The Art of Being Zen

I don’t know.  If you’re here because you think I have the answer to being Zen (Zeneful?  Zensome?  Zenolicious?) then you have taken a wrong turn on the internet expressway.  Truth is, I know nothing.

That’s right, nothing.  I couldn’t find calm and peaceful if it rammed me with a semi-truck.  The emotional mess of a writer has always been something that I laugh at – what a tired cliché – but I still can’t shake it.  Even though I detest Hemingway sometimes searching for the bottom of a bottle seems like a promising choice.

Because, who knows why, but I just can’t seem to get out of my own way.  Contrary to popular belief, I KNOW that I’m my own worst enemy, that the only thing stopping me is me, that an attitude adjustment and priority straightening is so overdo.  But I can’t help it – can’t help myself – at all.

I struggle to be authentic, whatever the hell that means, and it hurts.  Because my truth isn’t the same as yours.  And my truth is in battle with yours.  And my truth always seems to be stepped on and repeated as fiction.  Because it’s harsh and messy and rough.  And I’m afraid of it, of writing it down and going there, because you’ll point out all those things I already know but don’t need said out loud – because I already know them, know even worse things, even more judgment.

Anne Lamott has said “You own everything that happened to you.  Tell your stories.  If people wanted you to write warmly about them they should’ve behaved better.”  If so then why do I feel like everything I know is on layaway, a desire just out of my reach, mine if I could only work harder, always struggling to be bought and sold.

I have no answers for being Zen.  Or for being mindful or calm or satisfied even.  I have no answers to any question at all.  If you asked me one I’d be forced to tell you a story.  And I have no idea on when it would end.