Santa Rosa

We got back to Santa Rosa on Wednesday afternoon, and I spent a very lazy day hanging around the house on Thursday.  This morning, I decided to get up and go for a run.  I got out of the house around a quarter to 9.  The sun was warm, but it was still crisp in the shade, and a gentle breeze kissed my skin from time to time.  The weather felt divine, arresting in its gloriousness…

I ran through Taylor Mountain Park, just a few-minutes’ walk from the house.  I had a turn-around time in mind, but it was so pretty out there I decided to just keep running.  The area I ran in today was an open cattle grazing area.  I didn’t see any cattle, but I was graced with a visit from a wild turkey.  That was fun.  I had a similarly lovely run at the Laguna Lake Park Open Space in SLO when I was there last week.  There was a herd of about a dozen horses grazing there, and they happened to be coming through an open gate just as I was going through in the other direction.  I didn’t get close enough to touch, but was certainly close enough to enjoy their presence.  I haven’t been that close to a horse, let alone a herd of horses, in years.  It was magical.

While on my run today, my wandering mind conjured up some imaginary future run-ins with people that I hate.  Yes, that’s right – hate.  I carry around hatred inside me…  There are people out there I feel hatred for…

At some point, I became aware of what I was doing, of the fact that my mind had conjured up these people and that even thinking about them evoked a strong, visceral, negative reaction in me.  Of course, I don’t wish to feel this way, and I certainly don’t wish to run into one of these people someday and be washed over by a wave of hate I never even saw coming.  I was surprised that this feeling would arise at that moment, apropos of nothing, and I was both sucked in by the feeling of hatred – the familiar comfort of feeling justified in my hate – and disturbed by the intensity of my absorption in it.

My first inclination was to analyze the feeling, to try to understand where it came from as a means of dissolving it.  Of course, my mind set about trying to rationalize the feeling – why I should feel that way, or why feeling that way made sense, or how I could use that feeling to inform my decision-making.  It was a seductive thought, but it was easy enough to put off once I saw it for what it was – rationalizing.

“They” say that, in order to change anything in your life, the first step is to accept the thing as it is.  You can’t do anything about a problem that you don’t recognize exists.  If you want to fix it, you must first accept that it is.  In this case, that meant accepting that I have hatred inside me.  It’s tempting to look outside oneself and place the problem out there, on them, but that’s really just a sad delusion.  After all, it’s not like hatred of these people is universal, or that my hatred of them is their problem.  They don’t suffer from my hatred.  The only person who suffers from my hatred is me (and the people who have had to hear me bitch about it over the years).  Attempting to place the problem outside myself only denies me the means of fixing the problem, gives those I hate control over my emotional state, and casts me as a victim and them as a perpetrator of some imagined crime.  Pretty sick, huh?

One tactic I’ve learned about for dissolving tenacious negative emotions is simply to shine the light of your attention on them.  This doesn’t mean analyzing them or thinking about them.  It simply means acknowledging them when they arise – accepting that they are – and then focusing your attention on them.  So, when I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere thinking about my hatred, I decided to just pay attention to it, to how it physically felt.

Have you ever paid attention to how your emotions feel physically?  I haven’t.  The hatred was a pit in my stomach, and as I focused my attention on it, it grew in size and intensity and began to make me nauseous.  I was astounded that I’d been carrying this around inside me and didn’t even realize it.  I had finished my run at this point and was walking to cool down.  I continued to focus my attention on that feeling of hate – that pit in my gut – as I walked back to the house and began stretching.  At some point, my attention began to wane and my mind took over, flooding me with mental distractions that made it difficult for me to keep focusing my attention on that pit in my stomach.

Eventually, I lost it.  The pit kind of disappeared into whatever dark hole in my psyche it’s been hiding in all this time.  I tried to conjure it up later so I could attend to it some more, but that didn’t really work.  It’ll rear it’s ugly head again when I’m not expecting it, and I’ll have a new opportunity to focus my attention on the feeling rather than being swept away in the thought…

Tomorrow it’s on to Portland, folks.  I’ve really enjoyed my time here with my family, and yet it seems to have gone by in a blur.  It’s already over, and I wonder where the past week went.  It’s a long drive – 10.5 hours up to Portland with a couple-hour layover in Springfield.  Still, I’m excited to see familiar faces, and to meet new ones.  Tomorrow, I breach new (for me) territory.  We’ll see what new and interesting experiences that brings.

P.S.  I learned how to make pesto today.  Thanks, Uncle G!

P.P.S.  I have my passport AND Brazil visa in hand.  Thanks, Cousin S!

TL;DR:  Hate rears its ugly head when least expected; off to Portland – looking forward with tears in my eyes.