Instructions for making better choices

IT'S ALL THE DEEP END by Chelsea Snow

There are few things in this world that are true--things that don't change depending on your perspective or your privilege or your fleeting phases. This letter (full text below) contains one of the true things: choice is not about the future, it's about the present moment. Choice is about deciding to follow a curiosity or an idea or a whim and see where that leads. Choice is about taking a path instead of standing still or walking in circles. Your choice isn't guaranteed to change your future, the only thing it for sure changes is the way you feel once you've made it.

Last winter I learned how to meditate and it changed my life. The six months after learning how to do this (ridiculously easy) thing were some of the clearest, most intentional, most productive, most loving of my life. But as the school year ended and life transitioned from one thing to another and my structured days became markedly less-so, my practice vanished. I wasn't choosing not to meditate--I would simply forget to do it. I didn't forget my mantra, I just forgot how to use it. It's like knowing that you know something (like the name of a movie) but not being able to recall it. The essence of it is RIGHT THERE but it's still inaccessible. It's weird to have this sensation about a practice (as opposed to a fact), but I think it's the reason that so many people (almost everyone I know) falls out every once in a while: we don't choose to stop, we forget to continue.

Sometimes the solutions are so easy. This morning I went down to my local TM office and had a "tune-up". I'm not sure how it worked, but all of that knowledge came flooding back at once--it re-entered my body with an almost overwhelming sense of euphoria. I remember now! And I'll forget again! And that's okay.

I've been putting off writing all week. I've been putting off everything all week. School starts today (for me and all those children) and shit's about to get real complicated again. I haven't wanted to look at the list of things I needed to do, and I especially haven't wanted to sit down to write because when I write I tell the truth, and the truth would mean acknowledging that fucking list. 

But suddenly the list is surmountable, the writing is weak but it's happening, and I'm remembering how to do these things that I was so scared I had forgotten how to do entirely--not just meditating, but all of it. It might not all come rushing back in a flood of joy like meditating did, but it will come back and I can tune up all of these things: the rigor of grad school, packing school lunches every day, making enough money somehow, another rainy winter. 

Last week my dear friend Heather wrote eloquently about something I've been thinking about, and something Hunter S. Thompson was probably thinking about as he gave his advice in 1958. She wrote about jumping (okay, falling) into the unknown--or as I like to call it: the deep end. Consciousness is an ocean, and in this ocean there are a few shallow areas. But let's be honest: once you're in it, it's ALL the deep end. Float or swim...just don't sink.

Prints  here .

Prints here.

Borrowed from brainpickings:

Dear Hume,
your friend,