Saturday, April 17, 2021

Day 19


I met with the contractors at the house this morning.  Work continues, although at a pace far slower that I'd ever have expected.

Best-case reasonable date to move back in is probably about April 28.  Unless I can't take this semi-off-the-grid condo life any longer and decide to move back in even while construction and repairs are on-going.

This, too, shall pass.  The anxiety, the dissatisfaction, the restlessness of condo life will be but a memory some day.

In Zen practice, after you've been sitting for a long time, you get cramps in your legs.  Your ankles feel like stones pressing down on the floor, despite the mat you're on.  Your back aches.  It feels like you've been sitting there forever and eternity is passing you by, and is the attendant ever going to ring that bell and indicate the session time is over? Has he fallen asleep, or what?

And then the bell does ring and you get up, and after only a minute or two, the pain in your legs is gone, your back is fine, and all your pain and discomfort are but a memory.  Everything is impermanent and nothing lasts forever. Why worry about the inconvenience and pains of the present moment, when there's just going to be another present moment following it?

Soon, this odd chapter in my life, this semi-monastic isolation at the tail end of a year-long pandemic lockdown after nine months of trying to figure out retirement, will be but a memory.  I will be back in my house with its now roof, new floor in the bedroom, new back door, new ceilings, and new coat of interior paint.  I will look back and laugh, and wonder why I didn't have more patience to bear a month without tv and barely any internet.

It will all seem soooo funny.

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