“Be mindful. Be grateful. Be positive. Be true. Be kind.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
That's my meditation that I've been focused on for the last few days. Being mindful of not only my situation but my mouth and my energy.
I had a terrible dream a few nights ago that woke me up and had me in a bad place for a few days. Even now as I dare to share it with you, I feel the anxiety rise up and the tears come to my eyes. The reason it hurt so much was that in this dream, I let my mouth and my temper shoot off to a stranger, and as a result, this stranger hurt one of my sons who came to my defense. and I could do nothing but watch in horror as it all played out. When I woke I was shaking and couldn't get it out of my head, I was actually scared for a few nights to go back to sleep because I was scared that I would have this dream again.
But here's the thing that I discovered as I tried to meditate this damned dream out of my head over the last few days: The lesson to be learned is that in this dream I was neither mindful, positive, or kind and as a result, the situation went from something that could have been settled easily to something tragic. That was on me, nobody else.
Mindfulness teaches us that each word comes together in a larger puzzle that we can't always see up close.