And the follow-up...

In my most recent search for more information on embracing Buddhism, I came across Jack Kornfield. He is an American who studied to became a Buddhist monk. That is all I'm willing to write, as I haven't done a ton of research and I don't want to get any of his information wrong. 

I came across this lovely meditation on his website. Given that I've been prone to ranting lately, I felt this would be quite beneficial to me and likely to many others out there.

Lovingkindness Meditation

Enjoy!

Discrimination, what discrimination?

This is a post that I started a long time ago in which I was ranting about the very same topic that I sat down to rant about tonight. I will address the fact that I don't want to be ranting all the time in an oncoming post. (The one that I started writing tonight but couldn't finish as I couldn't bring the words together.)

Sigh. I'm ranting again. But this time, it's something that is quite seriously wrong with our country. What could that be, you ask?

Racism. It exists in our country. True to Canadian culture, it's not overt, but it courses beneath the surface, showing its ugly face in debates that allow it hide its true nature. For example, the government is currently toying with the idea of changing the national anthem. It would like to make the language more gender neutral and remove references to God. This has brought all sorts of vitriol about how yeah, sure, we have religious freedom, but most of us are Christian so we should just stick with that. *Scratches head* How the heck does that work? Our country is not a religious one. Religion and state are separate in Canada. And we all are free to practice whatever religion we please.

I particularly enjoy how those who insist that our society has become too politically correct and accommodating have never experienced any sort of racial discrimination. "Old" Canadians enjoy telling new Canadians to suck it up and accept the new country that they've come to, seemingly expecting complete assimilation. What I find interesting, and something that people often miss, is that the vast majority of immigrants that I know personally have done everything they can to integrate into Canadian culture. Most of them would not ask for any special consideration and would say that they came here because they wanted to be Canadian. You rarely hear that come up when the immigrant bashing comes up, though.

I've been fortunate enough in my life to have experienced the other side. I've been the newcomer to a country and understand what it is like to be on the outside looking in. At first, you don't know what the cultural norms are, and just do what's normal for you. It can take many years to learn the nuances of culture and even after many years, it is often impossible to master. I have felt the sting of people assuming I'm stupid because I haven't learnt the language yet or because I inadvertently committed some social gaffe.

...

This is where I stopped. Racism hurts - you more than anyone else. Peace. 

Just Own It!

No, not the podium. :p

I'm soooo tired of passive aggressive moaning and groaning. You don't like something about your life? Change it! You're unhappy with your hair? Cut it! You think your husband doesn't appreciate you the way he should and wishes he would spend more time with you? Tell him!

Why do people not just express what they are thinking instead of playing the "if he/she loved me, then he/she would know." This is such a toxic way to run a relationship. And no one ever wins. The one who is using passive aggression doesn't get their way and the one who is being passive aggressived (hee hee) just wonders what the hell they did wrong.

This is all vent. And it's short. I have other things to do, but this needed to be said. Maybe I'll add  more later.

I'm toying with an idea

I want to commit myself to yoga more. When I had anxiety issues, yoga played a huge role in helping to get them under control. I feel much more at ease when I do yoga on a regular basis. I need to start getting healthier and yoga is a wonderful tool to improving one's physical well-being.

So what's my problem? I have no initiative. I can't get moving. I know I should. I have 3 or 4 DVDs and I have a friend that comes with me to classes (which I prefer). Why don't I do it?

I challenge you, my readers. If I know people are watching me, then I might find the motivation. The goal? A 30 day yoga challenge, as it were. It doesn't have to be long but I want to do a yoga practice each day. Is anyone out there? If you are, let me know and shame me into actually committing to this challenge! ;) I'll share my revelations along the way. :)

Why FMWTIP?

So I started this blog and it would appear that I very quickly abandoned it. That is not true. I have been pondering my next entry and wanted to make it just right. There are a great many things that make me shake my head and I've found that I have less and less patience for certain attitudes. I was planning to write about one of those needling points. But then I was afraid that the negative tone of the post was not the spin I was looking for for this  blog.

Perhaps I should explain the title then?

This is a title that I came up with back in my early twenties when my life was fraught with drama. Is then any early twenty-something who isn't going through some sort of dramatic crisis of sorts? Anywho, this came to me one day and I swore that I would use it as the title of the book that I have always intended to write. I even went so far as to send myself a letter with the title written on a piece of paper so that I would have a record of my intention to use it. Apparently you're not meant to open the letter. Oops.

I think the title is self-explanatory. Perhaps it is not. For me, inner peace has always sounded like something pretty cool. I've always striven to be content and have a calm inner voice. I have never actually reached that goal. I'm extremely high-strung and tend to get very irritated easily. I want to change that. I don't want to get as worked up about things that, in the long run, don't really matter. It seems that I will not achieve my goal without a fight.

Having said that, I cannot preclude the possibility of posting rants. I mean, isn't that the primary purpose of the "blogosphere"? ;)

Technical experimentation

This is a new undertaking and while I have found a layout that I love, I am using it already for another blog. So I'm going to play around with different layouts for this blog. You may come in at the wrong moment and witness some wonkiness. For that, I apologize in advance!

Inaugural Post

I've been have a crisis of identity recently. Recently? Nah. It started when I was four! But lately, I've felt myself slipping back into an old pattern of negative thinking and ruminating. Ruminating is never good. When you spend all day going over what you should have said at a certain point, you know that it's time to take a step back and take a deep breath and get to the bottom of things. So I decided to start a new blog. And where did I write the first entry? In yoga class. During savasana no less.

Tonight was a good class. It was a yin/yang combo which was nice. Just when I thought I was going to die, the instructor stepped it down to yin. Ahhhh...nice! It was good mentally as well. The instructor took me through various stages of euphoria and rage. During the squat, he explained that particular posture was good for the back and that back problems are quite prevalent in North America. The rage came from the smug way he declared that third world countries don't have back problems due to their lack of chairs. Normally I'm all over this kind of hipster shit. (Thanks for the word "hipster" fark.com!) but tonight, I was just irritated that as a citizen of a rich country I had one more thing to feel guilty about - sitting in chairs. I already feel guilty about my astronomical ecological footprint, my ridiculous consumer spending habits and the fact that I can go off work and still afford things that people in other countries have to work years to be able to afford. Now I have to feel guilty that I can sit in a freakin' chair? Argh. You know what you can do with your smug att- ahhh...there it is. I broke through some barrier and delerium turned the pain in my hamstrings into a pleasant burning. Oh, no. Someone call an ambulance, the room is glowing!

Ok, I made that last bit up. Mostly because I felt bad about getting so angry about my chair. I like chairs. So sue me.

Oh right, yoga. :) The euphoria came during the dragon pose in which I was ecstatic to be doing a pose that so many others seemed to be having such difficulty with. And I was doing it with ease. "Ahh, look at me," I thought, "I'm rockin' the dragon pose and I've barely done any yoga in 1.5 years. So good!"

"What's that?" my body asked. "Rockin it?"

The instructor told us to switch sides. "Lean into it" he said. Blinding yellow pain up and down my hip. Oops. Looks like my "rockin' it" was more like "not doing the freakin' pose properly". Ah, such is life. We did savasana soon after that and I was able to begin writing this blog post. Thank god. :)

The purpose of this blog is to (I hope) give myself a place to write, vent, rant and not focus so much on the little things that seem to be riling me up so much lately. I've dabbled in Buddhism in the past and I want to start to try taking that philosophy more seriously. Life is too short to spend the majority of it all worked up over something. With that in mind, I will sign out, hoping that I don't irritate you, my reader, too much with my salutation.

~ Namaste

;)