Thursday, January 20, 2011

Walnutty

It struck me again, as I was placing walnuts on my scrummy breakfast this morning, how dazzled I am by the relationship between cause and effect. I'm not sure if it's a brain structure issue, but for as far back as I can remember, I have struggled making the link that says 'this so then that'. My most recent reminder was the wow response I had when I was told my cholesterol, which had been out on all counts some months earlier (too little of the good and too much of the bad), had rectified itself. The surprise was not that it had altered (such magical shifts are the stuff of life) but that my GP was clearly convinced that changes I had made (like walnuts on my muesli and irregular morning walks) had done it. I felt like a three year old. So I did this!? All by myself? What a good girl! But not far under my skin there remains a membrane of disbelief. Two and two makes what? The answer's logical, but I can't 'get it'. I like to think that this awareness has bubbled into my consciousness because my syndrome is on the move. I wonder: if I could swallow and digest and feed my blood with this one truth, that everything, everything I do has impact, what would I choose? how would I live?

10 comments:

  1. such serious, important questions. how would i live; what would i choose? it is within us, to choose. i keep forgetting that part.
    thanks so much....

    --susan

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  2. dear Pam, sometimes in the face of Susan's serious, important questions we do feel like three year olds--the world is puzzling and large and scary, and we can feel powerless in the face of them. But in that little girl is the twin of powerlessness which allows us to proceed at all, and that is the child's feeling of omnipotence, like different sides of the same coin. Of course, it seems unlikely that you could effect your future, but it's absolutely true--at the same time--that you absolutely can. The kicker is that you can't effect everything and you won't always know what you have managed to 'choose'. In the same way, you won't ever know where you've left your handprint on someone's heart--but you will, and have, Keep questioning--trust that very human part to guide you, even if you can't tease apart the 'cause and effect'. xo

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  3. Walnutty but not nutty. Hail to the walnut and the walk.

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  4. Hi Susan, yes indeed - that part's so easy to forget. Maybe we couldn't live with ourselves if that potential was always in our consciousness ... or could we?
    px

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  5. Thanks for your thoughts vsm. You are so right that they are twin sides of one coin. Like so many paradoxes in life, they are somehow single yet back to back. We forget because, like coin faces, they face in opposite directions - see and know different truths. This train of thought has been good to ponder (a barb!). Pamx

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  6. Ah, the two 'w's. Welcomed into m life.. but can I maintain the relationship? (Keep an eye on me!) Px

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  7. Congratulations from one who also battles cholesterol, I salute you!

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  8. Hi Donna, thanks for dropping by, and for your message. All power to you and I both in this body challenge

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  9. I believe everything we do, and think, has impact. That we can't always see a cause and effect doesn't change that. Nor, in me, does it always lead to the wisest choices. Mindfulness is a practice...

    P.S. I hope all is well with your other blog and the work you've done there.

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  10. Yes to all of that Marylinn. What I knew and and didn't know, I now believe more and more.
    (The other blog has done its job - earned me a paper in the compulsory qual for my work. It now goes to bed!)

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