Pay Attention

Paying attention is the next step after stepping back and breathing.

Pay attention. What is the underlying issue? The problem? The need? The important aspect of the moment?

I have been running on assumptions and old patterns for a long time. Well, technically, every yesterday automatically creates patterns which, today, are old. But there is a difference between a pattern, a habit, and an occasional action or event.

Sneezing once in a while means a slight irritant. Sneezing a lot, or having a pattern of sneezing after a specific event means something to pay attention to.

Today's attention (of which sneezing is actually an indicator) seems to be the temperature. And what, specifically, it does to my body. The cold tickle on the nose, the runny nose and the subsequent sniffles, are a symptom of my body being cold. But long before that, my muscles start to tighten.

And the muscles are things I am not used to paying attention to! For so long they have simply been part of the body. And it turns out I have been misinterpreting many things my body has been trying to say to me.

Now, I am not going to spend hours in recriminations. It is what it is, and, further, I fully understand the miscommunication. I never expected the body, my body, to be SUBTLE.

But it is. A gentle nudge. A little hint. A soft sound. A poke.

Until it realizes how oblivous I am. Then it gets louder.
And louder.
And then it has no choice but to break down.

But what else can it do? How else will I start paying attention?

And communicating with the body is like communicating with anything or anyone else. First you have to agree on a vocabulary. This means yes, this means no. THIS is pain, THAT is hunger.

I have always thought I knew the answers to what was happening to my body. Turns out, I need to pay a lot more attention.