#50finethings 6 – 10

“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.

Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

― Ellen Goodman

6. Meditate with Sharon Salzberg

Since the last new moon, I have been doing a 28-day online mindfulness meditation challenge with Sharon Salzberg called, “Real Happiness”. It was number *6 * of my #50finethings, and I loved it very much.

I first heard about Sharon Salzberg through an online Coursera course that I did in the first year of the pandemic, called “Buddhism and Modern Psychology,” with Robert Wright.  During the course, Robert Wright mentioned Sharon Salzberg several times, and I like to think that if the three of us met, we would all be terrific friends.

I love the way that Robert and Sharon teach wildly abstract concepts effortlessly, with humour, and a lightness of touch.  They seem to enjoy their own failings and they’re very encouraging to all their students.  At the end of their classes, you conclude that it’s easy to wish all sentient beings happiness, wellness, and an end to their suffering:  why not?

Sharon’s 28-day course was broken into a short morning meditation practice, a piece of teaching and an answer to a previously posed question.  It was all wrapped up with two live zooms, and I really did enjoy it.

I was drawn to Sharon’s thoughts about “anger”.

Sometimes I experience anger.

Sometimes I deny the feeling and blame it on the menopause, the politicians, being 50, grief, or the pandemic.  At other times, I’m seduced by anger and want nothing more than to centre myself in it and I follow it into the waves.  I think Sharon was encouraging neither; try not to avoid it or make it the focal point of the day.  Simply notice it and move on.

I’m going to try to do that!

7. Submit writing to magazines and competitions

In her beautiful book, “Writing Down the Bones,” Natalie Goldberg describes a writer as being a person “who writes”.  Over the last two years I’ve posted around 100,000 words onto my blog, but this year I’m going to learn how to edit.

This year I’m going to try and rewrite more, and I think the best way to do that is to submit my writing to magazines and competitions, and to readers who don’t know me.

To that end, I sent out a piece of flash fiction called “Blanket Street”.  The lovely Daizi Rae and April Berry asked me to read “Blanket Street” on their Bare Books podcast. Then the very kind Byddie Lee asked me to read “Blanket Street” at the Armagh County Museum  and finally, it will be printed in the Flash Fiction magazine on 12 April. 

This was a good start to the year and a very exciting adventure for “Blanket Street”. I’m going to submit something every month in 2022, and I’ll let you know how I get on.

8.  support Amnesty Ireland

I support Amnesty Ireland through a monthly direct debit, by signing their petitions, and by sharing their online content.  I wish them a successful year in 2022.   They have a specific Ukraine campaign out now, because of course they do, and they’re the experts in this field.

9. Learn Spanish

When I was 18, I went to Warwick University to study history. 

Part of the course required students to learn a European language, so I signed up to do Spanish.  I failed the course and my first year spectacularly, but I often thought I would like to try Spanish again.

32 years later, and here I am learning Spanish, but this time with the DuoLingo app!

No teacher, no classroom, no homework, no course book; just a short lesson every day on my Smartphone, and plenty of practice. 

They’ve gamified the App, so I spend a lot of time collecting virtual hearts, gems and crowns.  I move around league tables with millions of other learners, and it makes me laugh and chuckle.  It’s a completely new way of learning and I’m really enjoying it.

Maybe this is part of what being 50 is about? 

Having the confident modesty to attempt new things for no other reason than it might be fun.  I don’t really care about the outcome of this Spanish thing.  Maybe I’ll reach intermediate level before December or maybe I’ll be stuck at Level One forever.   Maybe I’ll become fluent and move to south America, or maybe I’ll give up and start learning French. 

It really doesn’t matter, and maybe it’s OK not to worry.

#50cosasbuenas!

10.  Learn a poem by heart

On her website, “The Marginalian,” Maria Popova recently posted a poem called “Achieving Perspective,” by Pattian Rogers, which was read aloud by David Byrne.

The poem was so beautiful I decided to learn it by heart. 

I haven’t learned a poem by heart since school, and it’s much harder now. 

First, I looked up all the new vocabulary and then I repeated every word and line until I could recite it.  There’s something a little bit magical and mystical about knowing a poem in this way, and especially this poem.

If you can, have a listen to David Byrne reading it here. 

Or if you prefer to read it, it’s written below. 

A big happy new moon to you.  I hope you are well and that you’re enjoying #50finethings.  I hope we can meet again like this, at the next new moon. 

See you next time. 

ACHIEVING PERSPECTIVE
by Pattiann Rogers

Straight up away from this road,
Away from the fitted particles of frost
Coating the hull of each chick pea,
And the stiff archer bug making its way
In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
Up the stem of the trillium,
Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
I try to remember that.

And even in the gold and purple pretense
Of evening, I make myself remember
That it would take 40,000 years full of gathering
Into leaf and dropping, full of pulp splitting
And the hard wrinkling of seed, of the rising up
Of wood fibers and the disintegration of forests,
Of this lake disappearing completely in the bodies
Of toad slush and duckweed rock,

40,000 years and the fastest thing we own,
To reach the one star nearest to us.

And when you speak to me like this,
I try to remember that the wood and cement walls
Of this room are being swept away now,
Molecule by molecule, in a slow and steady wind,
And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.
And when you look at me
I try to recall that at this moment
Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness
Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding
In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter
The widest arc of its elliptical turn.