Deep breaths in warm water.

It's not always easy to live in the moment, to keep my head from listening to those thoughts that circle and clutch and get bigger and weirder and start to sound like reality. I remember years ago, I had nose surgery, OK a nose job. Just a little off the top, please, so it doesn't look like Barbra Streisand. I knew the doctor since he had excavated through some of our patients' noses so that my boss, the brain surgeon, could get to a pituitary tumor and I thought, if he could do that, he could take off a bump. Where was I going with this?!? Right. I've always liked to think about things, the what and the why and how of things in life, but I know it sometimes got me into trouble when my view of reality changed with my obsessive thinking. Oh, the nose job. The doctor injected surgical cocaine into my nose and for two days the screen was white. No chatter, no mental gossip, no fears, no nothing. Just a blank slate. I imagine that's why people use drugs, to silence the noise up there. Peaceful, that silence. I'm not sure where I was going with this again. I've just been in the pool, doing my laps in that 85 degree water, and I feel really relaxed, but I meant to say that we think too much. We worry, we think and we think and we call friends and ask questions and we read books and we call more friends and we just keep thinking about things. Or we just hold it all in, thinking to ourselves, and the thoughts grow bigger and weirder and then we hardly know what is real any more.

What brought this up? I had a surgical rep come in today, one of the guys who brings rods and screws and plates and pieces of bone to the operating room so that the docs (yes, neurosurgeons do brain AND spine surgery) could fuse the spines of those unlucky people with degenerative discs and instability and stuff like that. Ow. Don't worry, my patients do really well and go on to be able to bend and work and play with their kids. So this rep has seen the inside of zillions of spines and watched dozens of docs do this fancy work to people's vertebras. And what does he do for exercise? He runs. He knows it's bad for his back, all that pounding and pounding, but he does it because he's in a hurry to get it done. Even if he swims, he does it fast and has to listen to music in order to get it done. So something that can be pleasurable, a feel-good way to take care of our body and feel it move, has to be done fast to get it over. What's the hurry, I ask?

Are we in a hurry with other things? I read another blog today, http://www.datinggoddess.com/, a site with good advice and food for thought. The post was about how we meet someone and we immediately project, like we plan where we'll live with them and who will do the dishes and how the sex will be and stuff and don't even know yet about their character or their ethics or sense of humor or anything. Then, if we get to know the person and we find we aren't a match, it's a great big hairy disappointment since we've projected a whole life together and now it's not going to happen. Or we refuse to see the red flags because we don't want to give up the future that we've fabricated. In another blog of my friend Rookie, http://www.supersinglemixers.com/, where a guy, a nice guy who I happen to know and like, writes angrily about how ALL women take out their anger toward other men on him, how ALL women think that ALL guys are liars and drug users and cheaters and he's just really pissed off because he is an honest and ethical guy, which I believe to be true, and that women don't give him a chance to prove it. They have their minds made up and thus aren't able to see that really nice guy that's right in front of them. So it's that not being in the present, our head being in a different place than our body, that allows us to meet someone and think the worst or project a fantasy before we even know their last name or favorite movie and just paint a picture of them that could be sooooo wrong but we just decide that it's true. Ow again.

I'm still not sure what is the point here. Maybe it's to slow down and enjoy where we are. Really BE there. I could do my laps in that lovely warm pool and be thinking of work or money or that guy I like and I would completely miss the pleasure of swimming. What if you were getting a massage or engaging in some other spectacularly fun physical activity that I won't mention here and be thinking the whole time about sports or the laundry or that person at work who bugs you or does that guy really like me or what should I wear on my date and then miss it all. It'd be like going to a movie and falling asleep after the opening credits!?! You're there, but you miss it ALL! OK, I think I have a point here, that we need to slow down, maybe stop sometimes and just do nothing and just feel. Yep, use the senses. Just be there. Enjoy the moment. Let the thoughts happen and just watch them float away. Breathe. Eight counts in and eight counts out.

Remember that picture at the top of this post, those two adorable kids in their bright green floaties and matching goggles and that goofy poodle squinting in the sun but refusing to leave their side? Those are my twin grandchilden, ready to swim in my pool, and I was so busy making making sure I had everything I needed and that they had enough sun screen and that I wasn't going to rip the pool cover and whatever else was churning in my head that I really almost missed that amazingly silly shot of them, totally oblivious of how cute they looked, just delighted that they were wearing that silly stuff and waiting for me to tell them to jump in. I would have missed that, but I didn't and I'm glad. Here, that's my message - let's not miss those special moments in life by being somewhere else.