~~~some assembly required~~~

*some assembly required

Zen?
assembled @ 6:50 p.m. on 2003-12-12

I've been looking at ways to simplify my life (as I sit here working, reading a journal entry, entering a card number into my UPromise account, and typing this entry). Wednesday, we (Hero and Sprout and I) went to see The Last Samurai, and while it was an excellent movie, the thing that really stuck with me was the simplicity of the lives of the Japanese villagers. The houses were spartan and clean, barely any furniture, let alone knick knacks to dust and books that I swear I'll read "someday". It all seemed so peaceful, and well... simple. Then I look around my place of residence (it's hard for me to call it "home"), and I see a ton of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. And yes, we are living with 20 years accumulation of 6 other people's stuff, but damn... I just want to take a super-huge trashbag and go from room to room, dumping. It would feel so good. So clean and simplifying, taking my mind off of all this stuff I've just been meaning to do. I don't know if anyone else feels this way, or maybe I'm just addicted to guilt, but all that stuff that I've been keeping because I'll get to it someday? That's a damn lotta stuff to get to. And I have enough to do in my day to day life.

Which reminds me... what is the difference between zen and apathy? I've gotten to the point where I have so little free, me-time that I either feel guilty (again! with the guilt!) for "sneaking" time to read my email, or I forget doing anything that I want to do, and just go from task to task in a sort of "this is it" mode. Like, either way, I'm going to be alive, so what else is there to do with my time? There is no "after the diaper"., there is only now, and now, and now, so I might as well be in the moment, right? Especially with my kids, because I've started to be almost scared by just how fast those moments go. Pearl was just a baby, I swear! And now she is walking and talking, singing, making up her own songs. She can point and click a mouse better than many adults I've seen. The two and a half years have flown. So sometimes I am able to just be in the moment with them, to just be thankful and grateful that I have that diaper to change, that I have that bedtime ritual to perform. So I suppose that's sort of zen. Then there are the days when I go from task to task in a sort of brain-dead state, figuring this is all I'll ever be, a drone, a body lacking free-will and personality, living merely for the convenience of others. Hell, that seems a step lower than apathy, even. And I've had more and more of those moments lately, which scares me. Thank God I have my kids to snap me out of it. Sometimes I feel that I even miss how wonderful Pearl is because of those feelings, and then the guilt is even worse, thinking that I might ever have shut her out somehow. Then there are days like today, when she is smiling, and taking every one of my carefully organized books off the shelf to build towers, and she shuts down her computer game "so you can work, Mommy", even seeming to know the difference between "click at the left of the screen" and "click the door on the right".... then I'm just blown away by her. Woken up again. Brought back to myself. I'm not sure what to do about how I've been feeling lately, or if there's anything to do, but at least I have her to bring me back to the moment.

--N

then || now