Mornings

For some reason, I've always found mornings to be my worst time of day.  Some mornings are fine -- this morning, for example, even though it's really cold out and I am not happy about that, I feel great.

But many mornings are very challenging for me.  I wake up with a sense of gloom and I really have to pull myself out of it.  I know I'm not unusual, many people feel that way in the mornings and I've heard of others say around 3 pm they start to get depressed.

I don't know how anyone can not be depressed these days.  I'm glad that George Bush is no longer our President, but the world is a mess, politics are disgusting, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives have been lost in the past ten years, the economy is...okay, now I'm probably depressing anyone who might be reading this.

Somehow, despite these feelings of despair, every morning I meditate and yesterday, when I was feeling really sad, I suddenly remembered Pema Chodron's words to "lean into whatever you're feeling" so I did.  I said, "I feel really depressed. I just want to stay in bed."  And then I meditated, read, went to the gym, made a few calls to friends who are going through difficult times and by 10 am, the feelings past.  Like clouds in the sky, they seem to always move.  It's an interesting business, life.  I want to feel that what I am doing is of service and I'm not quite feeling that these days.  But I show up and do my best and trust that I will find my way.

I just finished a new draft of "Scrambled Eggs" (I still hate the title) and now I feel that it's so much closer to where it should be.  So this morning, when I woke up, I didn't feel any despair.  I felt cold, but happy.