News from Jules | 11.22.2023 | The Afterglow
I feel different since I returned a month ago. It’s the afterglow. A familiar feeling usually after going on a retreat—so grounded, yet also floating on air—like the orange and pink radiance after the sun has set before the sky fades into blackness. Just so, I keep waiting for it to wear off.
And yet, day after day, when I wake up and open my eyes, it’s still there.
How is my heart today? Grateful.
Not just because I got a clean bill of gynecological health this month (at my annual exam and my first mammogram!), or my first paycheck from my new job at REI Bend, or acceptance in affordable employee housing from my other job at Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort this winter. All reasons to be thankful indeed.
Because, of course, without these privileges—being healthy, earning income, and having shelter—it is much harder to have the peace of mind to notice and appreciate everything else. Thus, we gain such a different point of view from the contrast when we are without.
Grateful because simply walking barefoot into the bathroom each morning—just steps from the bed and indoors—there is running water! Not to mention electricity. Heat. Laundry. A soft bed, a free shower, a warm oven. After three months on the road, the novelty and ease of modern conveniences still haven’t worn off.
And this gratitude buoys me.
Even when I’m exhausted, like after my first eight-hour REI shift a week ago when I had a splitting headache and proceeded to sleep for 10 hours, I’m not dragged down into negativity. Instead, I felt compassion for my body as it adjusts to a new schedule and joy for the opportunity to get paid for work that is flexible, simple, and low maintenance.
Not that I was ungrateful throughout my trip. I felt very aware of the opportunity for freedom and exploration that I created. But, it took all three months for my habitual negativity to wear off. To wake up in a soaking wet REI tent for the fourth night in a row and not focus on the cold, the discomfort, the inconvenience. Instead, the awe of a tent nestled within the roots of thousand-year-old trees, that kept me dry even if it was soaked and had done so for 17 years, and counting.
This subtle, but huge, shift in perspective started one day while I was feeling tired, worn out, and probably hungry, and commiserating with a fellow traveler at a local brewery about “just surviving day-to-day.”
But wait, I realized: Survival is being in a chaotic, understaffed emergency room or in an explosive, hate-filled warzone. Survival is living on the street and defenseless or manically sleep-deprived as the parent of an infant.
When one truly doesn’t know how and if it’s possible to meet one’s essential needs.
Yes, there were many times on my road trip when I didn’t know where I’d sleep that night, nor where to find drinkable water or food, but that was as close to surviving as I ever was. I wasn’t destitute, I lacked information. I could and would meet these simple needs every day. Besides being inspired, that was the whole objective of each day of exploration. I had actually pared life down to the bare essentials of living.
Not surviving, simply living.
In their “On-The Go” Challenge, Ten Percent Happier meditation app founder Dan Harris and international mindfulness teacher Alexis Santos talk about these activities. How the experience of folding the laundry in itself is not unpleasant, it’s just that we think we’ve got better things to do.
“And how it’s these small activities, added up during the course of the day, that oftentimes define our lives. And so, if we diminish this activity as being something not worth really experiencing, in some ways, we’re missing a lot of our life,” Santos said.
“The fact of the matter is: this is your actual life, you might as well be here for it.”
Waking up early, commuting, working, bathing, grocery shopping, cooking, doing laundry, cleaning etc. This is simply living modern life as we know it. Simplify it or complicate it, there’s some amount of it no matter what, so why complain about it instead of appreciating it?
Recognizing the full worth of what we have.
Just so, during these past few weeks since I returned, once again waking up early, doing the routines, commuting, working, prepping for tomorrow’s routines, going to bed, and doing it all over again every day, an old thought came to mind about “the daily grind”: The difficult, routine, repetitive or monotonous tasks of daily work.
This is the way we define it.
But, these tasks, these routines, serve a purpose: They consistently take excellent care of us. As I follow my routines, I notice deep satisfaction in the benefits of sleeping well, feeling rested, having regular digestion, feeling satiated, being aware, and keeping perspective.
Perhaps it’s not the grind, but the flow.
That flow determines how I show up and relate to the world: From scarcity or from abundance? Through negativity or positivity? This must be why my Mom parroted every day while I was a teenager: “Change your attitude.”
Of course, she was right.
I’ve had to learn my own way how to change my perspective in order to change my attitude in order to change my mindset, or set of attitudes, and thus change how I relate to my experiences.
In other words, to change my Gratitude.
The readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
When I woke up and opened my eyes this morning, it was still there—the afterglow—so grounded, yet also floating on air, as I made my barefoot way to the bathroom to start my day.
May you live in the flow of gratitude this entire week.
Love,
Jules