​You Are Dismissed

 
“Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
----Abraham Lincoln
 
 
Is it me, or has this entire Covid-19 pandemic made everyone a bit on edge, quick to anger, and much less patient with every aspect of their daily lives?  I mean, I’m not normally the Buddhist monk version of patience, love, and tolerance, but lately it’s been so amplified I don’t even want to spend time with myself!!!
 
A friend of mine shared with me the 90 Second Rule, a term applied by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientists Personal Journey.  Ok, stay with me here….it states that the body physiologically only holds a negative emotion for 90 seconds, and after that, well, basically, we are choosing to be a bunch of drama queens and re-thinking or re-stimulating that fear, anger or whatever. 
 
DAMN!!  That’s just mean, telling me that I’m the one holding onto the anger.
 
But wait, maybe there IS some truth to this.
 
Have you every stubbed your toe in the morning getting ready for work (when we used to do that) and it snowballed into an awful day?  Or someone asked you how your day went, and you tell them how bad it was?  When, it was something negative that happens which lasts just a few minutes and you choose to make that the focus of the entire day?
 
Truth be told, there is plenty to be grateful for in my life every single day.  The days I choose to focus on my health, my family, a roof over my head, my pups, my friends, fresh air to breathe, this computer I am typing on, the internet to post these blogs, the electricity to power said electronics and internet…well, you get the picture…then I find myself in a place of extreme gratitude.  On days I choose to focus on 105-degree temperatures, the partisanship in politics, extreme poverty, high crime rates, slow drivers…ok, I’ll leave it there…then I’m not in appreciation and can find myself spiraling downward quickly.
 
So I guess the question is: at this moment, what will I choose?

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