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Here Is What I’m Proud Of….
I talked a bit about things I’m embarrassed or ashamed of this week, but it’s time to spin it to something positive: What are 3 things you are super dang proud of today?
It could be something to do with your health, or just daily life. Here are three of mine:
1. I was able to tell my CF team that I’ve been on top of my nebs and clearance routine for the first time in a long time (even if once-a-day isn’t perfect, it’s better than my back-pain-induced nothing)
2. I am giving myself a “split challenge” to try for the next month or so, and even though I have already had to adapt the goal (from 1 minute, each side, for 5 times per side total: which made me almost vomit) to literally just one minute per side… At least I haven’t quit yet?
3. I am working extremely hard on facing the oh-so-many lesser characteristics of my personality right now, and trying to sit with it more often in regards to my relationship with others. (Mostly, those who are super close to me like my partner, Mom, and kids, who often get the worst of me).
To be honest, I could list like twenty more things I’ve “done wrong” this week or that I’m disappointed in myself about, but I guess one of the hardest things we can do in this life is let ourselves savor the positives without explaining them away.
So, there we go. Those are my positives.
What about you?
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1 Reply
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This is a difficult if not impossible one for me to answer. I do remember from earlier in life the sweet feeling of being proud after accomplishing things. For instance mastering a difficult piece of music on the piano, or getting my university degree. But pride never was part of my motivation. I even remember somehow feeling proud of reaching the age of 39, but that was some sort of my last identifiable goal (getting as old as Chopin). After that, the sheer impossibility and ridicule of claiming things that happen naturally (which is true for everything that happens) hit me to a degree that I could only laugh about ever claiming anything as an accomplishment.
What I mostly remember also, is that these feelings never lasted long and were superficial. Gone and forgotten before they really meant something. No furtile ground to build on. Pride is short and thin. The joy of laughing about it though felt very true and lasting. Later I found out moments like these are called Satori in Buddhist philosophy. A glimpse of reality and the folly of the mind.
And gradually I shifted away from attributing happenings to myself as an accomplishment, to a much more neutral and impersonal feeling of joy and gratitude for just being allowed to experience things happening on their own and surrendering to that. For participating in what happens, not as a separate person but as a feature of it. So in stead of adding myself to a result – a moment in place and time, something I told myself that I did – I just enjoy everything that happens all the time – irrespective of measuring results. And everything that happens is so complex and all-encompassing, that I can’t add myself to it anymore. It is simply too big and amazing for that. There was not even the desire anymore to add myself to what happens. It involves everything and even I am already in it. No possibility to genuinely attach myself to it, it is already complete without any action. This feels much more true and gratifying and all-including. And it lasts, it grows and builds. So for me it is definitely more true, more real.
In short, pride has lost its appeal. It is not true anymore. A thing of the past. When I try to reconstruct, I feel silly and immodest. It feels like ignorantly claiming personally the miracle of life and everything that happens in it. It has been replaced by the overall amazement, gratitude and joy that are incomparable to the little “zoomed-in” happiness’s of those days. It sounds contradictory, but without pride, life is much more rewarding to “me”. Everything that seems to come through me contributes to something much bigger and to a lasting feeling of gratitude. Not for me personally as a little drop in the ocean, but for me as the ocean in the drop. Although I have no clue of what that is, so don’t ask me to explain. I only know that it and me are the same miracle.
And miracles are beyond pride or modesty.
Namaste,
Paul
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