Therein Squats the Toad

I just spent the day doing nothing! Seriously nothing. I thought about taking a walk or cleaning and purging. I thought about reading a book and I thought about watching baseball. I napped. I snacked. I ignored my phone and the people who didn’t. I had the TV on in the background and Dharma and Greg was on for awhile; the show with the hippie married to the lawyer that was on for the first time in the 90’s. Dharma says this ridiculous thing that I titled this post. It made me laugh and then ponder its meaning. in context she meant the more common “therein lies the problem” or “that’s the rub“.

So here it is: I spent the whole day alone. quiet. thought-less. breathing. Yet, I also spent the day pushing back the feelings and the voices that were screaming in my head that I was wasting a day. That there were more important things to be done than nothing. That I didn’t deserve to spend the day this way. That I was actually selfish or sinful. Did it change my actions? No. But it did put a bit of a damper on the experience and therein squats the toad!

Now I am reminding myself of this reality: There is more than one way to skin a cat! There is rarely only one right way to do things. There is almost always more than one way to achieve the same objective. There are many ways to relax. Not everything has to be by the book. Not everyday has to be the same. According to some famous person who I cannot remember, “there are no ordinary days, or at least every once in awhile we should let the mundane excite us!” There may be routines and habits, which are good. Also good are vacations, creative brainstorms, unexpected changes and out of the box thinking. Variations are fun and often necessary. Today was rare which is extraordinary. I believe there are no ordinary days in life. Life is full of opportunities that I don’t have to take! Today I zigged instead of zagged. Sometimes – not often enough – I am reminded that there are wild and different ways of doing very familiar things. And that was my day – full of squatting toads!