XXXVII (Aging into a Prime)
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 09:08AM Yesterday was my 37th birthday. Going into the day, I felt a mild sense of despair. It’s just another day, it shouldn’t mean anything, just like New Years Day shouldn’t mean anything, right? But that was the problem - it didn’t seem to mean anything. I knew that the time would come when there would be few people left to go out with on my birthday, and I have no family, so these numbers just mean less and less and I would have to start dealing with it at some point. Still, I had a hard time shaking this downer of a feeling, even when I woke up yesterday morning.
So I sat and meditated and had one of the better and more focused unguided meditations that I’ve had in a while. When it was over, I just sat for a while, and as I got up and started preparing coffee and breakfast, I thought about the last three-plus months as I’ve started this path into Buddhism. It was not so much a birthday as a re-birthday. I am actually re-born as a more spiritual person than I’ve been in years. This isn’t born-again evangelical or road to Damascus kinds of moments, but it’s still significant.
And I haven’t smoked a cigarette in over three months now.
So the day went OK. I let my bad feelings go and went to work and was very productive. I had lunch with friends. It all went pretty well.
Until I got home found my dog limping and injured. She had damaged both of her left feet sometime during the day: tore a nail completely off a back left toe, and some internal damage/bruising of a front left toe (that one seems much more sensitive and painful than the torn-off toenail).
I ended the day at the emergency vet, making sure no bones were broken and getting the toenail-free foot bandaged. It was a far less scary experience than last time at the e-vet when the dog was having neurological issues. And mindfulness practice helped keep me fairly grounded as I waited to be seen.
The dog’s injuries may have come from either (or both) an encounter with a knocked over baby gate and/or my awful mean and nasty hard plastic and metal ski boots (those were also knocked over). Normally I ski on my birthday, but the sub-par conditions and low level of interest kept me from going up this year. There seems to perhaps be a cause-and-effect going on here: had I gone skiing on my own, would the dog have been injured like this? Seems like a weird effect of karma if so. Of course, one never can know these things for sure and can only deal with the current events instead of the what-ifs.
So I’m taking my birthday day-off today to keep an eye on my Greyhound so that her bruised paw can heal. All of my in-mind self-generated suffering over turning 37 in relative loneliness has evaporated.
Jeff Shell | Comments Off |
aging,
dog,
greyhound,
meditation,
mindfulness