"Centering"

Okay, I'm going to break a guy-rule here and admit the following: I can get really emotional watching movies. I'm not talking about crying, I mean all emotions. A good film just taps into me and the feelings start flowing out. I was watching one tonight and paused it--right at really good part, too--because I felt some anger that I needed to take the time to process. I went out for a run, and now I'm at my favorite coffee shop. And wouldn't you know it, there are two friends of Bill here, discussing where the best women's step study meetings are.

We are everywhere.

The anger stuff isn't really about me; it's boundary processing, continuing to learn and practice the principles. Other people's stuff is not mine to deal with. And, ironically enough, the friends of Bill are talking about stuff that's 'outside their hula hoop'. Love it. Their conversation has nothing to do with me, and yet it's exactly what I'm thinking about. This Recovery thing is so amazing.

Tonight when I got home, I did some laundry. My toilet sprang a leak and I used half my towels cleaning the water up. I'd planned to work on some music, but that's not how things worked out. And as it turned out, though, I did get done what I needed to--the bathroom's clean and I got to be here on the patio listening to Recovery happen. And to top it all off, the gal who works the counter here at the coffee shop is involved in our local version of the 'Occupy' movements sweeping the world right now, so I got to chat with her about how those are going. She wants me to come out and join them. We'll see.

Life is so full of such amazing things. Moment to moment, things can and do change. And we get to choose how we deal with all of it. We can be awake for it, taking joy in all that goes on around us, or we can be sucked in to the chaos and insanity. We can ride all the ups and downs, letting ourselves get spun out until we've forgotten what it's like to not be swept away, or we can remain centered and watch it all happen.

We can fall all over ourselves, trying to control, trying to rescue, refusing to accept the things we can't change; or we can choose serenity instead. The choice is ours and no one else can make it for us.