Reflecting Gratitude

When there are major milestones, events or changes in my life, I am often pausing to reflect.

I enjoy the pauses because they are opportunities to remember that I have much to be grateful for in this life.

The milestones, events or changes don’t even have to be my own for me to pause, as it seems I spend a great deal of time reflecting.  I believe I have shared before that I have always been a very reflective human.  As I get older, I seem to do it more and more.

As my mobility has decreased again, I find that I have the opportunities to do it with greater insight and clarity than when I was busy bustling around trying to make up for what I viewed as lost time.

I find reflection to be a very grounding exercise because I think that in order to appreciate where we are now, we truly must appreciate how we arrived at this particular point in our lives.

The month of May brings with it so many opportunities—both new and old—for contemplation and reflection.

It began with the 13^th birthdays of my beloved pups, only one of which is left to celebrate.  The opportunity also came for Duke and I to work with more frequency at the Homeless Emergency Project, and new opportunities in my college teaching life.

These opportunities and birthday celebration was followed by the birthday of my long ago deceased mother, quickly followed by the celebration of mother’s day.

In between mom’s birthday and mother’s day was the anniversary of Duke’s therapy dog certification with Project PUP, and soon it will be his work anniversary at the Homeless Emergency Project (HEP).

Interspersed throughout are events (both positive and negative) and milestones reached by friends, family, coworkers, students, former students, and residents at HEP.  Many of them are also finding themselves reflecting on their own journeys to this very moment in time, and the opportunities that are before them.

My reflections allow me to evaluate my journey in terms of how well I am meeting my own personal goals in the grander scheme of things.

Am I being love to the best of my ability?  Am I being in fear less?  Am I doing all that I can to be the change we all wish to see in the world?  Are my choices consistent with that primary goal?  Am I helping others to find their power?  Am I learning to let go sooner, resist less, and separate past emotional reactions from present situations?  Am I simplifying and streamlining tasks and activities in ways that make the most sense?

While these are all questions I seem to ask with each major decision I make, I have realized that it is also important that I consider them all in even the simpler decisions that come up from day-to-day as well.  That is why I added the simplifying goal for 2014 to the rest.

This month is providing a more thorough evaluation of where I am in my own bigger picture.  I am quite comfortable with what I am seeing as I reflect, and am looking very forward to the opportunities ahead.

May isn’t quite half-way over and all of this reflection has me grounded in so much gratitude.

Nerdville

Before I knew it two hours had passed.  I had been geeking out in nerdville and had lost track of time.

Then I realized that I had not written a post for today.  I did start rewriting and updating research for another nerdville writing project I hope to finish up before the summer months, however.

What is fun about this project is that it totally fits my theme for the year, which is simplicity.  If I can gain a basic understanding of something that is hugely complex, I can generally pare it down to the bare bones and explain it to my dogs.

That is exactly what I am doing with the growing body of research in neuroscience—simplifying it so that it is meaningful to any of us.

One of the key pieces of information in all of this research is that the brain is changeable.  No matter how old you are, you can rewire it if you want to.

Of course, those of us with disease processes aren’t going to be able to make the same changes that someone with a non diseased brain can.  At the same time, you can have a huge chunk of nothing in one part of your brain and the information can still get around it, with some rerouting of the wiring in the brain.

I started on this research path in a synchronistic way the year before last in a serious way.  I actually started researching neuroscience accidentally nine years ago after breaking out of the nursing home.  Because of so many things last year, I lost focus on it.  I was working on this about the same time I finished writing my book, so I needed to take a break from writing.

Nerdville is one of my favorite places to go and if I could live in a library’s stacks with the journals, I think I might (if they allowed dogs).

It is fun for me, but now my brain is not eager to switch gears to prepare for bedtime.