Welcome to week 2 of my weird friend Mental Mama’s challenge 7 Weeks Of Weird. I just realized that somehow, I swapped week two’s question for week three’s, so I’ll answer week two next week. I’ve never been good at following instructions.

Weirdest thing you do to relax.

This is probably the easiest answer in this whole challenge. The weirdest thing I do to relax is shoot guns.

Counter-intuitive, right? Guns aren’t relaxing! Guns are scary! They can kill you and they make loud noises that go BOOM! How on earth can that be relaxing?

It’s really rather simple: when you have a gun in your hand, you never forget that you have a gun in your hand. A gun is capable of killing me or someone else if I don’t handle it properly. I treat guns with the utmost respect.

Are you seeing the relaxing part yet? No? When you have a gun in your hand, you never forget that you have a gun in your hand, so what does that mean for the rest of your thoughts? They go away!

I’ve always been rubbish at meditation. I’ve never once been able to clear my mind of all thoughts. When I meditate, my internal dialog goes something like this:

OK, we’re meditating! We can do this!

Clear your mind… ommmmm.

What does “om” mean? Is that even a word? Is it a noun? What’s the definition?

Clear your mind… Is my mind clear?

No, I just had a thought about clearing my mind. Damn, does that count as a thought? I don’t think it counts as a thought since I’m trying to clear my mind.

Crap. I just reasoned though. Reasoning definitely counts as a thought.

Damn, that was more reasoning. OK, try again.

Oh, I have to pay the phone bill!

Clear your mind… ommmmm.

My butt itches.

Incidentally, that’s much the same process as trying to sleep. I’ll never reach transcendence through meditation. I have never nor will ever be able to clear my mind and just meditate, unless I’m holding a gun.

My internal dialog when I’m holding a firearm goes something like this:

I’m holding a gun.

Right hand around the grip.

Left hand around right hand.

Left foot forward.

Breathe.

Arms relaxed.

Head straight.

Relax.

Breathe.

Squeeze trigger.

Breathe.

Relax.

Yeah, so there are thoughts there, too, but all the fluff is gone. There’s no worrying about the phone bill or randomly remembering that embarrassing time that I did that thing one time. I focus only on the thing in my hand that is capable of killing and the target in front of me.

While I’ll never make a good hippie, I am capable of clearing my mind. It’s just weird that it takes something capable of killing to do it.