Hopping mad

I’m always tickled when I hear the expression “hopping mad.” Of course, it has absolutely no clinical application. And one must never ask a person who is hopping mad if he’s hopping mad.

Today’s forecast? More weather

“You are the sky,” observed Pema Chodron. “Everything else—it’s just weather.” Oh, how we love to talk about the weather. And to do so with the ardency of children in a sandbox.

Semi-conscious

There is the visible, the world of form, and then there is the invisible, the formless, which inexplicably erupted 14 billion years ago. If all we’re aware of is the world of form, we’re semi-conscious, lost in a mad whorl of thought and emotion.

Crying

When I was in primary school I got into a physical fight with a classmate. It ended briefly with me sitting on his chest. And I was crying. And he looked up at me and said, “It’s OK. It’s OK.”

Suddenly sober

To know ourselves, we observe ourselves, especially when things go wrong, when we’re flushed and boiling. Life’s munificence guarantees that opportunities for self-knowing are many and various. Emotions observed are emotions detached from, stepped out of. Easy? Not exactly. It’s like sobering a drunk.