It's 2:50 pm. I am laying in bed. In the morning I went to the gym for a yoga class and I chatted a bit with my gym crush. She taught me a lesson in seduction game: "Oh, I might not come to yoga tomorrow, I'd let you know but we haven't exchanged numbers yet, right?".
I did my part. "Oh a resolution for this year is to get an ass". She looked at my behind "oh you're fine, what would you need an ass for anyways... oh to call attention". I blushed and started blurting something and then corrected myself "see, you caught me and made me blush", and then we both shared a hearty laughter.
In the veil of my depression, these exchanges are muted but still beautiful.
My coping strategy is withdrawing into exercise, often my body reflects an inverse correlation to how good I feel. I keep to myself, in the almost two decades I've attended the gym (on and off), I have not made a friend, male or female... It's a bit of cringe now, but ten years ago I used to take my journal to the gym because I noticed it made me "think straight".
What is "thinking straight?". Does feeling precede thought? or does thought precede feeling? I think it was William James who already ran into this, but I cannot recall his conclusion. You do (insert vice or virtue) to feel different so that your thoughts can change. But you can also drive yourself anxious or hopeful or angry by talking yourself into it. You imagine conflict and play it out in your mind, making yourself angry.
Meditation fixes the "thinking yourself into feeling" problem. It will ease out your peaks and valleys because you will have distance from your thought. With practice, as the outer world causes less ripples, you can notice you are also inwardly agitated for no good reason. Be still and straight, and your mind will naturally follow.
I could replace "meditation" with "observing your breath", because breath is the root of life, it precedes thought and feeling. If you are skeptical about this statement, imagine your breath stopped suddenly and you couldn't bring it back (I would probably panic and gasp for air, rushing to find someone to help me).
You shouldn't try to control your thoughts through breath though, we've already established breath precedes everything. The person who tries to control their thought through breath is falling into an all too common trap. It is only truly understood intuitively or in practice, you transcend it when you notice you must let go of all control to truly fall into a meditative state.
I am perhaps selling myself meditation, because I don't hold a regular practice. Yes, I should write my logs before a meditation session so that I "think straight". I've already allowed my mind to ramble and it brought me to meditation, it feels as if I ought to stop writing and start observing my breath while sitting straight. I will write a a bit when I finish.
Because it's cold I thought it would be a good idea to go to the rooftop to meditate in the sun. I sat on a yoga block and tried to be still, but this is quite a challenge. My first yoga teacher was a stern Ashtanga teacher who claimed "all the yoga we do is so that we are able to sit down to meditate". I thought she was bluffing, but the more I sit down, the more I see the truth in her words.
In the end I went to meditate to bed. There I could get myself lost in breath rather than constantly microadjusting my posture. As I went into breath I felt my body become alive. When my body becomes alive, it is pleasant to be there. I now understand: if my sense of feeling is blunted, it is because my mind activity is veiling the peace that is already inside of me.
Then I had a peaceful nap. I woke up with my mind clear and a bit of an apetite. I quickly prepared myself a tuna salad, and sat down to write this.