Random insights and revelations

I should be asleep now, but when you eat dark chocolate m&ms after 9pm and use diet Dr. Pepper to take your night time pills, you just don't go to sleep easily. So, I decided to blog about some of my recent "lightbulb" moments.

Friday night I took a book with me to read while I waited for the choir concert to begin. The book is The Way of Qigong by Kenneth S. Cohen. I loved these two sentences:
"The foundation of qigong is song, relaxation and tranquility. Instead if making an effort and doing more, it may be important to do less."

First of all, I've known about the concept of song for quite awhile now. And I understand that the spelling of the word being the same as the word for a piece of vocal music is completely coincidental, but I still like to think of them as related. My best moments of singing are the ones where I find relaxation and tranquility. Song creates relaxation and tranquility in my life. Over the past several years, I have also learned that I was physically working way too hard to try to sing correctly. I'm learning that be doing less, I can often achieve more.

The next quote (from the same book) reminded me of Psalms 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God." Neither God nor Qigong will make our troubles go away, but we can find peace in the middle of the tempest.
"Taiji means the balance point between yin and yang, the place of stillness amid change. Finding the Taiji state of mind is equivalent to finding what Thoreau called 'the witness self,' an aspect of the self that is untouched by life's turmoil and that can be accessed during times of difficulty."

Here is one of my favorite quotes and I believe it 100 percent:

"Writing is an act of hope. It is a means of carving order from chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open."

--from The Writer's Idea Book by Jack Heffron

Writing is how I figure things out. I learn when I write. Usually I it's when I'm blogging or journaling, but occasionally, I learn something from writing fiction too.

A character in my novel (yes, the one I am currently writing) said something quite profound and I didn't realize it until I reread it later. She was trying to justify her actions and explain to my main character that it's all about power. Everything we do is about power. My main character is the leader of this group and therefore has power, but Trish pointed out a few other ways that Alanna seeks power. I won't quote the whole passage, but one of the things Trish tells Alanna is that she (Alanna) is a fixer. She's always trying to make things better for people. And fixing is power.

When I reread that, it hit me. I'm a fixer. I want people to be happy. And in many cases, it has transformed situations where I felt powerless. The danger comes when the fixing is more about me than about others. I think that this is what Trish was accusing Alanna of, making the situation better to make herself feel better, not really to help the other people.

Today, the Dalai Lama's tweet says,"Compassion is a feeling from deep in the heart that you cannot bear someone else's suffering without taking steps to relieve it."

I'm rethinking power. I'm not sure I really need it anymore, at least not in the way I used to view it. But that doesn't mean I need to stop being a fixer. I just need to fix because I feel compassion so strongly that I have no other choice but to make a difference.