tricky.

Life is a tricky beat.

(what does that even mean?)

When I make videos I have a habit of hitting the record button at the wrong time. What happens is I think I am recording when I’m not recording, and then I start recording when I think I stopped recording. The result of this strange habit is funny outtakes (if I actually watch the video instead of delete it).

I send the outtakes to my neighbor for laughs. 

On one outtake I say (assuming I am no longer recording), ‘it’s a tricky beat’ – under my breath. I sent it to my neighbor and he asked, ‘what did you say?’ and I responded with what I said. He asked, ‘what does that mean?’ I responded, ‘I don’t know.’ 

I don’t recall ever using the term prior to that odd clip.

I now use the term just because I like it. I’m not sure I know what it means. Yet, I absolutely know what I mean when I use it. 

Paradox. 

(and what does under my breath mean…??)

Anyway.

Life IS a tricky beat. And, what is more tricky than a paradox? Brene Brown defines paradox in a way that makes more sense than the Tao Te Ching. She basically says a paradox is an ability to hold two competing ideas. ‘I can be empty and full at the same time.’ ‘I can feel everything and nothing at the same time.’ These two examples are ones that I often say to myself – they make sense to me. 

Could it be that all people are right AND wrong (?)

Ughhhhhh….🙈

Is it possible to hold these ideas as a way to get onboard with humanity?

When I focus and am intentionally intentional, I love people. I love all people. Deeply. Especially/only when I focus with intention. When I focus with intention, I can tap into a love vibration to include someone on the surface I should ‘hate’. When I focus with intention, I can get underneath the surface to the child. Spending a lifetime in school settings helped to grow developmental images of humans – when I focus. The love vibration is powerful. I think the love vibration begins in a state of equilibrium and then raises its frequency from that set point. It exists.

I don’t live in a state that resonates with this magnitude of focus all the time. I know it exists. I know when I am outside of it. I don’t like being oppositional. But I am. 

If you have been following my content shares on the Sally & Sifer Facebook page, you will know that I love to suggest Quiet Time. You’d think Quiet Time was paying me. It’s my own Quiet Time that salvages a sense of my own human decency and calibrates me to what is possible. Life makes sense in Quiet Time. My Quiet Time is like a childhood ‘ghoul’. In my neighborhood growing up there was a lot of nighttime play. My backyard was in the middle of two houses and was often ‘ghoul’ – the safe zone. When I get too far outside of my regulated state, I know that from 2-4:30am I have ghoul. I’ll return to the safe space. It exists no matter where I am. Quiet Time.

When I grew up in church I used to think, ‘why don’t we all just pray for the bad people they talk about on the news?’ It sounded like the message was to love people. If that’s the message, then why is it so contradicting outside of ‘church’? 

Underneath it all, I don’t believe in bad people. People have the capacity to do bad things. Likewise, people have the capacity to do good things. Bad exists so good can exist. If bad didn’t exist, one could not know good. Goodness exists. To disconnect from the vibration creates the opposing experience. 

Connect to the goodness. And then. Do the next thing.

Do you cut off your hands because of what they COULD do (bad)? Or do you use your hands as the tools they are to create. And if there are no hands in one’s experience of life, does one compensate to create and make meaning? Is one in choice? What if you spent your entire life experience fearful of what your hands COULD do?

Fear has a purpose. Living in a state of fear colors everything. To some, their life experience is such that it benefits them to operate in survival to get their current needs met. What about for those, the many, who do not have current circumstances that need to be met by survival?

If the many practiced living in a calibrated state of balance, would it be of benefit to those who are surviving? 

Yes. It would. 

Calibrating to a balanced state allows space for empathy, shared humanity, broader perspective, and the other good things that contribute to living a life of possibility, rather than collectively living in fear. In the balanced state there is an understanding of paradox.

Disrupt. 

Self-Care. Care about yourself enough to be curious about tapping into the goodness first. And then.

See what happens.

Quiet Time.