Peace, Generosity

I know I've never said this before ... but damn, I did not sleep well last night. Yesterday was busy at the office and I was tense. I was thusly still tense while online Christmas shopping before leaving the office, and a vigorous run-and-row at the gym, a hot bath while downing a 3-shot bourbon cocktail, and a bowl of reheated Thanksgiving turkey soup did not take the edge off. Nor did a 90-minute chat with a (very) groggy MSF followed by perusing the The New Yorker (complete Nov. 7 edition), nor did playing Tetris on Facebook for 45 minutes before polishing the last 2 servings from a box of Kashi Go Lean and re-delving (for the third time) into Fred Emery's Watergate.  (Yeah, I agree: conspiracy and breakfast cereal at 3:30 a.m. do not exactly inspire a mind to shut down.) Woke up hard at 6:45 out of a dream where I was biking as fast as I could through the Back Bay, along the brick sidewalks of Marlborough Street, and I still could not catch the insouciant man jogging in front of me, who I know I was meant to catch, needed to catch. And thusly could not get back to sleep and could not get out of bed and didn't know how I was possibly going to manage the latter, ever, body unwilling and brain frustrated. It wasn't until I recalled how some 6 weeks ago I had similar dread of the uncertainty around me and only recovered from that dread when realizing that I have Patience Judgment Family Friends Health and my world does not really suck ass. That still holds true. And I realized I could remind myself in this season (and any time, really), that when I want to mire in a self-centered wallow I can instead tell myself to aspire to a Peace Within and a Generosity to Others ... to let go of little annoyances, to realize the ones I think aren't so little are minuscule in the grand scheme, that peace indeed can be a chosen state of mind, and that anything I can do to brighten someone else's day is an anything worth doing.

So, eventually, I got up. (I'll let you know how the rest of the day goes.)