Thursday, February 21, 2008

This is what 3am looks like…

I am pondering at 3:00 am the relationship between mind and body. I am trying to wrap my mind around what that relationship is and at the same time weave together two conversations that I had today, one with a treasured friend and the other with my body.

I came to the rather profound realization, during my conversation with my friend J, that there is a deep disconnection in my life, a fracture which I can trace back many years. During my conversation with J, I tried to explain this disconnection as two opposite poles which at various times of my life I have straddled. I have never felt ‘big’ enough to occupy both at the same time. When we talked, I found it hard to identify what those two poles were, and all I could think of was ‘Intellect’ and ‘Relational,’ but that didn’t seem right.

Then during yoga, I had a conversation with my body. Before you think I’m totally crazy, let me try to explain. If you are a woman, you have undoubtedly read a thousand magazine articles or books that have told you the importance of loving your body. In yoga, we are often told to listen to our bodies. I have never really critically examined what it means for us to do either. But what is implied in both is that somehow our mind, our senses and our hearts are separate from our body. Perhaps they are housed within it, but it is with the mind that we know our bodies, with our senses that we listen to it and with our heart that we love (or hate) it. Now of course we know that our brain, our ears and our hearts are all part of our body, but still a separation remains.

But today, I imagined my soul and my mind coursing through my veins. No, I felt it. For a brief moment, I experienced a deep inhabitance of my body. I felt connected in a way that is difficult for me to now explain. But I liked it. A lot.

At the risk of giving you blogging whiplash, I want to turn back to the earlier conversation with my friend. I was trying to explain to her my reticence around dating and relationships. I believe my past relationship failures have had a lot to do with my inability to embrace, at the same time, the intellectual me and the relational me. Growing up, the struggle was whether to be smart or pretty, because I knew somehow that being both was not a possibility. So, with men, and often with friends, I made the sometimes conscious and other times unconscious choice to turn off the brain whenever I turned on my heart. Because somehow along the way, I learned a destructive lesson. I learned that when I opened my mind to people, when I spilled my brain along with my heart, I have often been rejected. Here, I am seen as ‘too intense,’ ‘too intimidating,’ or simply as thinking too much. And so, I compartmentalized.

I’ve lived my life on competing paths. I walk down the path of intellect, a lonely path if there ever was one, afraid of opening my heart or my body because I feel as if opening either will diminish my ability to be taken seriously. Alternatively, I walk down the path of the relational, where my mind stagnates while my heart skips a beat.

I know that I am at risk here of sounding like a patient on your couch of psychoanalysis, but bear with me just a little longer. At 2:00 am, I realized that the two conversations that I was having were essentially the same conversations. Both conversations were about the separation of mind and body. Now, I am not talking about the body as simply an empty, physical shell. I think, when I am talking about the body, I am talking about how I present myself sensually, playfully and openly, in a word, relationally.

So, at 3:00am, I had an epiphany of sorts, or maybe it was/is simply a foggy, lack of sleep induced delusion. You decide. I’m far too tired to make that decision. But, what I realized was that my mind has always inhabited my bloodstream, my nervous system, my muscles, my organs and my bones. What I felt during yoga class was not a new connection, but a recognition of what has always existed. I can no more separate the two, than I can peel away my skin and prance about free of its encumbrance.

And now it is almost 4:30 am and I must take my sleep-deprived mind/body to bed. But I want to leave you with one last thought. Both paths that I took, I walked in my physical body. Each path I navigated with my mind. It was only my delusions and sometimes my skillful deceptions that allowed me to think otherwise. Who I am and who I let you see are not always the same and that is what needs to change. I want to know deeply and love fiercely. Both mean risks and neither can happen unless I allow both to. So, here I go, brain bits floating through my veins. Don’t even try to tell me that isn’t the way it works, because quite frankly I won’t believe you. :P

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Foodsome and the Food Slum

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about food. True, this is not something new, but it did compel me to write a blog dedicated to the stuff. I love food. There is something comforting and sensual about food that nothing else can replace. There are no ulterior motives with food. There is no selfishness or possessiveness with food. A hotdog will not fault you for choosing the buffet next door when you are really hungry. It is all about satisfaction.

Food is about satisfying not only hunger but whims. You could almost say that food is whimsy all packaged up in a Styrofoam take-out container. It really truly just makes me happy. I know you are supposed to feel guilty when you eat too much or eat the wrong things, but I think this is one area of my life where the guilt button is broken. I like what I like and avoid what I don’t. I make no apologies for my love of spicy food, nor for my shunning of lima beans. It just is what it is. Period.

I have a number of friends who seem to share my love of edibles. I rarely really find it easy to connect with people who are ambivalent about food, in fact. Really? You don’t care what you are eating? It’s just nourishment? C’mon. Really? There just isn’t anywhere else to go in that conversation.

But I have one friend in particular who shares my passion for food. Let’s call him ‘Steve.’ This may or may not be his real name, but regardless, ‘Steve’ loves food as much as me. Maybe even more. He’s what you might call a ‘foodie’. The first week I met him, he introduced me to Thai, Malaysian, Ethiopian and Cuban food. It was a food orgy. I knew I’d found my food soul mate. Until recently.

Recently, I have discovered that ‘Steve’ (again, this may or may not be his real name ;)), is a bit of a food snob. When you say words like ‘hot dog,’ ‘buffet’ or ‘Mongolian bbq’ he literally blanches (which, if you know ‘Steve’ is saying a lot). I, on the other hand, light up when I see the beckoning lights of a buffet or smell the sweet onions frying up next to the ‘tube steaks’ on the grill. Sometimes, food slumming gives me as much pleasure as imbibing on our world culinary tours. If it tastes good and I don’t have to cook it, I’ll eat it up. Food is an adventure. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my safari in a five star hotel. Or in a kitchen, for that matter!

Food. Someone should build a monument. Enough said.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Another ‘point of view’

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. And no, this isn’t really news. It’s more of an excuse for why I haven’t written anything here in so long. Quite frankly, I haven’t been able to decide what to write about.

Usually I find that because of my overly analytical nature and my intense desire for personal development, I see every bump in the road as a sign that this is an area I have to work on, and there have been a number of bumps in the road. But I don’t want to talk about those today. I want to talk about the whole idea of personal development.

You see, the problem with personal development, at least the way I see it, is that no matter how I phrase it, it always has the implication that I am not good enough, smart enough, or quite simply, that I am not enough. When one is always focusing on getting better, it is often easy to miss out on the progress you have made thus far.

Now, I am not advocating an end to personal progress! I just think that it is really important for us to find peace with where we are, who we are. I want to analogize this, not to a journey, because that implies a fixed destination, but more to an exploration. When we are exploring, we are always open to digressions, deviations and detours. I like that a lot.

I have a confession. I was the hiker who always wanted to stop halfway to check out the view. Honestly, I was most likely just out of breath or too tired or lazy and unmotivated to keep moving at a constant speed, but I think this is where I developed my attitude toward life.

When you stop half-way up a mountain (and yes, I did climb a mountain once, just ask my sister, she was there! [okay, it wasn’t a HUGE mountain, but it is still a mountain!]). Anyway, when you stop half-way up a mountain to ‘look around,’ you not only get to see how beautiful everything is around you, but you also get to see how far you have come. You get to see the bottom, where you started, make note of every rock you held onto for support, every bush that flew back to smack you in the face when the person in front of you forgot you were behind her, and the faint markings of the path that your feet have made on the way up.

Maybe for some people, stopping halfway makes them lose their momentum. I’ve heard that if you take your eye off the prize for even a moment, your progress is not only slowed but you also risk losing sight of where you are going. But, I think that sometimes we are so focused on where we need to be that we miss seeing not only how far we’ve come, but how beautiful the view is from where we are.

Today, I am celebrating my rocks and my paths. Last week, while writing my week-long comprehensive exam, I was inspired by all the support that was poured out to me as I struggled with exhaustion, rejection and discouragement. Every single person who reached out to me was a rock that I was able to hang on to and pull myself back up. I am so very grateful for all of you, for the mini-oranges, for the chocolate wishes, for the constant good thoughts and for the gentle and sometimes not so gentle pushing.

This week, I have had the opportunity to take a look at the faint path that I have worn across the landscape. I have been able to take the time to envision the not only the often jagged path that I have wandered, but the strengths I have gained along the way. I am not the same shy and awkward woman who began this exploratory journey all those years ago. But, I am glad that she took the risk and just started walking. And I think I owe it to her and to all of you to take a bit of time to enjoy the view. Maybe it is these stopping points, these new ‘view-points’ or ‘points of view’ that fuel us for the next leg of the journey, wherever that may lead us. I hope so, because I am looking forward to the next view-point already!