The Wrong-Side of the Bed

Grumpy? Begin again...

Today I woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed. Yesterday too, if I’m being honest. Frustrated. Behind schedule. Ornery. Grumpy. Feeling sorry for myself.

I could see it, I was mindful of my worsening mood, focused on it, and let it take over my behaviors anyway.

I’m not proud of it, but think it’s pretty normal, ordinary behavior. I was burnt out. After months of effort, I stumbled across the finish line at work and the hiring at my nonprofit fell through. Problems are inevitable, but problems suck! (The actual quote, by my favorite brain on the planet, David Deutsch, is “problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable,” was just a little more hopeful than I could muster.)

But muster I eventually did, for what was to be gained from sulking? Why worry, I’d rather wonder. Every little thing is going to be alright. We have the power of our perception to look out from the darkness of our minds lost in thought, through the clarity of our single eye of conscious experience and come to the spark of embodied illumination, a oneness with the contents, as the context, of consciousness.

I didn’t get back here easily. I sulked instead. But if we happen to get up on the wrong side of the bed, we can always just begin again, close and open our eyes to the never far away, but always subtle, splendor of our boundless, loving awareness.