¨to cabbage¨ verb - To GUILTLESSLY spend Sundays in your PJs watching silly TV while reading gossip magazines, eating comfort food, doing an art project, or whatever else is on your guilty pleasures to-do list, with the main goal of vegging out and recharching for the coming week.
After a stressful week with all of the Boston happenings, a freaking out friend and roomie drama... I was READY for some serious cabbaging. With most of the people in my apartment went to the Rastro for the day, and so I was free to sleep in, listen to my music loudly and sing along, never change out of my PJs, and generally do whatever I pleased.
And. It. Was. Glorious.
I slept in as late as my body would allow (10:30 am?! WTF, body?!), got up, had some strawberries with sugar (yummy), saw a coloring book on my desk that my mom had sent me for Christmas but that I´d yet to open, and became immediately inspired. Three hours later, I´d watched ¨The Secret¨ for the second time in a week, watched every single ¨Friends¨ blooper reel I could find THREE times, listened to tons of music I´d forgotten I loved... all while coloring a picture of kitties. When my picture was complete, I took a mini break for food, and then changed medium. I put the coloring book away and got out my favorite journal and started up on that with the piles of markers now spread all over my bed. I wrote and I wrote and I sang and I sang, happy as a freak´n clam still in her PJs. ^_^
I decided to conclude my amazing afternoon with a visualization meditation, which turned out to be one of the best ones ever. I´m sure to others, visualizing sounds absolutely hokey and ridiculous, but to me? It is like a ridiculously amazing super power I possess that few even know exists as a possible super power.
I think it might have been somewhere in this TED Talk that I heard the concept that happiness that was created by the mind was just as real as happiness created based on real experiences. And that idea got me thinking about visualization. Even if it were to turn out that visualizing didn´t actually work (which I´ve proven enough to not be the case... but just supposing), the happiness that I get out of it is completely real, and that certainly counts for a lot.
My explanation of the process of visualizing is like this: you get to come up with the most amazing thing you can possibly think of and suddenly become submerged in that alternate reality completely. As you linger there, more details fall into place, and as more details fall into place, the more real it feels. And, of course, the more real it feels, the happier you get. In a state of visualization, every single thing is mesmorizing. A smell, a color, a feeling, a sound. All of it. And when you practice it quietly in your room or in the shower, suddenly when amazing things happen in real life - no matter how small they might seem to others - you get that rush of amazement and magic that you experience while visualizing.
On the grand scale, according to new age philosophies, visualization is supposed to be a means by which you can consciously craft your future to your exact specifications. Supposedly, the energy you put out about what you want will be matched by the Universe´s energy. But it´s not as simple as ¨I am going to think about the lottery and I am going to win it.¨ No - the point of it isn´t that magic just happens... the point is that you get used to feeling that sense of happiness and gratitude that you are supposed to be feeling while visualizing, and by practicing feeling those positive emotions, you start to feel that way during your normal day. And as you feel that way and exude that positive energy, people and opportunities and experiences are drawn to you, and you are open to them and take advantage of thoughts and ideas and opportunities as they arise, with a new sense of confidence and enthusiasm - like you have while visualizing.
I´ve tried to explain it to people who aren´t into the whole thing, and the largely look at me like I´m full of crap. But then, they´re the ones who complain every day about their lives, and I´m the one who is currently, on the whole, pretty darned happy and grateful for everything around me! ;) In my opinion, it is much more powerful than it may at first logically seem. And after you do it for awhile, you realize it´s not about some new agey voodoo power, but just about conditioning your brain to see the world from a new perspective. And that new perspectives dramatically change EVERYTHING about a person and their existance.
Anyway - enough rambling. The point of this post was merely to say, today I did exactly what I wanted. I colored in a coloring book. I giggled over and over again at the same bloopers. I ate lots of strawberries with mountains of sugar sprinkled on them. I went to the store at night and bought Double Stuffed Oreos and dipped them in cream cheese just because I could. I journaled a bunch in my favorite journal that I always want to have perfect entries, but today I didn´t worry about that. I sang to music I liked in middle school. I didn´t shower until late at night. I smelled like yummy greasy cuddles. I talked to Wellington a lot and hugged him a lot. I imagined a crazy awesome near-future. I did whatever I pleased, and in the end didn´t feel like I´d wasted a single second of my day. It was, in fact, one of the best days I´ve had - and I´ve had some pretty great days recently! But just to spend the whole day with myself, fully entertained and chipper, was awesome.
When I finally emerged from my room around 7pm (still in my PJs with strawberry juice dripped on them), my roomie asked how much studying I´d gotten in and how many pages of my thesis I´d written. I just laughed and said I´d been coloring in a coloring book all day. She looked at me horrified, and all I could do was giggle.
This is what makes me so much different from other people.
And this is why I love who I am so much.
<3
XOXO
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