A Mindful Life

Price of plain unleaded gas when I filled up the tank yesterday:
$4.19 per gallon
Diesel is over $5.00 a gallon. Thank goodness we don’t use that!

This post has been updated with an extra link.
I’m not writing as much these days. Never in my life have I been so spent by the day’s end. Mothering has brought into focus for me what is real and what matters. It burns off all that is extraneous. Being used so completely simplifies my options. [...]

Increasingly I live in the time called Now. My days are full; as Claire becomes more active and engaged, the more present I become. Oh, I do think about future things (my tasks for the next day), and I find past ruminations intrude often. When I “come to” my mind gnawing a past experience like [...]

I marvel at how Claire’s existence has opened my life. It’s also reassuring to see how people react to her. We go out daily (for my well-being as much as hers).
On Thursday we went to the mall. I’m not a fan of malls, but I thought it would be interesting (anything different is inherently interesting [...]

It occurs to me that I don’t always exhibit kindness. In fact, I can be a defensive, judgmental, argumentative, entitled, and angry person. I had an encounter just now that showed me this. It’s not how I want to be. Let me put it this way: I’m not very graceful when things go wrong and [...]

Compassion can be learned in much the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport, U.S. researchers said.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion [...]

Another collage

The Party’s Over (Or, Fools Rushed In)

I received an email this morning announcing a study. I participated. Here’s the information:
ATTENTION BLOGGERS!
I am a doctoral student in Communication Studies at Kent State University. For my doctoral dissertation, I am studying bloggers. Would you be willing to participate in my survey?
This online survey should only take about 15 minutes to complete, and it [...]

This observation was included in an article about adult discomfort with a crying child who won’t be comforted, and what to do for the child. The answer: just stay near. The excerpt articulates what I struggle with when my child cries.
“The inconsolable state of grief, or what feels like an intolerable level of loss or [...]

You’re asking the wrong questions. If you want to make the world a better place, tell funnier jokes!
–Woody Allen