "how to" story because there are a gazillion of those out on the internets. But, what I am about to tell you will make you seriously reconsider whether or not this voodoo technique is something that you want to divulge in. Haha, I joke. Or, do I?

Some meditation practitioners will tell you that when you open up your mind to the universe, you are also opening up your spiritual soul to the negative energy of the world. There are ways to protect yourself. Hence, the rocks in each corner of the room. That would be 4 rocks, for anyone who is concerned about their practice and has not been using rocks thus far. You can also throw salt. No, not over the left shoulder but I think just to keep it around to deionize bad spirits. Or, you can remember, after a meditation or spiritual experience, to shake off any negative energy. Are we talking demons?

Aside from you making yourself vulnerable to the world, you may also develop psychic abilities, once you become more routine in your practice. After speaking with my mom about mediation, she told me that she had predicted one of my ailments. She is quite sure that the mediation she has been doing for the past few years has given her ESP.

In my opinion, and limited practice, I believe these things: meditation makes you a better person, meditation can help you heal yourself, and meditation can help you to become more perceptive about your health, family, friends, and overall life. When you dedicate time to work on yourself, you become a more patient, compassionate, and caring person. You can empathize with a person who is often frantic, frazzled, or even acting bipolar! Not to say that you will suddenly be able to diagnose mental illnesses or even understand what someone who can't bring themselves to meditate, are even going through. But, what I am saying is that you will have a more open mind to be able to change your perspective and see someone in their own world instead of simply imagining your own.

Again, these are the things that I believe. How else are we going to make the world a better place and come together to live as one? My last thoughts on mediation are that it is all about the breathing. The thoughts come and go, but it is my understanding that the thoughts will eventually cease and peace will enter your mind. I plan to return to the idea of setting up a tranquil environment. If you have kids, get a white noise maker or a really loud fountain. I will be setting up my hammock and fountain in the backyard this summer to just float, while looking at the clouds. Ideally, a mojito and a sun shade will be sitting next to me. A girl can dream, right?

I wish you peace, success, and happiness. Whatever form or practice that might take, just enjoy the journey, for that is why we are here...

It's My Birthday!

So, the big day rolls around. Plans were made, a cake was ordered, and it was going to be another COVID birthday...so, how do we celebrate our births in a world where going outside is pretty much unlawful? Well, we can watch our favorite movie. We can spend time, indoors, with our family and do those wholesome things that we never take time for anymore, like playing a boardgame!

But, this was MY birthday, and shouldn't I be allowed to set the agenda? My whole life, I have watched people celebrate birthdays. From parents, to siblings, to friends, to extended family, and after witnessing many of these birthdays, I have come to recognize one common theme. You must socialize!

What if you woke up on the day of your birthday and felt no particular need to communicate with the outside world? It should be your right, on this holiest of days, to be able to do that. Now, it would be a very sad birthday if this happened to you by no choice of your own. I mean, if people literally forgot your birthday! But, if you chose not to check your phone messages, the mail, or social media, you might actually be able to get through the entire day without 1 person wishing you a Happy Birthday.

So, the thought of the day is: What is the point of a birthday, really? We go to great lengths to make a day special for someone. We take them out for dinner (if you are not in lockdown) and look for great gifts to make them happy (hopefully, bought online), and we blow out candles and eat cake. Masks have been removed for this portion of the party.

All to celebrate you being brought into this world. Sure, it has a great essence. Without you being in this world, you wouldn't have great friends, a family who loves you, and even progeny who may or may not acknowledge your special day. But, if the day goes by without celebration, we would survive, right?

Let me give you an example of the biggest birthday party I can remember. When my brother turned 1, a hall was rented and a hundred people were there, eating, laughing, socializing. There were presents. There were kids. But, here was my brother, sitting in his high chair, completely oblivious to the fact that that all these people were there to celebrate him. Now, I had a similar party for my son when he turned 1 and the details of both parties might be getting blurred, but you get the idea. We make a big deal about a child turning one. We dress up in fancy clothes. We blow up balloons. We shove cake in our faces. To what end?

As we got older, the desire for presents never ended. We invited classmates and childhood friends and we would play for a few hours. If you had a party at your house, you might remember that feeling when the cool kids came over and played with your toys. For some kids, the party was just about the presents. Some of the smarter/spoiled kids figured out that the more kids you invited, the more presents you got! For me, I was just excited to have someone other than my best friend over to my house.

I know that on the days of my birthday party, the excitement was overwhelming for me. I was walking on a cloud the whole time, wondering if it was a dream that all these kids came to MY house to play on MY birthday. I remember feeling in a daze, like it was all a dream, a fantasy - made real. For one day out of the year, I was the popular kid!

So maybe, birthdays are still a big deal for me, even now at 43. Not because I want to invite friends over to my house during COVID, but that, I want to feel as special as those kids used to make me feel when I was 10. Don't get me wrong. I have had many good birthdays as an adult. However, what I am trying to get at is that you only get 1 day a year, right? Your ME day! Why not find out what is going to make that day truly special for you and then make it happen - COVID or not.

This year, I had to share my birthday with Jesus. Easter has not fallen on my birthday in half a decade but it was always a race with me and Jesus. This year, we finally tied again. My son, correlating Easter with presents, was primarily concerned with when he would get to open HIS presents. Meanwhile, I was balancing a good Easter with my son and a special day for myself. Considering that I was blessed with a beautiful sunny day on my birthday, I came up with a compromise - church and then the beach. Neither plan went off successfully. I am still kicking myself thinking, another birthday gone by that I could not make special for myself. Another year lost and forgotten. Am I destined to only remember those childhood birthdays fondly? Someone once told me that birthdays are just for kids, not adults. I refuse to believe that. If a birthday is not a celebration of you being born on that day, then I will have to put in on my shelf of sham holidays. So far, I only have Victoria Day and Civic Holidays sitting there, so please don't make me throw birthdays in with those two!

Without going into details of how many birthdays gone bad I have had, I just wanted to express the importance of making your day special for you. No one else is going to do that for you. As a big promoter of birthdays, I do try to make birthdays special for those around me. However, COVID has made it hard to celebrate with the ones I love. So, I will say it again: Find out what will make your day special, and then go and do it (within reason). You may have to abandon your family for a couple hours, if they are neighsayers, like mine. You may have to go outside your comfort zone. You may have to break free of the mould you have been living in for the last 364 days, but it is your day. Go do it!

A Penny for Your Thoughts

Have you ever been caught using an expression the wrong way? Idioms have been used the most in the English language as building blocks to civilization, moulding our culture, and confusing the heck out of those wishing to learn English! Native speakers use idioms to describe scenarios in today's society. However, most people don't even realize that they are using an idiom. For example, did you know that "try your best" is an expression that came from "do one's level best" which was used in the 1800s, according to Idioms.com?

There are 25,000 idiomatic expressions in the English language. People from foreign lands who want to learn English must hear these idioms on television and in our every day speech and think, "What is that suppose to mean?" Was it an insult or a compliment? Does changing one word change the entire meaning? It is not a bad thing to have cultural history, but what if the English language were to transform itself into something more sophisticated where we said what we meant and there were less misunderstandings?

Let's start with a few of the obvious ones and then jump into how any English-speaking person might interpret these expressions.

"It's a piece of cake" generally means that something is easy. However, for someone who has never heard this expression, they might be inclined to think that what they are looking at is a literal piece of cake! Too obvious? How about another?

"It's raining cats and dogs!" Perhaps there is a foreign language equivalent to this, but why do we not say, "It's raining frogs and pigs"? Fish and mice? How is it that family pets can start falling from the sky, but no one questions it? At least, use some water-related species. It's raining sharks and octopuses, tuna and cod, or seaweed and sardines! It must have been when "someone let the cat out of the bag" that it started raining so hard...

Okay, to get back on track. How about when someone is feeling "under the weather"? Has anyone ever been above the weather? All of these idioms have their own personal historical meanings. Yet, their relevance is lost on today's youth. So, why do we continue to figuratively say what we mean?

Here are some other ways thay the English language can be so confusing! "One in the hand is worth two in the bush", "beating around the bush", "two birds with one stone", "bite the bullet", "dodge a bullet", "magic bullet", "sweat bullet", "silver bullet", and "get the bullet" all have very different meanings! What hope does someone wanting to learn our language have to keep these idioms straight?

Then, there are the expressions that can be interchanged, such as "sweating buckets" or  "sweating bullets"; stop on a dime" or "stop dead". While "hold your tongue" and "cat got your tongue" are complete opposites! If you are trying to immerse yourself in the native language, you may be finding that there are many ways to say the same thing, yet none of these idiomatic methods actually infer any literal meaning in today's culture.

It turns out that the only literal way to say "try your best" would be to use words like aim, tackle, endeavour, seek, contend, essay, and the list goes on...However, none of these words can convey the true expression of "try your best". So, if you wanted to eliminate idioms from your life, the next time your kid has that big test or tryouts at school, you could simply say, "I hope you tackle that challenge ahead of you today." Rather than the usual encouraging slogan where we tell them to "do their level best".

We all know that technology allows us to search any idiom in any language to eliminate any confusion. Unfortunately, we cannot erase a history of words that were said to make sense at the time. Now, we hear the same expressions passed down from generation to generation, without adding value to our language or making it any easier to learn. Eventually, we could see the elimination of idioms in the English language. We are already being told to avoid them in professional situations. But, the question we must ask ourselves is this: Is the English language strong enough to survive without the use of idioms in our every day life, without losing the meaning with which we wish to express ourselves?

Other things to ponder...

Is it called a sweater because we sweat in it?

Slippers because we slip around in them?

Hoodies, because, if you wear one, you are from the 'hood?

Bar-B-Que because we have to line up to cook food?

Pineapples because they look like pinecones?

Are we naughty because we know NOT to behave that way?

Is a grape to a raisin as a plum is to a prune?

Is it Godzilla because he is a God or or was he created by God?

Why does a loonie have a loon on it but a toonie doesn't have a toon on it?

What's in a name, for a rose by any other name would still be a flower...?!

If you kick a football with your foot, do you kick a soccer ball with your sock?

Do you have to cook a cookie? What about edible cookie dough?

We're tomatoes invented by a man named Tom?

Do popsicles ever pop out of their mould?

What is the difference between jelly and jam? 

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, unless the goose is obese...

Does a loaf just sit around all day?

Is it true about assumptions? That when you assume something, you...?

Close but not as close as a cigar!

The money shot is different than being big money.

Sugar and spice and something nice so salty and bland gives you something bad.

That steak was a MIStake!

According to Marshall Mathers, we stand at a window watching the people we love walk away. That's why they call it window pain.

A semi-detached house shares a wall but a house is just called a single dwelling. Why not just an attached and a detached home?

Why do eagles line to soar but birds just fly?

A picture is worth a thousand words; one in a million; a needle in a haystack; another day, another dollar.

A penny for your thoughts.

A showdown is a duel between two conflicting parties, but a showoff is someone who boasts about themself.

Half in the bag means you're drunk!

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush means, don't be greedy.

A rolling stone gathers no moss. I always thought this was no mass - like, if it keeps rolling, it won't stop to collect dust. But, it is moss, algae, pollen. Keep on rolling!