You Can't Always Get What You Want

"I caaaaaaaaan't." - Gloria, Paperhanger, Drummer, Lover of Wolves

Day 15. The dawning of Week Three. Fifty weeks left to my goal. Sometimes it feels like I can. Sometimes it feels like I can't.

Several years ago I befriended an amazing woman named Gloria. She hung wall paper by day, drummed in a band by night. Co-habits with four wolves. Singularly built an eight-foot high fence around her five-acre piece of land to protect the wolves. One of the strongest women I know. Once she expressed a feeling state that I'll never forget. We were meeting for dinner, and she arrived at the restaurant looking exhausted and drawn. I asked about her day. She said she had been hanging paper alone in a 4,000 square foot house. At mid-afternoon she approached the entryway with its spiraling cathedral ceiling. Bullied her extension ladder against a side wall, and dragged the wet, glue-laden strip of wallpaper up, up, up. Gloria said that as she reached to align that first strip of paper with the ceiling, her arms screamed and her eyes swam. Out of her mouth she uttered, with the exact enunciation of every two-year-old asked to stop crying when she's flailing in a Wal Mart aisle two hours past nap time: "I CAAAAAAAAN'T."

Now, Gloria is no wimp. Her paper hanging specialty is the 24-foot ceilings of newly-built mansions. But we all have our limits, and that day she hit one of hers. So Gloria, with her splendid and gallant good sense, climbed down off that ladder, wadded up that strip of paper, and exited that entryway. Went home. Came back the next day and got 'er done.

I learned a lot from Gloria. Learned about approaching things in realistic increments, and knowing when it's time to climb down off a ladder. Some nights, THIS night, after a long and harrowing day at work, the thought of posting a blog and sitting on my cushion for 20 minutes (effectively delaying the moment I can crash in my bed) fills me with the same emotion Gloria experienced high up on that ladder. But I'm not two, and a fall off my cushion is likely survivable. So I'm watching the thought, the feeling, the sound of, "I caaaaaaan't" and letting it float on by. And I'm going to get my butt on my cushion. Because that's what I promised to do.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc