I’ve been thinking a lot about Zen and meditation these past few days. I ended up taking a break again because I was finding that I wasn’t going as often as I should and wasting a good deal of money every month. I still plan on going back again but not until after I finish the school semester. The reason I was thinking about Zen, meditation, and Church as well is because I had a couple of situations come up during the past week which caused me to reflect back on how I would have reacted a couple of years ago and how differently I react to situations now.

For instance, the other day at work my boss once again found something he wasn’t thrilled about (this time this was no fault of mine) and he went off on his tangent and I explained things to him and made a couple of calls just to appease him and thus confirm that things had in fact been done correctly and it is what it is and that he can’t change the outcome. I sat there feeling a lot of different emotions, primarily at first defensiveness because I knew the documents were reported correctly but rather than argue with him I just listened to him, acknowledged my emotions, and just breathed and relaxed. What ended up happening is that after he left the office he called me to apologize for overreacting. This in itself is a great step for my boss because in the past he would never have apologized or admitted he’d been wrong.

Also the other day I was running late for school and usually when this happens, which unfortunately is quite often because I’m notorious for running late, I tend to get myself all stressed out and anxious. However this particular day I was so calm I seriously did a double take and thought to myself, who are you? Lol! So I started thinking about Zen and meditation and how incorporating that with Church and all the things I’ve learned has helped me to become more aware of my emotional reaction to different situations. Basically that emotions don’t need to boil over and it doesn’t mean ignoring what we feel but not letting frustration, anger, etc get the best of you.

It’s like that whole blender scene from Father of the Bride where Ally blows her top when her fiance gives her a blender and she wonders what kind of 1950’s expectations he’s going to have of her, when all he was thinking was that she’d love to make her cool shakes with it. I wish I could find the clip to share here. What I love is when the father later explains to the fiance at a bar that Ally inherited the dad’s overly passionate response to things and that he (the fiance) is a lot more calm like Nina (mother of the bride). Kind of like my husband and I, me being more overly passionate of course with my reactions 😉