I have been in Thailand for three weeks and while some of my life is in pattern some is still an off step.   I love the spontaneity and non-fatal risk living, but I also like order.  You might not know this since my place of living is often not a home but a landing pad.  I am working on that. 

One thing I have learned about me is that if I don’t set the day with a time for “things” I want to do, as taking care of me and learning from my  life aka Blog, I do things that push the day forward until bed time.  I have played more spades online than blogged.  In my life process, will it matter that I outplayed a 75 yr old woman from Canada etc. 

On New Year’s Eve day, I started the day in a tangle of misconnections to my home.  I had been reflecting that morning about loving someone.  My online teacher Ajahn Brahm, had given a great talk on seeing the joy in the past year and accepting a choice to love or be in suffering.   In the talk, he asked what it is to be loved and loving.  I ran through the people in my life and reflected that in most cases, I know how to act so they can accept me easier in their life rather than just coming with my bumps and knowing no matter what, I am loved.  

When you have or appear to others to have a strong personality, it takes work on both parts not to be overwhelmed nor be overwhelming.  Someone once said of me that if there is a world earth crisis, I will get out and then figure out how to make a computer out of string.  But that also has its price.  Some folks see me as competition or someone to compete against or try to control.   I see me as someone who tries to let everyone one around me live their lives until they step on mine. 

When someone yammers on about something they are not willing to change or let go of…I am ok the first round but if they are stuck on not being able to change the other person… I must move on and encourage them to do so also.   T

here are some that think the rules don’t apply to them.  We have a person who thinks she has it together but who has not dealt with some enormous and scary issues.  She buys a big dog that needs a dog park or an acre of land.  Sweet dog but bounding through a community with folks with issues about dogs is not neighborly.  Short of calling the dog warden, it will not change until the dog can’t walk

I have been loved unconditionally and have loved back.  It was a deep friendship that ended too soon by disease and death but to this day, I hold Chuck in my inner heart and think of him often.    I see a kind and loving neighbor who unconditionally loves his wife.   I don’t believe he has had many thoughts of how he might change her.  That acceptance of the bump and holes as part of the package is love and so few really have it.   In most of the relationships, it is how the other person should be  or act so that my life is easier.   Buy a blow-up doll, the humans come with bumps.

That brings me to my housemate.   I have known him for 15 years and he is who he is.  He is not unkind or mean, but he is so into his now that he really does not have a clue as to how his behavior affects another.  The list of times this has happened are numerous and some were critical and more painful.  I must love his bumps and just because he says, let's chat at a particular time and then is not there does not mean anything is wrong but that something, almost anything, has come to his attention and the promised contact is gone.   It is my life task to maintain my sanity and just say… that is Jim.

Off to start my week with Chi Kong.