static

     I am more and more understanding that being alone is very important to me.  I don’t have any urge to chew off a leg when I am with people, but I know I need to be in a cave a chunk of the time.   I like me and find me very amusing – both what I think and how I live.  It is 10:30am, and I am in my jockey shorts and silk shirt with my warm from home slippers. So? And I would not care about being seen if I were seen.

     I thought of my grandmother and the tv.  When she watched the news, she had to be fully clothed since if she could see him, he could see her.   No dementia just she was born when Lincoln was Pres.. and died in the age of TV. Planes and autos were invented in her day.  

     My monitor on my life is my heart rate on the Fitbit.  My average rate before I came here was in the mid 70’s and now in the low 60’s.  Traffic doesn’t raise it but up and down the stairs does.   I would wonder if that did not make a change.

    When I watch MSNBC.. and my rate goes up, and I ask. why are you watching….Mueller in or out  Trump does this or that..   what can I do and if I am not doing it… why am I watching?  The conclusion for me was I am a junky.   Info junky.   I need to see the news.   I need to know what others know.  I need to be ready to engage in the complaining conversation or concerned conversation.. it is all the same – 

Static.  

• ·         lacking in movement, action, or change, especially in a way viewed as undesirable or uninteresting.
• ·         concerned with bodies at rest or forces in equilibrium.
• ·         crackling or hissing noises on a telephone, radio, or other telecommunications system.

     Whatever definition you pick.. it is unclear information going into a container that just sits with the information and does nothing.

     I am not going to TV-Junky meetings but I am asking the question….So Why do it… .   I listen to the news  very little and the resting heart rate goes to 60-64.  I can live with instant coffee in the morning – a good cup of joe would be nice but I am ok with the instant in my underware… and yes… 

     it is all good.

Compassion

Every year I bring a few books with me to Thailand.  Last year I brought Joan Tollifson’s Bare Bones Meditation and ended up in a retreat with the author shortly after my return from Thailand.  This year I brought another book by the author Nothing to Grasp*.  As my mother would say, it is one of bonny’s way out there books.  I started the book last year after the retreat and I am now on page 79.  I am not sure if it is way out there or so much inside the core, but it is about radical nonduality.

This year, I decided to have two Christmas Dinners with a fast day in the middle.  One of the things I have dropped is “clean your plate”.  That got me to obese.  I am at least down to “overweight” but moving in the right direction.  So, while I ate Pern’s half chicken, I had my companion book on the table and read a paragraph or two between servings, so I could “chew” while I chewed.

“I have been stuck or struck by her comment “Thought imagines a God “out there” and a self “in here” at the controls, calling the shots.  If you look closely, you discover that no independent entity can be found either “out there” or “in here” who is running the show of freely choosing what to want, what to think, what to care about, and what to do.”  

This leads me to think about why I like this person and not that, why I choose a more radical view of life than my very conservative and Republican parents and upbringing. My mother worried that I would end up on the street since I gave everything away.  She had 40 pairs of shoes when I cleaned her house.  I have three.  Where did I pick up comfort over appearance in a family when appearance was everything?  “Never let them see you sweat perspire” “be pleasant no argumentative” how did that upbringing make me go in such an opposite direction.   I would risk a friendship/personality for a principle. 

The most important thing that I have culled from all my mental gymnastics over a few pages in this book is to be more compassionate with myself.  I can not deny when I make a miss-step or say something harsh or do something too quickly that it offends or causes damage.   I must take responsibility for the action or words and apologize, make things right, or take a new direction.  

However, I can treat myself and others with compassion when I fail or feel they have failed to meet my expectations or ideal.   The great lesion I have learned this political go around is if there is no self and other… am I DJ or Trump that rhymes with grump.  My quest is to have compassion not just selective compassion for those/or me that deserve it.

 PS  and of course I had dessert - mince pie with brandy sauce - coffee with Kalua

* The other books “Being White” – Harris/Schaupp and “It’s Never too Late to Begin Again” Cameron/Lively as well as “Why Buddhism is True” Wright – on Audible

photos

     The past few days I have spent more time with photos of myself than I have in my lifetime.  When I was very young, and my mom would drag me into the studios of some of the more famous children’s photographers, I would either not smile or even just frown.  I hated to go and could not understand all the antics they did to make you smile.  

      When I got sick in Boston, Mom took me out of the sick bed to get one of these photos.   I was pale and thin and in pain with a raging session of colitis.   Five-year-old children don’t get colitis.  I got colitis.  The illness was severe, and we were miles from anyone in the family, and I was too sick to be moved far closer to home, wherever that was at the time.  At first, my parents thought I just had diarrhea, but the blood and high temp said, something was not right.   When the doc said I could die, we went to the photographer, and I got dressed in a little blue sailor dress with a while tam on my sick head and black patten leather shoes.   I smiled, he clicked, and I went back to the penthouse and my pj’s and the bathroom. 

     So, having pictures taken of myself has never been easy.   It was harder when I was younger and not a thin girl like my svelte classmates who were either dieting or laying in the sun.  I did neither.  While we had some financial resources, I lived in a working-class area.  When I entered Holy Angles Academy for Young Ladies, I was one of the girls that did not come from one of three feeder schools, and I lived in the Black Rock area.   There were four of us that came from that area.  2 Judy’s, Carol, and Bonny.  

    I have subscribed to audiobooks, and last night I started Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone.  I was luckier that she was, I made the team, but I never felt like I connected with the girls since many had known each other since grade school.  When you just about to graduate, there are a small number of students 10-15 that are selected as “beacons.”   I was a beacon, and I was co-captain of the basketball team and the photography editor of the yearbook that had won some national recognition… so I felt it was a default. 

    In the book, Brown talks about Maya Angelou and  “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”  Like myself, Brown went through a place of not belonging to a family.  My cousin said to me once, and she knew she was the black sheep of the family, but she had a large family.  I was the black sheep and an only child.   I have thought of that a thousand times since I was young.

I have gone through a Norah Jones and Diana Krall albums, and my butt is tired.  enough

Have a cup of tea

     One of the hardest things for me to examine and actually have to give up is the concept of free will.   I grew up in a traditional religious base that told me that I was responsible for my life and my actions.  It is like you are always expected to win the game.  Well, you don’t.  You can give it your best shot, but most of the time, it is a million things going on at the same time that affects the outcome.  The idea of a game is probably most comfortable to see this concept since there is a team and the team is only as good as the weakest link not to mention the atmospheric pressure and the skills of the other side. 

     In accepting the concept of free will it is up to you to select door number #1.  All will be right with the world, the world will be saved, etc.  The free will concept was always more comfortable to support when I/we were winners.  And maybe now it is easier to see that we are not the executive directors of our own destiny but only a player with millions of variables.

     What part of me thinks, forgets the motorbike key at a busy plaza and leaves the bike unattended for hours.  What part of me picks that word or this word. What part of me thinks that it is your responsibility to make me happy or at least not get in my way of my being happy?

     If all I have is NOW.. can I pick a word NOW that will have the same meaning and significance when it comes out of my mouth or gets to the listener's ear.   I pass folks on the street who spend their day sweeping up leaves in an area where there are leaves falling all the time.  Is the value of their effort any less because the “aren’t doing the job.”  They are doing what they are expected to do, they sweep.  I am doing what I am “expected to do”… I get up, I pay attention. 

     What incredible pressure we put on ourselves and others when we have these pictures of how life should be and if it doesn’t go that way, there is something wrong.   When it is not going the way we think it should, we get mad at whoever is around since they are keeping us from be happy by not making our world the way we think it should be.

I think we will be constantly unhappy with our life and those around us when we think we can control anything and anyone…..  STOP    have a cup of tea

I don’t know what I would do

It is very funny to me that people say.. oh you are so brave to ride the motorbike.   They should have told me that when I was 40 and bought my first 50cc Honda… and before I had the license dumped it in the driveway and put my leg under the unprotected muffler.  It was an interesting smell…my flesh frying on the metal and until the day it was not in my life, it had a brown circle on the spot on the bike.  After years and years of changing skin.  The book says you change skin every 27 days, but like the rings on a tree, you must count the layers of skin effected and each has its own healing level and time.

When I am in my present mode, I can see, I can move, I have very good spatial acuity which is a terrific asset when you are moving at 30mph between a car and the curb.  So why not ride.

Then folks say, I admire your sense of adventure.  I don’t see it as adventure as much as reacting to what is presented to me.  Ok, must move my body to various places in order to see different things in front of me, but that is not an adventure or being venturesome.  When I was young and there was a rock in front of me.. I had to see what was on the other side of the rock.  Now my rock is the earth and so I am on the other side of the planet looking to see what is here.  I am amazed at the number of things people who have not done that with even things that are very visible… the Waroros Market, the events at the Tha Phae Gate etc.   Now to be at the right place at the right time, you might want to check the happenings page in the paper or City Life, but that is true at home.

How do you have the courage to do this alone?  I live alone.  My life is without a partner.  I would not sit home if I were not alone, why if I am alone. I don't have to talk anyone into doing anything.  I read the obituaries to see if I know anyone. And what they say… read them… died peacefully. Died in his sleep surrounded by family… really??  Did he care.   I have yet to see, was a miserable person and died miserably.  Then there are the subtle things like send donations to Hope Town.  Well since the person is 25 and that is for addicts, I would say Hope Town did not offer enough hope and were not too successful.   I had dinner with a new friend last night who told me her ex-husband died taking a wiz in the snow… when they found him days later in the snow. He was still in the position of the relief… Bet they didn’t put that in the paper…I still laugh when I think about it .. but he had a heart attack and the lights went out, and he died with his fly open... 

But, I also have several friends who have made a choice to take a chance that some rat poison or left-over gas chamber gas will cure their cancer.  Their rationale is that it might heal them or give them more time or whatever and they don’t want to suffer.   Have you been with folks who get juiced to get the cure and then spend the time home alone in the bathroom?  This is where I say, I don’t know what I would do.  

 A few years ago, when I suddenly lost the hearing in my left ear and was having an MRI to see if I had a brain tumor, as I laid there listening to the boom boom boom of the magnetic field moving around, I thought, if I have a month, I will get on a plane and fly to Turkey join a flotilla and sail by myself in  the Aegean.   I would like to think I would still want to do that and that no little voice would say… what are you crazy?  You could die!!!!  Really.

‘Tis the season

     I purchased a gift for someone the other day.  It is a hard person to give to because they don’t like accepting and they have definite ideas about what they want. 

    When I was young, and my father was the “boss” of several men, they often thought it was appropriate to give me a gift.   The most time I ever spent with them was usually at dinner – I dressed up in fancy dress for the elegant restaurant and quietly (as in don’t speak) eating my raw vegetables and blueberries.  Occasionally or should I say rarely did they get it correct.  The three gifts I remember most was a what felt like 6’ milk chocolate Easter bunny… well, probably 2-3 feet, Marzipan candy, and fancy dolls. 

     My father would eat milk chocolate and a few cousins would also, but my Mother and I were strictly dark or semi-sweet chocolate.  I have discovered that they are not producing magnificent coca at the Majo University experimental farms although Indonesia is more famous for the beans and the growing cycle.  You can get delicious chocolate products here at specialty shops.   That is not the Chocolate I got.  I got the kind that you kept eating thinking it would get better and it didn’t, but you could not sleep and had a tummy ache.

     While I have always associated Marzipan with our Jewish friends, I also know that it is a very popular treat originating in the orient but made famous in Germany.  What is not to like, sugar almonds… I hated it …too sweat and the almond paste while beautiful in my morning sweats was not good for the funny looking candy.

     When I was in Buffalo, we lived in a factory family neighborhood.  We were not a factory family – had no hand me downs, never wore oxfords and had so many clothes I could go two weeks without duplicating.  There were a few things that I did not enjoy, paper dolls, playing school and play house with doll babies. Even then the dolls that were purchased at the best and most famous toy stores wet, and had natural hair, etc.   I had a box of them…   and I never played dolls, or mother, or even loving aunt with any of them.

     So how do we receive things that are given to us that might not be what we would want or buy for yourself?  Maybe more, what do we give to others?  Generosity has little to do with it most of the time. I can not understand going to the Chaing Mai Sunday market and buying a boatload of anything – scarves and the most common or little purses.  I have done that and then gotten home and thought which of my friends wants this or would use that.  I wore a dress to dinner because my mother made,

but it does not mean I am interested in having a doll.  

     There is an old eastern custom of giving a scarf and getting a scarf.  So everyone passes back and forth until you end with the one you want and then thank each for bringing a scarf.  I would most likely go home on my own.

     So, ‘tis the season to have generosity in both giving and receiving….open-handed and open-hearted.   From a bonny view, giving freely of your time to another is the greatest gift that money can not buy.

Threshold

     When I sat in the garden on my Mae Rim ride the other day, I had my long lens out snapping various objects and trees.   As I panned, I saw this doorway.   If you look closely, it has two swinging doors which if closed would hardly keep the dog out that was wondering about the area.  Like most doorways here, it has a 2-3 inch threshold that in addition to keeping out water and snakes... requires one to be aware of stepping up and into a new space.

     When I come to my Thai residence, I come into a covered marble floor area for the motorbike and come to a glass door that requires me to use a fob to open…buzz, and you push open the door and leave the open space area.   There are two flights of marble stairs that allow for more transition. With all the bodywork I am having, acupuncture needles and heat twice a week, two-hour massage of my deep tissues once a week, and various other hour foot massages along with magnesium spray and the Chinese White Flower rub, I can do the flights of stairs in normal walking order.  However, it is not a rush.. or mindless walk but more like a meditation walk.  I put my foot down and step and lift and move the other foot and leg to the next step.  The cadence is in four beats.  Sometimes, I have to move to the side as another is running or doing two stairs at a time to get someplace in a hurry.  I think, what a gift the stairs are so that I can have the time to leave the roadway, the bike, the responsibility of the drive and enter my transition chamber.   Breath. 

     My room door also has a threshold of about 2-3 inches.   I can not just open the door but must use a key.. turn the lock and then step in.  Just inside the doorway, is a foot pad for my outside shoes and my slippers for my inside feet.

     I put my outside items and my purchase items in a proper place, my keys – motorbike and door, hang on the chain for the door.  In the evening, before I go out, I put the flashlight on the end of the bed, so I have the “torch” to get me to the desk lamp or next to bed lamp.

     Since I was a very young child, I did not like overhead lights unless they were muted and artistic.   The two lights here are neither, so they stay dim.

I have been thinking about the transitions we take from room to room, out to in, alone and with others.  We slip so freely from one to the other, but it is also the opportunity to bring your present self to the new place.  We have 1000 of opportunities for stepping through the “gateless gates,” for starting new, for be present in the new space and always with a “new” self.

      There are many times in my day that for a moment,  I wonder where I am and who I am and I feel like I have been dropped into a area that I can hardly see the sky.  And then I just stand up and there is a very clear way.

     Today, I will try to be more awake and aware of the opportunity of stepping over the threshold and to being a more present person to each situation and with each person, I pass.

imagine... or maybe not

Sad music plays most of the time in Thailand or at least in the places that I eat.  Sometimes the words are in Thai and you can only imagine that they are singing about unrequited love or some type of loneliness.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

I eat by myself, most of the time.  So I say…self what would you like to eat?  Do you want to people watch?   Do you want to watch soccer or rugby?  My usual answer is not sure what I want to eat.. not sure I want to people watch etc.

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace... You...

I go and look at the menu and try to order something simple.  Turn on my Kindle.. and then listen to the music while I wait for the food.

Each year, this is a some that they play at least once while I am here.  I think of someone who was part of my life, and that I lost leaving a hole.   I think of so many times when the song has been in my head.   I now listen as a Buddhist.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Funny how we just let the words and tune roll over us…   A simple tune and simple words.  The words are Dharma.

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world... You...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

There have been many days when I thought, can’t get any worse than this… but it did or didn’t.  I’ll have another beer… it is all good.

The chicken or the egg

     Several years ago, I put a wedge in a friendship when I stated my firm belief that most things are concepts and not truths.  When you hold something as true to your way of thinking and believing, it is not necessarily a universal truth.   I am surer of that concept today than I was at the time.

     Almost everything we talk about is a concept.  There is some similarity in our individual concepts, so when we are talking, we have a similar point of reference.  Example, when I say tree, dog, the universe, the body… you may think a spruce and I a redwood..  but they are both trees.   In most cases, that is adequate unless the issue is “go climb a tree.”  Then it would be easier if it were a spruce.

     I find that at times I forget that most things are just concepts and they create some imaginary differences in our connecting.  Who cares which came first the chicken or the egg… unless you are the chicken.  It is functionally useful to know which you are cooking. 

     We put labels on things and then function as if they were not just concepts but absolutes.  I have been reflecting on my back home life and why my resting heart rate averages 74 there and 64 here.   I have spent a great deal of my life trying to make sense of life.   Such as …why are the most profusely stating they are Christians, the least “Christian”…  why are there such double standards…if we like someone, we want to give the benefit of the doubt and if we don’t… we have no tolerance. 

     When I have distance, and when I am most connected to life, I can see when I start to grasp and fixate.  In the still of the meditation, it is what “comes up” and I start playing the tapes….I will show them… how could they do this to me… poor forgotten bonny… etc.   I react…  and then I come back to the breath…. and I see what is happening and I relax, let go…  I stop trying to “get a grip” on life or the situation.. and I am just here and now… and the air is clear and crisp.

a short collection

     I am looking to balance my life with go going to stay home.  The go-go part appears to take a direction toward my photo destinations or places I have not been to before or a long time.  There are mountains (Sammong) to the right and river (Doi Saket) to the left.   Then add Chaing Dao, Chaing Rai to the north and Lampung and Lampang to the south.  Each area has a village, fields, chicken stands, etc.   If it were possible for me to close my eyes and wake up mid-point, many of the places would look similar… field, chicken stand, road dogs, men with flip-flops on the motorbike, etc.   Like the Wat’s they are not all alike, and while each has a Buddha, all the Buddha are not alike.   Time and an open eye for space and subtleness are a key.

     When I am at home, my Laptop says…I am alone, and I don’t like being alone….turn me on and sit for a while.   A while can turn into a long time and HP smiles and typist says butt sore – how long have I plays Spade, looked up essential words, read email, etc.  and why?

On my MIT – most important things to do - #1 get control of your computer time.   So, I will finish this Blog and go back to my sketchbook sKool Class (ok.. on the computer but I am active with paper at the desk).

     The very positive think about the current administration is that I am not unhappy to be in the later part of my life.   It will take a long time to clean up the mess that is being made.  The poor will get poorer and less healthy, and more of “them” will be seen as a threat to be corralled or locked up.  The poor elderly will have fewer resources and be corralled into facilities that will soon overcrowd.  A good compromise for me would be a condo in a lovely location… not in the US.

But for today, I will think about my attitude and press the OFF button.

 “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,” Viktor Frankl

     The question most asked of me is what do you do all day and the second question, are you lonely.  I miss some of my friends but mostly I see my heart rate dropping, my night extra beats diminishing, and I smile most of the time.   I have little need to fix anything and also am learning that there is nothing that wants to be fixed.   It is what it is.  

I am not alone, I am with my best friend.

Alone one is never lonely: the spirit adventures, waking
In a quiet garden, in a cool house, abiding single there;
The spirit adventures in sleep, the sweet thirst-slaking
When only the moon’s reflection touches the wild hair.
There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone:
It finds a lovely certainty in the evening and the morning.

CANTICLE 6  by May Sarton

     I meet a high number of people here, and there is a danger of becoming fast friends. I only have to look at my Facebook page and wonder, why am I friends with this person or that.  We have little in common, and they would toss me under the bus quickly if I were not the bonny they thought I should be.   The more time I spend with my breath, the more I realize that there are only a few that come close to a friend.  I am very over the attraction to she/he is “neat” “funny” “cute” “smart”…. Are they whole or aware that they are not.

Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself… Regard him as loyal and you will make him loyal.

Seneca a letter titled “On True and False Friendship”.

travelogue two

Today's water route was out to the Huay Tung Toa reservoir and lake.  The good king created the area to help with the dought many years ago.   I am not sure he knew what a wonderful spot this would be for the folks in the area.  There is no charge for the little water bungalows but you are expected to drink and eat.   Since I have been coming out here, there is more little areas to sit.  Also, you can choose your restaurant from the location of the bungalows.  There appear to be about five restaurants.  All serve beer and alcohol.

Some of the huts are on land but many are on the water with the little "bridge" to walk out on to get to the raft.   There is a mat on the ground and a short table for the food and drink.

The group below were pretty typical.  The father is reading the paper and the mother is conversing with the rest of the family.  The dog is being a dog.  But this is a family that includes a dog which obviously lives in the house.  I think that is his water bottle in the basket.   He is harrier than many of the dogs here and probably is groomed.  He looked friendly but bored... my projection.




The restaurants hustled the food.  They were going so fast, I did not get an acceptable picture of some of the items.  The kitchen had a mosquito net on it.  The young boy went and picked up what looked like live minnows and put them in small jars and took them to a table.. who knows if they were for fishing of eating.
I saw a lot of dished get served.  some shrimp, chicken, beef, papaya salad, etc. and of course rice.



Again, the shadows on the water were wonderful. 

 Same same but different from the shadows of the clouds that I took at the dam the day before

travelogue one

I am going to step out of my usual thinking out loud and talk about some of my recent travels.  The more distance I put between me and home, the more I am present in my now, the more I see what is in my immediate space.
This was water week.   I had breakfast on the Doi Saket road and had not been to the Dam, so that was my Saturday trip.  Like many roads, after you turn off the main road, you are not sure you are on the correct road going toward what you hope to be your destination.    However, now that I have my GPS, who cares.  When I have had enough, I just hit "home" and we go that way. 

After I turned off the road that was the turn off of the other route and then missed the side road to the dam, I backtracked, and as I was heading to the dam, I saw this swampy area with these huge leaves.  I just loved the size of them. The color was a muted green.  They appeared to be standing at attention waiting for something. I have no idea what they are called or why they were in this patch.  At the very edge of the cluster were three brown leaves that appeared to be standing at attention.  I had the idea that they were the press and it was a concert that I could not hear... or it was a marching group, and these were the reviewers. 

 The sky was so blue and bright and the white clouds just floated along in the air.  No place to go and nothing to do.  I began to look very carefully and could make my eyes see 3 dimensional.. the sky then the cloud... then the hilltop.   When you shut one eye.   It is just flat, like my hearing.   I only hear out of my right ear, so all sound comes from there.

Spinning is rarely productive

     Being in touch with how you are feeling, what is happening to your mind and body more often than not is really an interesting experience.

     Yesterday, I had a tooth extracted.  Well more like dug out of my jaw.   The root was cracked, and while the nerve was dead, the tooth was attached to being in my mouth. 

 

     After the two very big shots of nonvaccine, which was not a comfortable experience, I did not feel anything and found listening to the crunching to be disconcerting.  It was an opportunity to feel open and spacious versus tight and grasping to be out of the position.   There was nothing to do and no place to go except lay there and feel my heartbeat and observe what happened to me when I just relaxed.  Not saying I was ready to sleep, but the more I just let the Dr do his thing and do my belly breathing and say relax   Relax   Let Don't cling    It got much easier just to be there as an observer and not someone having an old friend, an old tooth, ripped out of the jaw.     I could feel the difference in my body/mind from being tight to being open to the experience.

     My mind went to all the things that are happening at this very second.  Someone born-someone dies, a child is born to love, and a child is not picked up, someone overeats, and someone starves all at the very second, I am here and now.  It has been my experience to see me as the center of everything and only rarely am I part of a universe and not the center of mine.  Most of the time, it is me, mine, my friends, house, community.  I make my universe very small.

     The smaller my universe, the more important I make myself.  Like a character in a movie – It is all about being as perfect as can be.   When my life is more in perspective, my little stuff matters little in the scheme of things.  I am up or down, on top or underneath, it is the way it is.

Mental spinning is a very unsatisfactory condition.  If only he would or I would or they would or they should etc..   Re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.  I think one of the best lines I read in one of Tollifson’s books…. The treadmill goes faster, but the carrot doesn’t get any closer.    

Mmmmm   so stop running, spinning, trying to be perfect.  Enjoy the experience.