230303 What I learned in my studies this morning 3

Lets go. Follow me.

In dark running with wild things. 

Be joyful today!

Thoughts:

I took my sons to an event tonight. Mrs. Student brought them up to my office then, after work, we went to skate with the local NHL team's mascot, take some pictures, get some autographs, a free glow-in-the-dark practice puck, and a cupcake. 

It was a lot of fun and we had a good time . . . all because I used my reason to practice patience and to refuse to assent to the thousand or so murderous impulses I experienced before it all started. 

You know how, when something little goes wrong and it irks you? Then another thing screws up and it bugs you? And a third thing brings it up to actual annoyance? And the seventeenth things makes you want to ram people with your car, consequences be damned? 

Yeah. In the hour and a half between when I got off work and the event started, everything that could go wrong did. Nothing in and of itself was too bad. Added together? I wanted to yell and scream and hit the next asshole who bothered me in any freaking way.

But I didn't. 

Not only did I recognize the warning signs that I was getting unreasonably upset so I could head them it off at the pass, but I also reminded myself over and over again that my sons would be watching how I acted, how I responded.

So I held it together.*

Today's Meditation:

Today's Meditation II:

Today's Meditation III:

* Mostly.