Working on Me

I've spent most of my life looking at people who meditated, or did anything else I considered to be new age "crazy" like they were just that, a bit crazy.  It never really occurred to me that most of these practices had been going on for centuries, and that the people practicing them certainly seemed happier and less stressed than I was. I didn't have time, and actually considered myself kind of immune to enlightenment to some extent.  I am an ER Nurse.  Unfortunately, that means I am a bit skeptical of everything in existence and more than a little jaded when it comes to the human condition.  I've learned from 25 years of being an ER nurse that if you don't let something touch or soften your heart, you live to work another day.  Twenty five years, that's a lot of wasted time.

If you were to ask the people that are closest to me, the people I work with, none of them would tell you that I am a particularly nervous or stressed person.  I've always managed to stay pretty low key, let things roll off my back, and never get too worked up about anything.  But over the past few years, that's changed for me.  I don't know why, but life's stress' started getting to me.  I found myself suddenly inundated with feelings and emotions, and often I really had no idea what I was even reacting to.  I was just stressed, or angry, or sad, or even scared.  I had no idea what of or what about.  I just was.  It was affecting my personal relationships, and affecting my attitude at work.  I wanted to push people further away because it seemed like the more I insulated myself from other people, the less I had this emotional dance with myself. 

Then, quite accidentally, I ran across some reading on meditation and living in the "now".  Ah oh.  New age Crazy.  But the first few sentences caught my attention and so I kept reading.  After just two attempts at meditation, I realized that it somehow calmed me and made it easier to focus.  Maybe I'm not getting Alzheimer's after all?  (Fingers Crossed)   So, I'm doing more reading.   I'm going to continue learning to meditate and I'm opening myself up to a lot of other things I use to call crazy.  It's going to be a journey, but I can't wait to see what's over the next rise. 

It's kind of exciting to look in the mirror and realize that I had so limited myself in the past, that my future may not be at all what I expected.