Dogfish Juggling

Life has been moving along at a rather happy clip here, these past few days, and it’s kept me fairly occupied.

Perhaps the most noteworthy event in the past week is my return to the workforce. I’ve been through my first day of training at Athens Student Business Services, a local transcription service primarily devoted to transcribing case notes for financial planners. I can’t say that it is the most fascinating job I’ve ever had, but it has flexible hours and will provide a bit of income for me, so I am rather pleased with the development.

I’ve also recently returned from a trip to Jesup for my birthday, and while I am glad to be back in Athens, I enjoyed the trip. I had the opportunity to attend a group sit at the Vipassana center, and it was really nice to visit the Dhamma hall again.

It’s been a bit of a struggle for me to keep up my meditation practice. I can’t really say why, either. I’m not sure where my motivation breaks down, but I only manage about an hour a day two out of three days. I think part of it is the miasma of an entirely ungoverned schedule. Hopefully, once I start my job in earnest (Monday), establish some sort of regular schedule for myself and really settle into a more sustainable life here, I will have a bit more of a solid base for my practice.

On the subject of Vipassana, I’ve been meaning to get this bit of thought out of my head for awhile.

On the first day of our 10-day meditation retreat I met a few of my fellow meditators. We had about 3 or 4 hours before our vow of silence, and during that time we all pretty much asked the same questions: “How did you hear about this, why are you here?”

Most of the answers were pretty generic — a friend of a friend, a trail of on-line links — but one stood out. It came from an older member of our group. Like me, like most of us, he was a “new student,” meaning he’d never sat a Vipassana course before. He was as prototypically middle-aged as you can imagine. He was taller than me, wore glasses and was slightly balding. He had the softness of features and body that comes from decades at a desk job.

“I came here,” he explained, “because I’m over 50, I have two children who are grown — over 20 — and I can’t remember any of it. I can’t remember anything. I was so busy living in the future, I missed my whole life.”