Yin vs Yang

I’m conflicted.  Who isn’t, right?  There is a rumble going on between my inner hippie and my inner advocate.  At this point, the IH is winning.  The problem is, the IH wants to pick up and move to Traverse City, Michigan and live on a lake or a few acres that we can farm.  At the moment, that is somewhat impractical.

My inner advocate can live anywhere and in fact, with the internet at my fingertips, can assert herself constantly (as she is doing right now, writing this blog).  She worries and frets about current events, politics, the human condition, religious hypocrites, gay marriage, intrusive government and animal welfare.  She rants, writes, yaps on the radio and has been the dominant feature of my persona for years.  But, I can feel her shrinking, bit by bit, day by day.

It’s funny, but many women my age are just getting to know their inner advocate and allowing her to have a voice.  They’re speaking up, getting informed and involved and starting to finally ‘call bullshit’ on what they don’t like.  My personality and media career have always allowed and encouraged me to be outspoken and opinionated; in fact it’s been a requirement for many years.  Maybe it’s time for my IA to retire or at least, ratchet back to part-time status.

My inner hippie is my more holistic, spiritual side that has been somewhat dormant for most of my life, other than an occasional flutter here and there.  Now that she’s starting to flower, it’s invigorating and I feel like she needs room to grow. I suppose that the hippie and advocate can live side by side in harmony, but balance is something that I’ve never quite mastered.  I’m kind of an all or nothing gal; which has served me well professionally and in my quest for learning and knowledge, but it is probably also responsible for some of my failures.  The old saw,  “everything in moderation” isn’t even in my lexicon.

One way to handle this is to allow the inner advocate to advocate for a kinder, gentler, healthier lifestyle. I’ve noticed that more and more of my posts and opinions are moving in that direction.  My political views are moderating, softening a bit .  I no longer see things in black and white, Republican vs. Democrat terms.  My tribe vs. the other tribe.  The key is for all of us to quit relying on politicians to solve our problems, particularly since it’s obvious that they can’t and they won’t.  It’s time for a truce and to realize that each and every one of us is responsible for our own happiness and success, however you define that.

My inner hippie is kinder and more forgiving than my inner advocate; she is more willing to see the other side of an argument, more open to other viewpoints.  She believes that much of modern life, while convenient, isn’t always better or healthier or more fulfilling.  If I allow her to blossom and grow, then I think that she’ll have a positive effect on my inner advocate.  Perhaps they will meld into a more productive and evolved ‘me’.

So, the battle rages for now.  I’m back to daily meditation and gentler work-outs.  I’m eating whole, organic foods, listening to my body, getting enough sleep. The inner hippie and inner advocate will eventually work things out and move forward in harmony.  Mind follows body or body follows mind?  To be continued……

Stream of consiousness….

I’m in a rut.  And you?  I guess we have to define it first and that might be tricky because I suspect that my rut ain’t the same as yours.  Mine might be partly due to where I live, which is in a small town in the Rocky Mountains, northwest of Denver.  It’s cold and snowy and during the winter, you feel pretty isolated from your neighbors.

This year, the snow has been sporadic, which isn’t optimal for a community that thrives on skiing and the visitors the ski resort brings in.  My husband and I usually ski several times a week, but this year the conditions have cut our outings considerably.  This equates to too much time in the house sitting and thinking.   Too much togetherness, too much time spent watching uninspiring TV.  I feel like I’m waiting for something, anything to happen.  A rut.

Some of my friends have advised me to move closer to ‘the city’, but I’m not sure that would solve my problem, which if I’m honest, is 80 percent internal.  I spend time in the city and although there is much more to do and the conveniences are a lot more….well, convenient, I suspect that city living can be just as rut-inducing as rural life.  Seems as if the typical city/suburb dweller spends an inordinate amount of time in their car, shuttling kids, commuting to and from work, running errands and that’s stressful and tedious.  The more stuff and conveniences you have around you, the more compelled you are to ‘run out for a few things’.  So, you can be in a sort of suspended animation with few choices or suspended animation with too many.  I’ll take the former for my rut.

I know this about myself: I need space and more importantly, I need nature; in large doses.  I can be impatient and I often demand instant gratification.  Nature enforces patience, solitude and to a certain extent, doing without certain conveniences (like Whole Foods or Bed, Bath and Beyond and worst of all, Target!).    As I write this, I’m looking out of the window at a snow covered meadow, where we routinely see foxes hunting and playing, mule deer grazing and occasionally a moose or two.  As I was driving early yesterday morning, I saw two beautiful snowshoe hares.  They’re so white in the winter that they are absolutely luminous.  Every time I see one, it takes my breath away. In the spring, they go back to a brownish-gray color and are impossible to spot.  Patience.

Spring takes forever to arrive at 9000 feet and so I’m perusing seed catalogs for a garden I won’t be able to plant until June (if nature cooperates) and we eyeball our firewood supply, hoping we won’t have to dig through 3 feet of snow for more.  We get the hummingbird feeders out in late April to have them ready for the arrival of our harbingers of summer, who show up every year, without fail, by the second week in May.  Patience.

Look, I know that for a lot of you, this is a foreign concept.  You’re happy and fulfilled and I envy you.  I know that I spend way too much time in my own brain; thinking, planning, worrying, plotting, ‘what iffing’, which is probably why I’m sitting and writing, when I could be out ‘doing stuff’ on a Saturday morning.  I require a lot of solitude to recharge my batteries, which can also begin to drive you a little crazy.

So, I guess it’s perfect timing that my husband is out of town for a few days because the effect has been a break in our routine.  I think that sometimes we have such symbiotic relationships among spouses, kids and maybe even co-workers, that we move in tandem.  We’re almost tied together with strings and we share habits, routines, comfort zones.  With him out of town, I feel free to move differently.  For instance, yesterday I listened to ‘my’ music most of the afternoon, without feeling like I was imposing on anyone else.  I grazed, instead of fixing a meal for both of us; I turned off the TV and went to bed with a book and read late into the night.  All things that I don’t do when living in symbiosis with my husband.

A minor shift in my universe and I feel less rutted today.  Better….and you?