“WHAT DO I DO?” asked my mother.

I had just helped her out of the car at Mc Donald’s. She was confused as to what we were doing. I took her arm and led her inside as I explained that we were at her favorite place, McDonalds.

Not four weeks earlier, I had heard myself say those very same words, “WHAT DO I DO?”

My mom had not taken any of her medication for 4 days. She would spit it out and throw it at the nurses, along with the water. By the time I saw her, she was raging, trying to bite, push, kick or hit anyone who got close to her. She was like a rabid dog. They took her to the emergency room, where the first thing she did was grab the doctors pregnant belly and try to push hard on it. After that 4 men struggled to hold her down on the bed, two at her wrists and two at her ankles, so they could give her a shot in the thigh that would hopefully, calm her down.

Between attempts to hold the men back, and I mean, she was putting up an amazing fight for a 94 year old, she looked over at me, glared and yelled, “You are the worst daughter anyone could ever have. I hate you.”

That’s when I left the room and the small scared voice inside of my head asked, “WHAT DO I DO?”

I can remember, not too far back in the past, when that question would have paralyzed me for a long time with such an out of control fear. Maybe that is how my mom feels when she’s standing there in the parking lot and doesn’t know what is happening and so she asks the question; the one she has no way of answering.

But my mind is fully functioning. I can ask the question, and in my case, am fortunate enough to know the answer.

It’s quite simple, yet can be, oh so, so hard!

Don’t follow that runaway mind.

The mind that is going 220 mph down into the pit of darkness where there is nothing but pain and misery. And as it travels, it picks up speed so the story, the wrongness of everything that is happening, grows bigger and more dramatic with every passing moment.

We are so drawn to those stories; they are so juicy and ripe.

I once heard about a study that was done. There were two kids sitting on rocking horses. One was wildly rocking and yelling, the other was silently moving at a slower pace. Everyone who walked into the room put their attention first on the one making all the noise and thrashing about.

Our minds like action, they are drawn to it.

But we can train our minds to move in a different direction.

We can choose where we want put the focus of our attention.

And if we don’t, it will just go to the drama and chaos because that is most likely where it has always gone in the past.

So, I re-focused my mind, remembered not to take anything personally, wished this was not happening, but gave much more air time to the fact that it WAS happening and I would be so much happier if I didn’t travel down the mind hole of my runaway, ever so dramatic thinking.

I came back into the room.

Same bed, same mother, same men, same voice yelling. The only thing that had changed was me. I was now traveling down a different mind pathway, one of my own choosing, and was no longer plummeting down the hole of despair. Everything was the same and yet it was all totally different.
I’ve been hanging out in the world of dementia a lot lately. For some of us we may not have much longer with these pliant, mold-able minds before we lose the ability to think on purpose and create what we want for ourselves.

A sobering thought for sure.
Given all that,

just what

do you want to do

with your one and only precious mind?