How to Shift a Bad Mood
I’ve been thinking about my summer of ‘landscaping therapy’, as a friend and I started calling it. It’s been so cathartic to plant new trees in the yard and finally tackle some of the neglected corners. I’ve learned throughout the process; it’s felt like one big metaphor in many ways.
Pulling weeds is extremely satisfying. And the soil underneath them is often dark and vibrant, grateful to be liberated. For a brief time after yanking them out, everything looks orderly and professional outside: the fleeting illusion of control!
I’m leading a meditation class at a local studio here in New York this coming weekend and I realized, in preparation for the class, that I’ve been trying to pluck my own weedy, grief-y thoughts, in an attempt to clear the inner terrain for the teacher to emerge. As if the teacher in me should be a less messy, more perfect version of who I actually am.
Then this morning I got the message. The grief-y, messy stuff is not in the way of the curriculum I’m supposed to be working with. It’s not something to address beforehand and tidy up. It is the curriculum.
I’ve had the weed and the flower confused.
This time of year is often grief-y for me. Summer giving way to fall. Memories of the divorce, of other summers ending. The exhausting cyclone of back to school which culminated…
