Essence of Life

One of the definitions of the word essence is "the crucial element, or the most important ingredient"


I have spent an enormous amount of time pondering essence in the previous months. I have examined my own life's essence and questioning if it even exists within me. Can a life even be considered a life if it is void of essence? I believe that if you are missing that one crucial element that brings the whole life together, then it is just a recipe that is not worth cooking or sharing.

If your life were a recipe, what kind of ingredients would be listed? I feel like I have many ingredients listed in the "what you need" section of my recipe, but I have failed in mastering the perfect quantities of each to form a tasty, winning recipe. I have long put the ingredients back in to the cupboard and have forgone searching for my essence. My life's essence seems to be in a state of perpetual postponement, continuing to be an un-used recipe, not yet culminating into a wonderfully, exotic, flavorful and decadent meal worth cooking over and over again.

Maybe with a little more time, I will finally be able to master the recipe, but time along with life is of the essence. Everything linked together, moving fiercely and quickly, I am afraid I will run out of time before I am able to discover my essence. I may have to come to the realization, that the recipe of me, is not worth the page in the ultimate cook book. It is a recipe that is so tasteless, that it should never be repeated. However, with enough tweaking, can a recipe be saved? If I take a little more time in preparation and execution ,paying closer attention to all of the exact measurements of every ingredient, maybe I will be able to salvage it and cook it into something masterful.

 I have always been creative in the kitchen, not paying close attention to detail and just adding a little of this and little of that, and have never gotten bogged down in the details.  My dishes have always been wonderfully delicious and I guess I that is how I have always been in life as well.  However, I have come to realize that cooking in the kitchen of life requires a bit more precision. 

Creature of comfort?

I am self aware.  I am cursed with too much self awareness.  I know I when I am making a mistake, I see when I am doing wrong, and I see everything I need to do to fix it.  However, I don't always do it.  I am learning that I might be a creature of comfort. 

It is amazing that things we do over and over that bring us pain and suffering become comfortable.  I know that is how it is for me.  I have just learned that about myself and I must say, it makes me sick to my stomach that I have become that way.

I am used to the pain and the suffering of my life.  It hurts and I am so tired of crying, yet deep down there is some comfort to it because I know what to expect.  There is no surprises with my life the way that it is now. 

This brings me to the question that has been on my mind for sometime now.  Do we do the same things over and over, even if they are bad for us or bring us pain, because deep down we are comfortable with the results?

I wonder if there is truth to this.  Actually, I don't wonder because I have found this to be true, at least for myself and I see it with the people close to me as well.  I see this same attribute in my friends, and in my intimate relationships. 

I think there is something inside of me that is afraid to change this habit.  I have learned that I am scared of the unknown and that I am worried that I wont be able to handle new outcomes.  I think that the outcomes that I am already "prepared" for throw me for a loop sometimes so what would a new outcome do to me?

I am realizing how much fear I have in my life and deep inside my soul.  I am afraid to fail yet I am afraid to succeed.  I am afraid to experience the new because I don't know what to expect.  I obviously am NOT afraid of heartbreak because I set myself up for that day after day.

For every action, there is a reaction, so if I am comfortable with heartbreak then I must be severely uncomfortable with happiness. 

Ugh...that is quite the revelation.  Damn self awareness f#@ked me again.

Living in a world of distraction

A few months ago, I had a couple in their 80's come into my office.  They were holding hands, and were still genuinely in love.  The had been married for 60 plus years and still were quite vibrant and loving towards one another.  Throughout our conversation, they looked at each other often and smiled.  He gently touched her hand and you could feel the warmth of their love and mutual respect radiate throughout the room.

After they left, I couldn't stop thinking about this couple.  I couldn't help thinking about how love has changed with the generations.  I couldn't help but think with every decade, love and respect between two people deteriorates and relationships don't last. 

I began to wonder if the more technology we develop, the farther we get away from loving and respectful relationships. We have so many distractions in our daily lives and then we have so many "entertainment" distractions as well.  Video games, reality television, texting, Internet, email, chat rooms, social networking sites all take our attention in another direction.  It seems as if we don't have to face the issues with ourselves or with our relationships because we can just drown ourselves with other distractions.

I am guilty of using these distractions.  I think we all are in someway or another.  These distractions however don't "numb" me out.  I don't look at them as a way to truly escape the issues of my life. 

Sometimes I wish I could just turn it all off and go back in time a few months or a few years.  I long for the days without all of these distractions.  I want days where serious conversations take place face to face other than via text messaging. 

With all of these distractions, do we truly have to face what's wrong?

New Day?

I have always lived by the mantra "Every passing minute is just another chance to turn it all around."  I want to live that way and I want to believe that is true.

I know that I am the only one connecting myself to "yesterday".  I am the one who can't seem to stop the chatter in my own head that is taking me back and preventing me from living in this moment right now. 

Today is a new day, but it is difficult not to let yesterday creep in and mess up your positive thinking.  In all of the reading that I have always done on the Zen living, you are just supposed to keep bringing yourself back to "NOW".  It sounds so easy, yet in practice it is much more difficult. 

I don't understand why as people we have a hard time living in the now.  If we lived in the now, we wouldn't feel half of the pain that we feel.  We could just enjoy what is happening without struggling with what is wrong and yearning for what is not.

I don't want to yearn for what is not.  I want to burn myself out in every possible moment and just know that what is happening right now is the best possible thing that could happen.  I want to believe in that with every fiber of my being, but I guess some behaviors are just so deeply embedded that it will take awhile to dig them up and get rid of them.

My goal for today is to just live in today.  Not spend my time worrying about yesterday and not obsessing about tomorrow.  Today, I will just worry about what is happening now.  I will look for my motivation, which has been lost this week and I will do at least one thing that makes me feel good and healthy.

It is a new day, even though previous days seem to be dragging me down, I will enjoy today.  I will sit with my legs crossed and breath deeply in and out finding the zen in my own life.

No More Blogs about "HIM"

Today I think (I hope I can control myself) I wrote my last blog about HIM.  I have come to terms with the fact that he isn't coming back (Yes, I know I have said that before) and I am just ready to move on from this place.

I know that there are still some hard times in my future when it comes to this failure.  I know that he will show up with a U-haul to pack up his stuff and that is going to be a heart wrenching day, but I am going to try my best not to blog about it. 

I want use my head space to get to the heart of the issues that got me to this place right now.  I want to explore what has really made me who I am and why it seems like I am still at the starting line of life.  I want to delve deep inside my vast soul and release the pain I have been holding onto.

Everything that I feel is just a symptom of something bigger and it's time to face the hard truths.  I will heal myself and I will find the light at the end of the tunnel.  I will once again live the big life that I once lived and I will once again find the humor that brought sunshine to the people around me.  I will once again walk on the path to be the best Toni I can be.

I release him and the pain that has been caused by him.  I release the blame that he lay ed on me and I forgive myself for the mistakes that I made.  I accept my sadness and I will begin to release that sadness. However, I have yet to forgive "HIM".  I have a feeling that will be a little farther down the road.

I say goodbye to HIM now and I say Thank you to you all who have supported me on this part of the journey. 

Stay tuned and watch the real work begin!

Poked the Bear

Yesterday was a hard day.  I felt a strong need to contact HIM and I did.  My reason is because I wanted to tell him that I thought he was a runner, and that I couldn't and wouldn't take the blame for everything that has happened.  I really wish that is the way it would have went.  I heard his voice and I just broke down.  I found myself begging him to come back which made me feel like a fool.  I wont bore you with all of the details, but the conversation ended and the texts went on until he once again turned mean and cold.

I cried all day and really just wanted the pain to stop.  I think I was crying mostly because I was so angry with myself.  I just had to poke the bear and I don't even know why.  I did it.  I am the one who contacted him, I am the one who provoked his meanness and  I am the one who just made the whole situation worse.

I can't for the life of me figure out why I did this.  Why did I feel such a need to contact him when deep down I knew this would be the result? 

I know that I am just looking for something to make me feel better.  None of what is happening right now makes any sense to me, and that is what is causing this unexplainable pain in my heart and the emptiness in my soul.  I know that I keep searching for answers hoping that something will click and the pain will disappear.  It's just funny that searching and talking is part of what got me here to begin with.  He hated the talking, and yet I just keep poking the bear.

I do really want to let go and just move on, but I feel like that is impossible right now.  One of the problems is that I have nothing to fill my time right now except my own thoughts.  I want to break free of this self loathing and feel an ounce of happiness again. 

Logically, I know that I am the only one that break these chains, yet they just feel so damn tight. 

Love is a choice

I do believe that love is a choice.  I believe that is why love is so difficult at times.  You choose everyday to love the people around you, even when it's hard.  When we meet new and exciting people that we connect with, we are enveloped in feelings but are any of those feelings really love?  I know that it is passion, lust, excitement and attraction but I don't believe that it is love.

Love is something that you choose to feel and that you choose to convey and that you decide you are going to give. 

I think that when we think of love being a choice, we think of the choice TO love.  Rarely do we make the conscious decision NOT to love someone.  Today, I am making the choice to no longer love HIM.

I feel sad that I lost him, and I know that I have been trying to convince myself that it is HIM that I do miss, but I am slowly beginning to realize that I was just trying to hold on because I didn't want to face another failure.  I believe that my ego has gotten in the way of my rational decision making and my ego has clouded my judgement.  My ego is what is really devastated. 

I try to walk away from HIM everyday, so I can see things more clearly then the day before.  I have to tell myself the hard truths about this relationship, and that isn't always easy.  There isn't anyone hear to watch me lie to myself, so I have come to the conclusion that I shouldn't be lying to myself at all.  I have to tell myself that I was ready to walk away from HIM six months ago.  I was unhappy and miserable six months ago and every time we argued, I would mutter under my breath, "get the fuck out of my house".  One of the hard truths that I have to tell myself, is that one reason I am so devastated by this break up is because I didn't do it.  I didn't take control of the situation along time ago.  That is partly my ego of course but also my emotional being.  I stayed because I didn't want to fail.  I stayed because I was afraid.  And yes, I stayed because I didn't want to start over yet once again.  I stayed for a lot of other reasons that I will discuss in my future blogs.

So yes, love is a choice and so is not to love someone.  Today I choose freedom from love.  I am closing the book on a horrible love story and I am going to prepare myself to write another love story someday.  Today, I choose to let his love go and to let my love go.  I choose to accept what has happened and to accept the real reasons why I am sad.  Today, I choose to walk alone and to get back on the path that leads back to me.

Today is my day.