Mindfullness & mortality

Still working on not letting the lump in my throat get the best of me. Yesterday as I was driving (I usually drive between 4-7 hours a day for work), I got to thinking about my behavior while I'm driving, my behavior when I'm at home and not working, my behavior at the breakfast table, hell, even my behavior in the bathroom.

Just like an alcoholic in denial since she only drinks "a glass or two" of wine from her wine-in-a-box, I admit to being a clandestine stimulus addict. The second I get in the car I turn on the radio. At home, even though I rarely watch TV, I can't imagine an evening with going online. At the breakfast table, if I'm alone I find myself turning the milk carton around just to read the same text about cows being let out into the pasture for the umpteenth time. In the bathroom I bring the newspaper even if I'm only going to be in there for two minutes. And it dawned on me that I have to stop fleeing, not that I know what I'm fleeing from.

So yesterday I started by driving in complete silence the last 45 minutes of my trip home. I didn't get caught up in the Internet that evening. This morning I drove to the train station in silence again. I found it enjoyable, even though it took a few minutes to "adjust" and get my damn'd monkey mind to take a chill pill.

Then as I was on the platform waiting for my train, my husband told me on the phone that Michael Jackson died. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of Michael, but he symbolized my youth. This portrait was taken when I was 13, and his passing reminds me of the finality of life, and of how we are constantly changing throughout life's journey. Even if I had gone to see Michael Jackson's concert this winter, it wouldn't make me 13 again. Yet in my mind's eye the images of what that era represented to me: innocence, potential, adolescence, liberation, anticipation, remain untainted.

That is, until now. And yet the same words that described that period of my life are just as applicable to my life as it is right now. Same-same, but different.