F.F.A.

Serious:  Concerned or dealing with grave or important matters, problems, etc.; weighty; important.


For the longest time my life was marked by an incredibly powerful tendency to take myself way too seriously.  Way, way too seriously.  I was totally lacking in the ability to laugh at myself or to find any of my foibles or ridiculous exploits amusing in any way.  What in the world was so important?  I have no idea today.  Whose opinion was I so consumed with, anyway?  I don't care what anyone thinks of me today, for the most part, so I marvel that there was once a time when I was so obsessed with what everyone thought of me, even though no one was thinking about me just as I was not thinking about them.


Today I have managed to develop a wonderful ability to laugh at myself.  It's a skill that frees me from so much.  I no longer try to hide under a bush when I make a fool of myself, which is a good thing because there isn't enough shrubbery in the forest for that.


I was bedeviled by a vague sense of slight dis-ease today.  I was having no luck in putting my finger on any specific cause, nothing that I could deal with or work on.  Free Floating Anxiety.  Out into the sun I went, to sit at the coffee shop and be around people.  And a meeting, too, of course.  I left early and found a park with a farmer's market near the meeting place, and I sat out there, among some more people.  I got asked for a dollar to assist in solving some vague medical complaint;  for seventy five cents to help with a bus fare, by a guy who was smoking - not a wise technique by someone panhandling, holding on to a 25 cent cigarette; to sign a petition to put measures legalizing marijuana and eliminating the estate tax on the next ballot, which seemed like a strange marriage of two principles existing at opposite and extreme ends of the political spectrum -- maybe the heirs of the people who save money by the elimination of the estate tax are expected to use some of their windfall to buy a shitload of pot, thereby stimulating the economy; to make a contribution to help "my son's school"; and if I would mind sharing my bench in the sun - this from a nattily dressed and vaguely unbalanced man with a dog named Fred who ignored the fact we were in the shade - he sat there for a minute before jumping up and running over to a nearby statue of Abraham Lincoln to probe a cavity in Abe's clenched left hand to "see if anyone had stuffed anything in there."  They had not.  I wondered what he had hoped to find. 


All of that fending off helped me feel better about myself.  That, and the meeting.