The Beautiful Answer

Love Ray Gun

I know. When you type it out like that, it sounds a little porny. But I have a pretty vivid imagination, and am always on the lookout for new ways to be playful with energy, to not buy into the tired old ways that many of us express our emotions. I mean, does everyone scream when they’re mad?  No. Some people steam, other people drink, while still others hug it out. 

It came to me when I was driving, as we so often do here in L.A. Some guy was riding my buper, even though I was in the slow lane, about to get off at the next exit. This type of behavior irritates me for the obvious reasons (which is that it just sucks), but also because it’s the epitome of greed. I mean, seriously? You’re so concerned with getting what you want right freaking now that you can’t, I don’t know, ease up a bit? After all, we were in bumper to bumper traffic. Not exactly the Indy 500. 

Luckily, I caught myself in the next moment. OK, so it was very little skin off my back, and who cares anyway, right? But I wanted to try something a little deeper. And for some reason, the image of a ray gun came into my mind, the ones you see all the time in cartoons blasting someone’s face off and leaving them in a cloud of ash. Then I loaded that baby up with some love pellets, planning to fire them behind me into the guy’s car. Hey, it could work, right? 

I’m sitting there giggling to myself, imagining firing away with these imaginary love pellets, and probably anyone who looked inside my mind at that moment might have thought that I was batshit crazy, but it made me laugh. I can’t be sure if this is what made him ease off my bumper in the next few minutes, but it made my commute a little easier, and a lot more fun. 

It’s Not Enough. It’s Too Much.

Today’s traffic adventure involved having to get somewhere to interview a playwright for a podcast I curate, knowing that I would not have enough time to eat lunch, breathe or prepare, really. Thankfully, I’d written the script yesterday. But it’s generally a better idea to spend a few minutes centering yourself, drinking a bit of water, and maybe grinding the phlegm out of your throat. 

Today? Not so much. 

It seems like it’s been one of those days that kind of shoots by and nothing gets done. I’m sure some things are getting done, but not as many as I’d hoped. But since I’m in a reframing kind of mood, I’m gonna look at the limiting belief in that statement, “There’s not enough time.” 

Who says? Some great clock-keeper in the sky? Who rules time anyway? Maybe people would even ask, “What is time, but a human construct?” 

Now we’re getting somewhere. ;)

Yes, time is a human construct, but when you work freelance as long as I have, there are deadlines to consider. And deadlines are made of molecules of time. I’ve missed maybe a handful of them in the 20+ years I’ve been writing and editing. So maybe I have a better understanding of time than I think. 

Perhaps a better belief to install would be, “Since there’s no such thing as time and I’m already working pretty hard here, it’ll all get done and handed in to everyone’s satisfaction as soon as humanly possible.” 

See, that word humanly is important. I’m not a robot, though at one point I tried to be one, overloading myself with assignments and overly-defining my life by my work. I’m a human, damn it, and sometimes traffic happens. 

My little reframing exercise seems to have worked. I got there with a few minutes to spare (and prepare) for my interview, which went fine. I ate lunch, though it’s nearly dinner time, but it’s amazing what you can do with your mind to make it all OK. Kinda makes me wonder what my mind does when I’m not watching, and how it maybe takes to places I wouldn’t willingly go. 

Need to upgrade my operating system this weekend, so I can put up the pictures I’ve been taking for all my blog posts. Until then — meerkats! 

That one on the left totally gets it.