Simply Dance

Reading the check-ins from a Catholic on-line weight paying attention group I belong to has made me realize how consistently we fall into a trap of giving up too early.  We strive for perfection, our best, and yet we seem to continually fail--or so we perceive it to be.  What's profound is how wonderful, beautiful people with complicated lives and attention to those they love are sidelined by eating too much chocolate, by failing to exercise, by not keeping track.  I recently finished reading "The Happiness Project," by Gretchen Rubin.  I was hoping to be inspired by it, and certainly I was.  I also seem to be somewhat shamed as this woman's attentiveness to the precepts (as they have become for me) that discipline, focus and sacrfice have rendered a best seller, a #1 bestseller.

I celebrate this woman's success and her timeliness in a market that hungers for something like this.  What I think we hunger for is completion, a sense that we are doing our best. What we fail to keep in mind when we act to improve ourselves is that we can only strive for better.  Best is an illusion, it is a future eventuality I hope, but it is not the "better" of now.  The "better" is achievable, best is not.  Yes, we have "personal bests" and records, but that's not the point.  This is a precept of this journey the author takes.

I don't hope to imitate Rubin.  I do not need to wonder if I am happy.  But reading this book helped me realize I could be moreso, because it is a choice, a choice that perhaps takes discipline, focus and sacrfice.  Still, discerning how that might apply to the point of this blog, I realize that simple "awareness" is not going to help me realize my vision--for if I cannot see a goal as more of a vision, I will lose my passion for it.  And this is precisely the point where I am prone to give in, to give up, to say that I can't commit to profound revelations about this weight loss thing I am reluctant to call a weight loss thing.  I am struggling not to draw attention to the thing I do not want to draw attention to.  Then what doI do?

Simply, do better.  Remember Simple, the S of S.T.R.E.N.G.T.H

Focus on something else, break my own rule and make a rule, or precept, for me. So what is simple and what is doable is to put on workout clothes the first thing in the morning, even if I go back to bed and sleep.  My intention this morning was to get on the treadmill.  But I decided to clean the kitchen first--at least create a more positive environment for when I have to eat again., but I didn't get far.  I decided I needed to listen to Gino Vannelli's "Jehovah and All That Jazz" (which might possibly be my all-time favorite song--at least until no) and I ended up dancing to it three times--and I think jazz music can be difficult to dance to--especially alone)  I needed the healing and abandon I find in this song, its holy irreverance.  I needed the vision of myself dancing, not the one I would dare view in something as flat and one-dimensional as a mirror.  That is not vision, it's not even adquate image. No, no, just the joy that teases movement when the piano rift drifts into the saxophone wail.  Listen, if you have ears.  What a gift to hear the fullness of sound, to clarify a vision it evokes.

I may never get on the treadmill today, and it looks less and less likely, but I've got a couple hours to keep cleaning...and dancing!  I am less inclined to simply give up, to be overwhelmed by household tasks and even a desire to write.  Workout clothes for me are not particularly flattering but they get the job done.  Scant because I get hot when I move, and when I get cool it reminds me, I have to move, if only to cycle the laundry, or to generate enough body heat that when I stand in the garage to fold it I will be grateful for the coolness of the space. 

While dancing, I thought about how my core muscles just needed to be treated better--and blessed with new strength.  And I have long meditated on the pregnant metaphor of core. (it's where the seeds are)  So, of course I made an anagram of C.O.R.E--and this is my copyright too--Cooperate Organically, Respond Enthusiastically?  Putting on workout gear has been an important reminder that I need to to respond enthusiastically, today I chose to dance--with passion, and the gratitude that no one was watching.