A grateful thought and a thankful heart
I started Ramadan alone, and expected to end it the same way.
For the first 11 days, my morning routine was wake (cursing the hour), listen for my flatmate to come up the stairs after his breakfast (sometimes beginning my meal in my room, if I'd thought ahead enough to have food waiting on my dresser), go down to the kitchen to finish up hurriedly while leaning against the cold kitchen counter, return to my room tired and vaguely grumpy about my inability to return to sleep. The practice of shifting negative thoughts into positive ones (what in my mind I think of as the gratitude project) that I was exercising throughout the rest of the day hadn't yet penetrated the earliest hours.
For the next 11 days (good symmetry there), my morning routine benefited greatly from the shared company of the same flatmate I'd previously been avoiding in the morning. In fact, it was during that period that the mornings really did become routine. The hour still felt awfully early, but somehow not rushing through my food made the whole process of getting up much easier, and knowing I wouldn't be alone in the kitchen was good incentive to stop grumbling to myself and just get on with it. Which opened up space in my mind for other things - like the gratitude project I'd had such good success with later in the day. Instead of thinking 'Seriously? I'm going to get up and go EAT something at this hour???' I'd try to roll out of bed thinking 'Thank you that I have a warm bed to sleep in and something good to eat this morning.'
That was also the period that I learned a lot in the mornings, from conversations with my flatmate. For the rest of the day we wouldn't say too much about Ramadan or how it was unfolding for each of us, but in the morning we would talk about it more. Sharing some of the experience of Ramadan with someone who had done it before was invaluable to my ultimate ability to see the whole month through. For example, instead of trying to eat a more-or-less normal breakfast as I had been doing before, I learned to eat dinner in the morning - no more toast and peanut butter and fruit and boiled egg for me (which left me hungry by early afternoon), instead rice and rich meaty stew and yogurt and a banana (which saw me through most of the day).
We talked about other things too, often laughing together, which makes any day a whole lot better right from the start. Those conversations helped put me in a good frame of mine for the introduction of other things into the morning routine. Instead of coming back to my room and going straight back to bed (a futile exercise to that point in any case), I'd take a few minutes first to actually say out loud all the things I was thankful for (what at that Buddhist meditation retreat I went to they called 'loving kindness meditation'). The first few days I did this, my list was abysmally short and vague. But the longer I practiced it, the longer my list got, and the more specific. I started looking forward to this time. And, probably since it helped calm my mind again, it actually helped me begin to be able to sleep again afterwards (which went miles to improving my general outlook and productivity the rest of the day).
For the last 6 days, I've been on my own in the mornings again. My flatmate's gone to another country, leaving me the only one in the house still observing the fast. My morning routine hasn't changed much, it's just gotten quieter, more introspective. This isn't a bad thing. I had a trigger point massage the other day, the kind where the therapist figures out which spots hurt the most, and then uses a wooden tool to dig in and make them hurt even more...ouch! As she was getting going she explained to me that she likes her clients to be 'wholly present in the moment,' to really experience the sensations as they arise and then to picture each muscle opening up around the pain. Essentially, she wanted me to visualize the relaxation of each muscle around the massage tool, and thus to actually physically cause the muscle to relax. The sooner I could unclench the muscle, the faster the pain went away, allowing her to deal with some of the pesky little knots hiding underneath the clenching, keeping me from moving freely. This was a fair analogy of the fasting part of Ramadan in my mind. The more I came to embrace the physical discomfort as just one necessary part of the total experience, the more I opened myself up to other, deeper aspects that weren't even in my awareness at the beginning of the month. And which do, in different ways, help me to move more freely in the world.
This morning I went down to the dark kitchen at 5am, as usual, repeating my thankfulness mantra somewhat more forcefully than other days. Tired. Missing the shared mornings with my flatmate. Wondering what I would put together to eat. He told me before he left that it would get harder the closer I got to the end, and he was right. Especially considering this is my last day in Dunedin for quite some time, maintaining my commitment to see Ramadan through (rather than, say, going for my favourite french toast brunch with friends), is taking more willpower than I expected. Also, I am getting low on food, having finished up the last of my stews a couple of mornings ago and now just working through the miserable little leftover bits of this and that ingredient that I didn't know what to do with earlier.
But rather than opening the kitchen door to a cold room, I found the space toasty warm. Nice. At first thinking that someone had just forgotten to turn off the heater before bed last night, I opened up the fridge to find a little care package of my favourite meaty Chinese dumplings (laboriously handmade yesterday by another flatmate) waiting for me with an encouraging note attached. They weren't there late last night, which means that sometime between midnight and 5am she came down to the kitchen, turned on the heater for me, and left me freshly steamed buns to eat. Though the others in the house remained tucked up warm in their beds as I had my breakfast, I was nonetheless not alone. And that is the essence of a grateful thought and a thankful heart.
For the first 11 days, my morning routine was wake (cursing the hour), listen for my flatmate to come up the stairs after his breakfast (sometimes beginning my meal in my room, if I'd thought ahead enough to have food waiting on my dresser), go down to the kitchen to finish up hurriedly while leaning against the cold kitchen counter, return to my room tired and vaguely grumpy about my inability to return to sleep. The practice of shifting negative thoughts into positive ones (what in my mind I think of as the gratitude project) that I was exercising throughout the rest of the day hadn't yet penetrated the earliest hours.
For the next 11 days (good symmetry there), my morning routine benefited greatly from the shared company of the same flatmate I'd previously been avoiding in the morning. In fact, it was during that period that the mornings really did become routine. The hour still felt awfully early, but somehow not rushing through my food made the whole process of getting up much easier, and knowing I wouldn't be alone in the kitchen was good incentive to stop grumbling to myself and just get on with it. Which opened up space in my mind for other things - like the gratitude project I'd had such good success with later in the day. Instead of thinking 'Seriously? I'm going to get up and go EAT something at this hour???' I'd try to roll out of bed thinking 'Thank you that I have a warm bed to sleep in and something good to eat this morning.'
That was also the period that I learned a lot in the mornings, from conversations with my flatmate. For the rest of the day we wouldn't say too much about Ramadan or how it was unfolding for each of us, but in the morning we would talk about it more. Sharing some of the experience of Ramadan with someone who had done it before was invaluable to my ultimate ability to see the whole month through. For example, instead of trying to eat a more-or-less normal breakfast as I had been doing before, I learned to eat dinner in the morning - no more toast and peanut butter and fruit and boiled egg for me (which left me hungry by early afternoon), instead rice and rich meaty stew and yogurt and a banana (which saw me through most of the day).
We talked about other things too, often laughing together, which makes any day a whole lot better right from the start. Those conversations helped put me in a good frame of mine for the introduction of other things into the morning routine. Instead of coming back to my room and going straight back to bed (a futile exercise to that point in any case), I'd take a few minutes first to actually say out loud all the things I was thankful for (what at that Buddhist meditation retreat I went to they called 'loving kindness meditation'). The first few days I did this, my list was abysmally short and vague. But the longer I practiced it, the longer my list got, and the more specific. I started looking forward to this time. And, probably since it helped calm my mind again, it actually helped me begin to be able to sleep again afterwards (which went miles to improving my general outlook and productivity the rest of the day).
For the last 6 days, I've been on my own in the mornings again. My flatmate's gone to another country, leaving me the only one in the house still observing the fast. My morning routine hasn't changed much, it's just gotten quieter, more introspective. This isn't a bad thing. I had a trigger point massage the other day, the kind where the therapist figures out which spots hurt the most, and then uses a wooden tool to dig in and make them hurt even more...ouch! As she was getting going she explained to me that she likes her clients to be 'wholly present in the moment,' to really experience the sensations as they arise and then to picture each muscle opening up around the pain. Essentially, she wanted me to visualize the relaxation of each muscle around the massage tool, and thus to actually physically cause the muscle to relax. The sooner I could unclench the muscle, the faster the pain went away, allowing her to deal with some of the pesky little knots hiding underneath the clenching, keeping me from moving freely. This was a fair analogy of the fasting part of Ramadan in my mind. The more I came to embrace the physical discomfort as just one necessary part of the total experience, the more I opened myself up to other, deeper aspects that weren't even in my awareness at the beginning of the month. And which do, in different ways, help me to move more freely in the world.
This morning I went down to the dark kitchen at 5am, as usual, repeating my thankfulness mantra somewhat more forcefully than other days. Tired. Missing the shared mornings with my flatmate. Wondering what I would put together to eat. He told me before he left that it would get harder the closer I got to the end, and he was right. Especially considering this is my last day in Dunedin for quite some time, maintaining my commitment to see Ramadan through (rather than, say, going for my favourite french toast brunch with friends), is taking more willpower than I expected. Also, I am getting low on food, having finished up the last of my stews a couple of mornings ago and now just working through the miserable little leftover bits of this and that ingredient that I didn't know what to do with earlier.
But rather than opening the kitchen door to a cold room, I found the space toasty warm. Nice. At first thinking that someone had just forgotten to turn off the heater before bed last night, I opened up the fridge to find a little care package of my favourite meaty Chinese dumplings (laboriously handmade yesterday by another flatmate) waiting for me with an encouraging note attached. They weren't there late last night, which means that sometime between midnight and 5am she came down to the kitchen, turned on the heater for me, and left me freshly steamed buns to eat. Though the others in the house remained tucked up warm in their beds as I had my breakfast, I was nonetheless not alone. And that is the essence of a grateful thought and a thankful heart.
posted by Roberta | 6:07 AM
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