Ups and Down

It struck me the other day that I have lived long enough to see plenty of the amazing, fresh new things on the market, later become worn and tired relics. In other words, I am old enough to have experienced many whole life cycles of many, many ideas and products. This came to mind out of nowhere. For some reason I started remembering back in the early 1990s, when I was a textbook salesperson. (Yes, that position is a real thing. A textbook salesperson goes into professors’ offices and tries to convince the professor to adopt their publisher’s textbook, so that the 8000 kids taking Introduction to Biology, will have to purchase said textbook. Don’t hate me.) Anyway, back then, “email” was the new thing. Most of my professors whom I called on, still preferred receiving telephone calls and voicemail messages. They did not even look at their “emails.” A few “cutting edge” professors started insisting on emails only. Nowadays, it seems like email is only slightly more of an upgrade to snail mail. We all have a million examples of this. Technology is changing so quickly, even our twenty-something kids have experienced a few product lifecycles of something going from “latest and greatest” to graveyard in the wink of an eye.

In my readings this morning I was reminded that acceptance is not consenting and approving, but more so, an awareness of the way things are in a moment. Acceptance is a detached noticing of what is happening. Acceptance is being fully aware of “what is.” When I find myself getting curmudgeonly about they way things are changing in my lifetime, and I stubbornly start sticking my feet into the sand, I am reminded that nothing remains “the it” thing/person/way of being/way of doing things, for long, especially these days. Having been at a Disney amusement park recently, I was reminded of what it is like to be on their imaginative thrill rides. Entering into the ride car, you realize that the whole ride and experience is really just made-up, creative, imaginative fun, despite how realistic these rides now seem to be. You get on the ride, and you surrender to the experience, trying to soak it all in – the feelings, the sensations, the thrills, the fears, all the while, never taking the ride too seriously. In the end, you know that you will get off of the ride, and everything will be okay. You have the expectation that you will arrive safely back to normal. Perhaps there is an analogy here?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.