Saturday Morning Breakfast Meditation

I love Saturday mornings when I make my breakfast without turning on the television to listen to the news. Instead, I stand in front of my kitchen sink and look out the window at the birds outside chirping as they scrounge for delicious morsels of food.

After a few minutes, my stomach begins to tell me that I need to make breakfast. I listen to my slippers shuffle on the tile from the kitchen sink to the refrigerator. As I pull on the handle, I hear a very small swish noise releasing the suction between the rubber insulation and the refrigerator frame. I noisily collect a carton of eggs and my can of coffee grounds, slamming the refrigerator door as I turn and and shuffle back across the kitchen.

At the sink as I turn on the water, it moves through the cold washer inside the faucet making a gurgling noise and gushes into my teapot. It’s been waiting all night to be released from the confines of the water pipes.

After filling the teapot, I hear myself slam it onto the heating coils on the plastic base and click on the switch that starts the movement toward boiling hot water. During the week, I don’t hear this noise when I am listening to the news on the television. I notice my habits more when I am being mindful in the silence. The cold water begins to jump around in the teapot as the water molecules move from cold to warm to a hot boil and I listen for the sound of the rapid movement of the liquid hitting the sides of the teapot. The kettle makes a clicking noise when the water has reached the perfect temperature that I don’t usually hear during the week when I’m listening to the television.

I pull out my Chemex coffee carafe and shuffle to the pantry to find a coffee filter. Remembering that I am in mindful-mode, I consciously pull off the plastic top on the coffee can and dump the two tablespoons of coffee grounds into the filter. Today I can hear the plop, plop of the coffee and then I pour the hot water over the grounds. This noise of the steaming liquid moving from the teapot is different from the water arriving through the faucet.

I slide the eggs out of the paper carton and place them into a pot. They roll around the saucepan as I carry them over to the faucet to add the water and return to stove and turn on the burner. As the water quietly heats up, not like in the teapot, the eggs move around the pan until they find a comfortable place to sit to cook.

I go off to read the paper at the kitchen table until I hear a splashing noise and look over at the stove to find the water boiling and the eggs dancing and jumping in the turbulence of the boil. I never hear this noise on a weekday morning with the television on and many mornings I overcook the eggs because I haven’t looked up in time to check on them. Today, the eggs are perfect, as I crack open the shell, and gently pull the hard protective covering apart revealing firm egg white cushioning a golden yolk inside.

I shuffle back to the kitchen table with my coffee mug and bowl of soft-boiled eggs. I look out the window above the table to watch the birds find their morning breakfast in the grass.

Dieting in the New Year!

January is the season for New Year’s Resolutions.

During December as we celebrate all the holidays with gusto devouring all our favorite delicacies and sweet desserts, I don’t hear anyone anticipating their annual New Years Resolutions.

Right on schedule, right after Midnight on New Year’s Eve, we begin to think about what we need to do to shape up for the coming year and most of us are thinking about dieting so we can undo what we have been doing the entire thirty days prior to our change of heart, or should I say, change of diet. 

Let me share with you how I diet.

I diet at the grocery store.

I can stick to this diet because I am a rather lazy person when it comes to satisfying any dietary cravings. If I am hungry for a certain food and it isn’t in my refrigerator or pantry, I won’t jump into the car and drive to the store to get it. I can’t find the motivation or energy to listen to my taste buds that seriously to make a special trip to the grocery store.

My diet consists of driving to the grocery store once a week and buying only the items on my grocery list and nothing more. No impulse buying for me. Well, at least, most of the time I can use my will power to limit my purchases to what I have planned ahead of time to buy.

My grocery list consists of the foods that are healthy and good for me. Sometimes, I add ice cream, but not for every trip, only occasionally.

As a result, my diet consists of having the will power to stick to my shopping list at the grocery and nothing more. Consequently, I only have to do that once a week.

When I am at home, I don’t have to be on a diet. I just eat what is in my house. All the food options in the refrigeration and on the shelves in my pantry are only the foods that I should eat. This removes the emotional stress and strain of trying not to eat something that isn’t on the diet. If it isn’t in the house, then my diet is safe from any ”will power” problems.

My advice on how to diet – just stick to your shopping list at the store and eat all your food in your house.

Contemplative Communication

In my meditation this morning, I realized that through this blog I have the ability to communicate with more people than I know. That was not always the case.

In the past, to communicate with another human being, the average person had to know the individual to either speak or write some sort of communication.

Way back in history before writing was invented, people spoke to each other face-to-face. When writing was invented individuals could communicate with someone they knew via written communication. Letters were the vehicles for sharing information.

During this time, there existed "town cryers" who acted as the town's communication system, walking around screaming out the news the town needed to know. Orators were popular, expressing themselves to crowds of people they didn't know. But the average person had a limited number of people they communicated with.

Then the telegraph was invented taping out messages along wires, followed by the telephone. With these inventions, one still needed to know "to whom" they wanted to communicate. One needed an address or phone number.

As computers became more common and the internet was created, emails became a popular vehicle for communication, but people still needed to know "to whom" they were communicating because they needed a specific email address.

With the sophistication of the internet and the creation of "blogs", "Facebook", "Instagram" and other apps used to share information, the game has changed. We are living in a wide community of communication without having to "know" anyone, and least of all, know "with whom" we are interacting.

Here I am sitting at my computer, typing on this blog, to send out this communication, without knowing "to whom" I am sending it to, "to whom" is reading it and "to whom" is sharing these thoughts with a wider community. Our community is wider than our personal list of contacts on our mobile phones, our friends on Facebook or our email list.

We are flinging our thoughts out into the ionosphere and not knowing where they will land.