How I Spent My Birthday
This Monday I turned 62. Wow! Somehow I felt the weight more than when I turned 60. I can officially start taking social security benefit IF I want to although I’m not even remotely considering it. It’s just such reality that blows my mind. I still feel like I’m in my 30s still chasing dreams and visions.
What was interesting about this birthday is that I spent the day in bed. I came down with COVID for the first time on Wednesday last week. So it was the day 5 of isolation and recovery. Fortunately, my symptoms were relatively mild. I’ve had many seasons with worse flu symptoms. I just had to lay low for several days to let those body aches, chills and sore throat pass. I’m feeling much better today and have been more vertical than horizontal for the last couple of days, and even got my laptop open.
The best part of my birthday was the monsoon like rain. As anywhere else in the West, it’s been quite dry in the mountains. Even though it’s nice to have clear blue sky day in and day out, I was actually excited to see the cloud covered sky on my birthday morning. I could smell the moisture in the air. The first rain came around 6:30am and lasted about 5 minutes. It was for my new kitties to see the rain as they sat by the windows and watched and listened in wonderment. Throughout the day, the clouds kept morphing revealing that deep blue sky here and there in between and dropped some more rain — sometimes really hard like a bucket turned over — on our thirsty earth. I actually don’t know how much rainfall we had that day but felt relieved for the trees, plants, and the animals even though it’s not even sufficient to relieve the drought.
So it went. That’s how my birthday was, and it was fantastic. My favorite definition of “mindfulness” is from James Baraz that says, “Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” Such simple wisdom that I cherish is what makes my life so rich.
#YouCanSitWithUs