Tradition

For over twenty-five years my college friends and I had a reunion called EC weekend in my home town of El Campo. We always spent the night at the ranch house. We always played poker and always sat at the same seats while playing. We were big on tradition. 

I love traditions. They’re great. They bring some stability to an uncertain world. In my prior entry, Lamp Posts, I talked about the reasons behind rules. Stability can often be a good reason for having a tradition. I need to lean on the familiar from time to time.

For most of my life my mind was immersed in what I call traditional thinking. By that I mean repeatedly thinking of ways to make sure I was enough.  That usually came through comparison. I’m enough because of an accomplishment, which made me more than I was before, or comparing myself to others. I wrote about this in my post, The Great Thief.

Another form of traditional thinking for me was filling my mind with entertainment. For a while, it’s a way of crowding out the relentless notion that I’m not enough. I don’t have to think about it because I’m distracted.

Accomplishments and entertainment are important. They make life possible and interesting. However, like rules, the reason behind them is what really matters. To be enough or to escape having to think about being enough is like chasing fool’s gold. It looks good, but isn’t worth anything in the long run.

Discovering I am enough through reading and meditation has mostly freed me from those states of mind. It provides a completely different type of stability. It’s become a new tradition for me. One worth continuing. Nothing more complicated than perception.

May you have enough today, one moment at a time.