At This Moment

What I do is what I need. I do for which I am responsible to myself or others. This week, today, at this moment.

Several times last week I had conversations about present-mindedness. I also had another conversation about routine. By the end of the week I had linked the two ideas together with the insight that developing habits, or even changing ingrained habits is easy if you have a focused consciousness. Making a lifestyle choice is not difficult if you possess present-mindedness and have a purpose for your choice. I've found it easy to make a lot of fundamental routine choices this year. You just do what you do.

On Saturday night I had a special dinner with my mom, Dwayne (her boyfriend whom I like), Rhonda (her boss whom I also enjoy), and her boyfriend (whose name I can't remember). My mom insisted that I have the Sea Bass. She tried three times and each time I politely declined.

I realize her persistence had to do with her denial that I am no longer a meat-eater (she's proud as she is perplexed), but too, since I became an ovo-vegetarian about 6 weeks ago, she reasons, "she can cheat and have just a little bit." She reminded me that refusing to eat meat was a "choice" and not a necessity. That's true in her mind, but not my own. Principled choices are where choice and necessity merge. I'm not tempted to eat Sea Bass, even though I loved fish in a past life, because I don't eat meat. For the same reason, I exercise everyday because that is what I do. I began not flushing my toilet at every visit in order to conserve water and power, part of a new environmental ethic I am integrating into my life. A shift takes place, so it is done.

The only challenge I've encountered, however, is when I am changing habits which have helped me cope in some way. Dealing with "money matters" comes to mind. I minimally think about budgeting, money, and costs since it excavates deep financial anxieties connected to childhood. Raised separately most of my life by a compulsive gambler father and poverty burdened mother, money emotionally represents discomfort, sacrifice, pain and manipulation.

Intellectually, I have come to associate money with greed, excess, deprivation and unbridled capitalism. Changing certain habits have been more a struggle, in which along with a routine, I am forced to uproot bad feelings for new impressions. Money continues to pay a minimal role in my life. I choose to live as simply as possible for myself. More importantly, it's a choice not motivated by fear, but rather--principle. It's a welcomed change, one that is liberating from my own self-limitations.

Discipline is all that is required to make personal changes. It takes a commitment to leave places that have helped you hide from things which may not even exist anymore, if they ever did.