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I admit to being a little distracted as I write this.
Vlad also seems a little unnerved, specifically by the large mass of balloons that have just arrived.
He’s usually fine with balloons but these are all clumped together in a large plastic bag, floating like some lumpy alien spacecraft with multi-colored tail ribbons.
Uncertain whether it’s friend or foe, he doesn’t know what to make of this airborne blob.
You see, Vlad doesn’t yet know it, but in about 3 hours, he’s hosting a party on our rooftop dog park for his puppy friends to celebrate our first year together.
Since it was such a huge hit at his birthday, I’ve purchased another cake for canines at Maison de Pawz.
(Plus I’ve grabbed a few bottles of VInho Verde for the humans.)
And yet that’s not why this is (rather oddly) the strangest party I’ve ever thrown.
What’s unnerving is that because it’s so unstructured I haven’t created a formal invite or an RSVP option.
Nor is it so intimate that I’ve simply texted four friends to see who’s free for dinner and awaited their responses.
Instead, I’ve just posted the offering in our building’s WhatsApp Dog Chat.
Quite soon, we’ll see who (if anyone) shows up.
I find the idea of things being this undefined, this open an invitation, this blank a slate, more than a little uncomfortable.
This combination of openness and uncertainty resonates with other things in my life, specifically new projects I’m launching.
Most significantly, I’ve finalized and I’m about to offer a new lead magnet.
If you’re not familiar with the term “lead magnet,” I’m more than a little envious since it means you’re less entrenched in internet marketing than I’m forced to be in order to pay for Vlad’s college education.
A lead magnet is simply a free offer to get people to subscribe to your mailing list.
The fact that you’re reading this––unless you’re looking over a housemate’s shoulder––means that you’re already on my mailing list.
I do, however, want to offer this to you as well since every single person I’ve shared the title with has responded with an enthusiastic “Wow…I Really Need That!”
The title….(drumroll)….
Meditation for
People Who Can’t Sit Still.
Five days of 1-2 minute videos offering my favorite meditation tips.
It’s totally FREE and designed for Very Busy People (just like you) and it’s HERE if you want it as my gift.
Finally, I suppose I’m guilty of burying the lied, but the first video stars Vlad’s friend (and puppy mentee, Janey).
Watch it HERE.
Despite Mercury being retrograde, I felt this was an auspicious time to soft-launch.
Several synchronicities pointed the way forward for me.
My favorite is that Behr Paints just announced its Color of the Year for 2023:
Blank Canvas.
It seems an apt name for something I think people misunderstand about the purpose of meditation.
There’s this mistaken notion that meditation will allow one to stop thinking.
Newsflash: as long as you have a functioning brain, that’s never going to happen.
In the same way, Behr’s “Blank Canvas” isn’t really an utter absence of color.
(Although technically something being white means that it’s reflecting all the colors in the spectrum back to us, I think you still get my point.)
Here’s what resonates with me about all this:
I’m intrigued that “Blank Canvas” isn’t a pure white but rather an appealing neutral shade.
In fact, in Behr’s pallet, the first six shades (before heading off into the more daring universe of grays) are a subtle symphonic poem:
Whipped Cream
Statement White
Blank Canvas
Winter White
Natural White
First Snow
In other words, even in the most neutral universe, there’s feeling and movement afoot.
Indeed, ridding the world of color is as almost as impossible as stopping your thoughts in meditation.
And why would you even want to try….?
They look like they might be related but Vlad and Janey are not.
Theybecame best of friends on the baseball field this spring.
(You can see their onset chemistry HERE).
Vlad’s my co-star in another course I’m launching soon––and in the promo for a new DailyOM offering––but when it came to putting him in the first meditation video, I had to repress my Kris Jenner tendencies.
There were days this past winter when I never thought I’d say this, but he’s now actually a little too well-behaved for the part I was casting,
Namely, “The Restless Puppy,” aka the perfect metaphor for our restless thoughts.
I’ve often quoted Jack Kornfield about how meditation training requires the same kind of patience one needs with a puppy and it’s completely true.
Unfortunately, I’d hate to say Vlad “aged out” of the role for this video, but he honestly has.
Make no mistake, Vlad is still essentially the Harry Styles of the puppy world––perpetually a little bratty yet consistently adorable––but unlike Janey (and most people approaching meditation for the first time) he’s actually able to sit still.
If you watch the first video lesson here, you’ll Janey’s restlessness went beyond Method Acting.
Her performance is authentic, effortless, and completely on point.
I believe––and I’m sure you will, too––she has a huge career in front of the camera ahead.
I confess that I have had some difficult soul-searching moments lately around the concept of the Blank Canvas.
Specifically, I keep thinking about how much my perceptions have been colored in ways in which I’m at best dimly aware.
(I may be writing more about that soon even though it’s definitely not contained in a world of tasteful neutrals).
Anyway, it’s both refreshing and unnerving when I catch myself looking at life through old filters, ones I didn’t realize I was applying.
Living life through old paradigms––ones as distorted as a sepia wash––is a truly Sisyphean proposition.
Like sitting still for meditation, a filter-free existence can sometimes feel utterly impossible.
Whenever I think about the phrase “a blank canvas,” I can’t help but remember the first play I ever saw on Broadway, Stephen Sondheim’s beyond-genius Sunday in the Park with George.
I still find the memory of it intensely moving.
When I’m feeling world-weary, I recall two moments in it.
(Perhaps they will be helpful to you as well.)
The first is from the second to last song “Move On” when the present day artist meets a vision from the past.
She convinces him to stop agonizing over his creative choices and questioning his vision, and to simply move forward, reminding him:
“Anything you do,
let it come from you–
then it will be new.”
(Best advice ever.)
And, of course, the incredible final moments of the play when George recreates the tableau of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Latte.
The last words right before the curtain falls, spoken not sung, summarize everything:
“White.
A blank page or a canvas.
His favorite.
So many possibilities.”
That’s what Meditation offers us.
Not the cessation of thought.
Instead, it’s a doorway to new ways of being, new possibilities.
But first we have to be willing to walk through…even if we can’t quite sit still.
Namaste for Now…
