The Eye of Swedish Meats

There’s a lot of stuff moving around in my head.  It’s as if I can’t turn my mind off.

 

Going to IKEA a few weeks back didn’t help matters.  There I was, walking through the myriad of furniture, accessories, ridiculous options that no man in his right mind would ever conceive when it hit me…I need to unplug.  I need to ground myself.  I need to be present.

It was amazing.  I can say all the right things to myself but putting them into practice is another thing. So there I was among the chaos that is IKEA when I came to the obvious conclusion…

I can’t do this! I can’t block out my life.

I tried turning my mind off, but then a giant sign of meatballs would show itself…or a room full of boxes… or a human assembly line of ooglers who wanted nothing more than to spend their Sunday afternoon indoors with hundreds of other strangers looking at everything from beds to shelves to stuffed rats…..blleaaahhhhh!  I defy the Dalai Lama to turn his thoughts off in an environment like that.

 

Being a spiritual sage in a controlled environment is easy…try keeping your cool when you’re rolling a twenty-foot table through a bustling crowd (i.e. at IKEA!) or trying the thousandth time to put your kids to bed after a 10 hour work day.  If you can keep yourself under control under such circumstances  then I have more respect for you than any spiritual master on a mountain.

As I walked through IKEA, my mind screamed RUN DUMMY!   Run away until there’s no distraction, complication, messiness. But that’s life isn’t it?  Life is messy, complicated…even ugly at times.  Life doesn’t sit around and wait for you to be ready…it just IS.  So what I learned that day amongst the buffet of Swedish meats was that no matter what is going on around me, I have the power to react any way I choose.  Even as I write this, I’m not quite sure I believe it.  I’ve put my fist through walls, screamed at those whom I love, treated the innocent with contempt…yet I have control over these lower, reptilian responses?

I once met a woman who had ten kids.  She was at an age where they all were grown and I asked her how she made it through.

“I learned to remain in the eye,” she said.  “Every hurricane has an eye and I learned early on, if I didn’t keep myself inside that calm center then everything else would go kaput!”

Good advice, but how do you remain in the eye?  Is it something learned or a blessing you’re born with?

During our IKEAn trip, I could have ran away while Reece and the kids shopped.  Instead I tried to find the eye…and you know what?

I never found it.

 

I believe there’s a reason for all of this…mess.  There are rewards and lessons adding to our human experience and even though I walk through the shadow of crowds, schedules, kids and meatballs….in the end all of these events will be worth experiencing.

 

At least that’s how I made it through IKEA.