The First Step

At some point in your life, you gained the ability to stand, and then to lift up one foot without falling over right away, and then to put it back down a little closer to where you want to be, and then shift your weight onto it and lift the one you stood on a moment ago. You probably fell down soon after that, or you may have had something to hang onto so you didn't fall.  Remember?

I don't remember either.  I mean, all that happened to me too, but I can't remember it.  If I knew then that it was something I'd be doing millions of times, would I have done it?  It took me a lot of years to realize that when a goal requires a high number of repetitions of the same action, it merely looks daunting.  Granted, to look daunting is to BE daunting, but there's a deeper sense in which appearances are deceptive.  There's something in the distinction which eludes description.  I hope you feel the same sense of infinite potential that I do.  It's got a little bit of fear in it for me, but mostly excitement and joy.

In the last few weeks, I've come to recognize that my mind is full of stuff, or maybe it's my memory.  Something about my experience feels like it's crowding me.  I'd like the freedom to drive to New Hampshire over the next week to be at Porcfest, but I have commitments and desires that probably won't be fulfilled if I do.  Am I writing this post to convince myself to drive away from my family for a couple weeks?  No.  It came up because driving to NH is one thing I don't have the freedom to do, and that isn't because of other people.  It's because of me and all the stuff I've allowed to collect in my mind and memory.  There is a way to handle it, and there is a first step in performing that method.

The first step at this point is to figure out how to do it.  Sit and think.  Meditate.  I meditated this morning but the thought "you have too much stuff going on to be as free as you want to be" didn't come up.  Something this important ought to, even if I'm meditating.  Maybe this is why I had the dream last night of flushing the toilet and seeing that the toilet did NOT overflow, but the sink did.  It didn't make sense to me.  I woke up curious about it, but not curious enough to think about it.  So maybe dreaming that flushing the toilet made the sink overflow, and knowing that my commitment to blogging would bring it into my consciousness was enough to let my subconscious leave me to meditate in peace.

I think I just figured out the first step, and it is this: Ask for help. Or maybe the first step is to try to write out a list of all the things in my head.  Maybe I can ponder whether to ask for help or write a list in order to avoid actually taking a first step.  Because, as you know, if you take the first step, there still may be 999,999 more steps you have yet to take, and who wants all that work?

My wife, Kim, is sleeping*, and I'm totally not comfortable waking her up to tell her I need help.  I have some other things I need to do*, and I want to get them done before I write out a list of things in my head.  I'll use "I need help" as my mantra, and try to let a lot of people know, because I think that will be more effective than well..., honestly just hiding the fact that I need it.  If you need help too, go let someone know.  We'll do it together.  And by "together," I only mean in spirit.  Is that enough?

*By the time I published this, these weren't (as) true any more.