Ruby & Row : A Mighty Generous Hand

A Mighty Generous Hand

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i didn't feel like meditating today (i felt great! i don't need to meditate!), but i did it anyway. twenty minutes on the mat.

towards the end, i felt emotions bubbling up- starting from the lower abdomen, drifting into the chest, then sitting heavily in the throat.

it's funny how even on days where we feel "great", we still need to care for ourselves, tend to the mind. because that feeling of greatness will fade once that person in traffic cuts you off and slams on his breaks, or when your friend doesn't tell you an exciting piece of info you'd have loved to have been apart of.

so in tending to the mind, i felt a little more at peace with everything going on, with everything that needs to get done.

i came back to this Strayed essay after my mind kept gravitating towards finances. and the lack thereof. and the lust for travel and manicures. and the asking of "why"? why can't i do or have these beautiful oh-so-fulfilling experiences and ever-so-necessary beautiful luxuries of life? Strayed sets me straight. every, fucking, time.

"Instead I was forced, by accident of birth, to work one job after another in a desperate attempt to pay the bills. It was so damn unfair. Why did Kate get to study in Spain her junior year? Why did she get to write the word “France” on her resume? Why did she get her bachelor’s degree debt-free and then, on top of that, a new car? Why did she get two parents who would be her financial fall back for years to come and then—decades into a future, which has not yet come to pass—leave her an inheritance upon their deaths?

I didn’t get an inheritance! My mother died three months before I “graduated” college and all I got was her ancient, rusted-out Toyota that I quickly sold to a guy named Guy for $500.

Bloody hell.

So here’s the long and short of it, Wearing Thin: there is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding. And dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand."