LIVING BETTER

Hellebore or Winter Rose

It's been muddy here where I live.  We've had so many damp warm days that the daffodils have popped up too early.  The Hellebores, though, are right on time.  Also known as the Lenten rose, the Christmas rose and the winter rose, but they only resemble a rose, they aren't one.  Last Spring my brother transplanted some for me from our woods where they couldn't be seen without traipsing over rotting logs and dodging the stickery overgrowth.  Leaves, stem, flowers, sap and roots--the whole plant is so toxic that the deer leave them alone.  Last weekend my husband brought a few more closer to the house.  The main erosion prevention where we live is rock.  Rocks partly buried, rocks under the earth, rocks wherever we place our spade.  So we got a little rock pile out of the holes he dug.  Since I've loved playing in the dirt since childhood, it was a happy day for me.  If you're a gardener too, don't you just love kneeling on the wet earth? 

January has brought loads of suggestions for living better.  Gadgets, technology, energy savers, mood boosters . . . .  but I'm thinking that being outdoors trumps them all.  Bundled up or stripped down--whatever the weather demands.  I read about rates of depression climbing among teenagers and young adults, women, veterans and just about everybody else.  So anything we can do for ourselves or for others, deserves our attention, don't you think?   Otherwise health or family issues, job or money issues, or plain old unhelpful thoughts can push us toward our limit. 

These ideas are ones that bear repeating--I can't remind myself too much.


1.  Take more time for ourselves.  Not so easy I know.  I remember when I had no time for anything but putting a meal on the table, supervising homework and getting ready for tomorrow.  Feeling like I couldn't carve out a minute. But that wasn't so healthy.  Experts say that time alone helps us regulate our emotions so we can better deal.  A sort of Time Out I guess. And where better to have this Time Out than outdoors. There's actually measurable evidence that solitude can be restorative, build confidence, help us set boundaries and boost our creativity and productivity. Solitude isn't loneliness. It's time to enjoy our own company, to please no one but ourselves.  Have you noticed how you're not lonely when you're on a walk, taking a hike, by a waterfall, rowing a boat, whatever it is you like best in nature to do?  Some days for me that might be just reading on a bench or sitting by the fire pit.  

2.  When something is good, enjoy it! Wholeheartedly.  Sometimes when I'm enjoying the outdoors my mind goes to what I should be accomplishing.  As if nourishing our bodies and souls in nature weren't enough of an accomplishment!  Or I might wait for the other shoe to drop. This day or hour is too nice; what's going to happen to spoil it?  Or try to anticipate some future hypothetical disappointment so I won't be taken off guard.  Sometimes I do that right while I'm in the midst of having a good time!  Negative expectations they're called.  And what a waste those are!  When something negative does happen it's never what I was preparing for anyway.  In fact the worst things that have happened to me so far I could not have anticipated, not with all the foresight in the world. So, why not savor the good without worrying so much about what will come next?  Why not give ourselves a break?  Cradle our joy.  

Illustration by Lori Roberts

3.  Give mistakes their due but no more than that, our own or those of others who may have hurt us. 

Remorse - is Memory - awake -

Her Parties all astir -

A Presence of Departed Acts -

At window - and at Door

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

 

Remorse and regret are pretty much the same.  Not happy feelings.  One way to manage bad feelings is to accept them, knowing they won't last forever.  Just like our thoughts, our feelings come and go.   The more choices we have the more likely we are, apparently, to fear we've made the wrong one. And maybe we have, or someone else did and it's affected us.  Better to find a middle ground between avoiding something we wish hadn't happened and obsessing over it, whether it's something we did or that was done to us.  I've been working on this a while now.  Last night was the first of eight weekly classes on "Loving Kindness Meditation" at Duke Integrative Medicine.  That is a part of this effort.  And today I'll be outside again doing the quarterly maintenance on the mossy path I've made winding in the woods beneath the trees.  In other words staying with the present which is not where obsessions live.  

With much hope and expectation for living better this year.  Nina Naomi