Monday, October 28, 2024

 Monday, October 28, 2024

    I was exhausted by 8:30 and in bed by nine. I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by midnight.   It would be a difficult night. I did some belly breathing and fell asleep again. The next time I awoke, it was  2:30. I dozed or meditated for the rest of the night.  I feared insomnia.  That was my life after my dad died until my first night in my freshman dorm room. I was alone with my mother, without any protection or assurance that I was okay in someone’s eyes. That was three years without a single good night’s sleep. I wouldn’t wish insomnia on my worst enemy.

     I have been wrestling with my tendency to obsess about difficulties in relationships.  Some of that, I was sure, was just the natural reaction to not being embedded into a social unit; in other words, I’m lonely.  I’m welcome in many groups but am not an embedded member of any social unit.  I believe that’s difficult for all human beings.  Evolutionary psychology assumes that the evolution of our brains influences our social and cognitive behaviors as well as physical form. Our brains developed 11,000 to 21/2 million years ago.  Social behaviors are embedded in our brains.  While all this is theoretical, applying the theory has borne significant fruit.   

     One of the theories is we are social animals.  Being alone, unembedded in a social unit, means our very lives are in danger. When our brains were developed, that was true.  If we were alone, no one had our backs. We couldn’t rest for a moment. We were fair prey for any animal seeking its next meal. I believe fear and terror underlie loneliness. 

     Since aloneness is more a psychological state in our modern world than a physical one, it took me three years to feel that Mike was really gone and I was alone.   There have been incidents that brought home how unprotected I am.   If Mike had died before my mom, I dread to think what would have happened. 

    I have been wrestling with my tendency to obsess and ruminate, whatever you want to call it.  What can I do to interrupt that pattern?  I’ve been listening to books on tape.  It commands my mind and overrides the pattern of my default brain.  I’ve also been trying to sit with the fear which underlies the rumination. 

     I started by welcoming Christ’s love into my heart. I watch people who have this deep belief in Christ successfully take refuge in Christ.   I wasn’t raised with that notion. Quite to the contrary, I was taught that religious beliefs were nonsense.  I’m not fussy. I don’t have to be right. I’m good with it if it works and does no harm.   The Buddhist meditation hasn’t quite worked for me when dealing with fear.  I did find bringing in Christ’s love helpful.

     This morning, I started just saying “I love you” to myself. This mantra is incorporated into EFT:  “I love and comfort myself.”  I have tried deep self-love before. It didn’t work because I couldn’t forgive my young self for having irritated my mother. I knew intellectually that irritation was more on her than on her infant child, but that didn’t cut it. Now, I could accept that self-love. 

   Note: this is not a self-love based on something I am or can do.  It’s not because I’m wonderful. It’s simply because I am.  It doesn’t make me better than anyone else.  It’s the love all human beings are entitled to, regardless of what they are or what they’ve done.  It’s the self-acceptance the salvific religions teach.  Even a few moments of it are lovely. It’s the substitute for or the supplement to imperfect human connection.  It allows us to stand alone as individuals without terror. 

    That meditation calmed me.  I slept.  When I woke, it occurred to me that my mother didn’t just pass on that fear through her behavior, her reactions to the world at large, and to me specifically.  Her terror was a result of the draconian medical treatment she received in the first six months of her life. Terror was set as her normal frequency then.  I was bathed in it along with the amniotic fluid.  How do you undo that order of fear learned at that early age?  Here, the Buddhist practice of Vipassana comes in.  You watch the sensations on your body, patching them at a time.  You don’t go into the feeling deep in your viscera. You focus on the surface of the body and the skin, and you observe the sensation on a small patch at a time. That way, you’re never overwhelmed. 

        When I got up at 3:30, I listened to a book on Audible, Magic Hour by Kristen Hannah, while I did my morning yoga. That blocked my mental machinations. I also worked on the updates.

   It was raining heavily where I lived 800 feet up the mountain, and I wondered if it was raining at the shoreline. The weather is usually different at different altitudes. The temperature up here is often five to seven degrees cooler than between here and Queen K, which is three miles lower.

    I decided to go to the beach for my Monday morning Chi Gigong session.  It was just Clyde and me, as it had been all summer. He spoke to Roger, who leads it during the winter season. Roger said he was practicing a new sequence with 100 moves. Right! The one we’re doing now has four. He’s dreaming if he thinks our motley crew will be interested in going through 100 moves. 

    After we finished, Clyde talked briefly about the political situation. He is a card-carrying member of the Unity Church. I thought the people of this church were all open-minded liberals, so I assumed he would be Democratic. Not only is he voting for Trump, but he believes his progressive wife is naïve. He described her as simple-minded. His reasoning was interesting. 

   I asked Clyde if he wanted a dictatorship. He said it was time for a change. Democracy wasn’t working anymore. Wow! This was a new one.  I don’t disagree with him that all the existing political systems aren’t working, but I don’t think Fascism is the cure. The global world requires a global solution.  How does that work?

  I dropped off some plastic cushioning material at UPS and went to the bank to get cash to pay Dan when he trims the trees.  Then, I was home for the rest of the day.  I slept and listened to Magic Hour on Audible, a book recommended by my friend Jean.  It was profoundly appropriate. It’s about a wild child found in a small town in the state of Washington, cared for by a psychiatrist willing to give her life for the job. I think it helped me adopt an attitude of self-love.

   Besides that, I slept for most of the day and finally did some gardening at the end. I sprayed the weeds against the fence I shared with Mei and Peter with vinegar. They let their patch be a mess. I spray over the fence, hoping to get some of their weeds as well as the ones on my side.

  I had a session with fourth-grade LG.  He is experiencing a big difference in math. He had three sessions to connect the abstract math algorithms with concrete examples. His mother texted me his homework for the night.  It had to do with solving for partial products.  For those of you who don’t know what that means:  Given 456 x 2=, you solve the problems by multiplying 400 x2=, 50 x2=, and then 2 x2, and then add up all the partial products.  He had no difficulty with the exercise.  He was brimming with confidence. 

   I spoke to his mother briefly.  I told her about the progress he had made in math and handwriting. Had she seen his handwriting? She said she knew about his handwriting.  Had she seen him write since I worked with him?  No. I asked LG to write his name in front of her.  She was duly impressed. LG said he wanted to do more work on handwriting.  We worked on writing the names of all his family members.  Once we had worked on the names of his mother, father, sister, and him, we had covered thirteen of the letters in the alphabet.

     I have developed the most effective method of teaching stroke patterns using the computer screen. Using a broad stroke, I form the letter slowly while the student follows using the index finger of his writing hand to start. LG started with that but preferred to use a pencil in subsequent lessons.

   When I went to the bank, the teller gave me a statement for the balance in the account. I was surprised. It was much lower than I expected.  I had deposited all the money from the warranty for my faulty solar system into that account.   I checked my checkbook to see if I could find an explanation. I could find no payment that would explain it.  I decided I had to check it with the bank.  I drove down there with two objectives in mind.  First, speak to a bank clerk to find an explanation.  The second objective was to stop at Target to buy an iPad for a friend who didn’t have ready cash.  She lived in Hilo.  I would try to arrange for her to pick it up there. When I arrived, the bank was already closed, and I went directly to Target.

   The clerks in the electronic department didn’t know who to arrange for a pick up in Hilo when the store was in Kona. I was told to go to customer service for help. I was there for an hour, holding up the line.  I called my friend to tell her it had been arranged.  When she went to the Hilo Target to pick it up, they said there was no order.  When I checked the order I got in my email, it did say the pickup was in Kona, not Hilo. Back to the drawing board.