My Tent on The Beach

I’ve known a lot of interesting people over the years–for some reason, maybe random, I was vaulted back to thinking about a particularly exceptional guy I knew back in the early days of the journey.  His name is Steve…I assume he’s still doing his thing.  There’s a lot of good reasons to remember him; he was full of resonance.  He radiated: wisdom, love, grace.  I’ve never really met anyone else that can do that.  And still be a normal kinda “guy” too.  He was (and I’m guessing still is) a phenomenon. And this morning I woke up with his resonant baritone in my head–it’s literally the first time I’ve thought about him in probably five years–but there his voice was giving me the first thought of the day…and it’s a good one.

Usually I wake up with some trace of pop culture looping through my conscious.  It’s not rare for Lady Gaga to be all up in there; yesterday I woke up to the Black Eyed Peas suggesting, “I have a feeling (ooh-ooh), that tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a good, good ni-igh-ight.”  Even if I tried I couldn’t tell you how the dial in that random jukebox up there works.  But last night I went to bed upset–always a major no-no.  I can’t even say that I was upset “at” something or that the feeling was even clear.  I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t nervous or sad…I was just…”not feeling great” about things.  Lot’s of things.  I’ve taken to being bolder about taking risks lately and hanging myself out there to be critiqued or called on the carpet.  I, like many, want to take the least riskiest risks; I do things that might be out of my comfort zone but that seem to have the probability for a predictable outcome.  Go ahead judge me…I like to plan my risks.  Anyway, of course nothing has turned out the way I thought it would.  I expected people to respond in certain ways and when they didn’t it threw me off.  And it kinda stung.  It’s still stinging, actually, and last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was feeling particularly lost as to what I should do. How could I fix all of these things so I could feel better about them?

“Always do what love requires,” Steve whispered in my ear this morning as I woke up feeling guilty about choosing sleep over yoga.  And his voice intoning that refrain over and over played like a loop in my head for the first hour I was awake.  And it was (and is) the answer to all of the questions I had last night as I was drifting off.  It explains how to deal with the ways people have disappointed me over the past couple days, it prescribes for me how to graciously handle all of the good wishes yesterday when that is really hard for me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  It gives me a guide to consider in how I talk to myself in those moments when relentless critique seems the only correct action.  In so many ways it just is the answer.

Structurally, it’s about as close to a perfect answer we could ever hope for.  When? Always. What? Do. Do what? Whatever love requires…requires. It’s 100% responsive in nature; it acknowledges my love for different people and things is 100% unique in each case…and therefore, what that means depends on each case, each circumstance, each interaction.  And it roots my intention; not in selfishness, not in an agenda…but in love.  It is the prescription for compassion.  It asks me, out of love, to respond to what someone else needs (or what I need).  That is the challenge of love, I think.  It requires we know we’ll do something we would not choose otherwise for the sake of the person(s) we love.

Obviously, I think I need not dwell on how hard this is in reality.  It implies accepting others as they come to us, with their own needs and constraints.  It means consistently standing on that line, knowing you may not get this in return.  It means challenging your own fears for the sake of someone else.  It could mean having to let someone go.  Ugh.  Just thinking about the challenge of this makes me nauseous; this is a lesson in advanced compassion.  Even now, and every minute, I wonder if I’m up for it.

And then I think…I just have to be.  It’s such a good answer, the answer I was asking for that I cannot ignore it.  I guess it just means I’ll try.  That’s all I can promise.  Because I just cannot receive a gift like that, in such a timely manner and in response to such a direct request for help, and disregard it.

“Always do what love requires,” he said to me as though he was just standing there right next to me, waiting for me to wake up to share the notion.  Thanks Steve.  It’s good to hear your voice.

That is not my title.  It’s actually a book I’m reading right now that is really changing my life.  I love that books have the power to do that…if we heed them…well, some of them.  I think this particular one is brilliant because it falls into that “magical realism” genre in which everything and nothing makes sense all at the same time. It’s a story for the ultimately story-teller…it seems it’s completely unreal…until you start trying out some of the ideas and then watch as what seems impossible merges with possible.

It’s goofy and profound at the same time. A rare combination, I find.

So anyway, one of the ideas I stumbled across that’s really amazing is this push/pull situation he introduces.  I’ve always struggled with the idea of “letting go.”  That sounds terrifying to me.  Letting go generally means that for 2 seconds you feel weightless and then are introduced to a world of fantastic pain…that last longer than 2 seconds. In my book, letting go has always meant giving up.  Instead, in this story, I ran across this idea which has revolutionized my way of thinking: when something is pressing you in a particular direction, instead of pushing against it, why not pull?

Wait.  What?

That sounds absurd.  Won’t I just be falling then? (And I always envision this as happening with a door such that I’m pulling, they’re pushing, and I’m falling backwards.  The answer is actually no…you’re not falling necessarily.  You’re just not spending so much energy resisting the flow of things.

Wait. Whaaaaat?

I’ve never, EVER considered this idea before.  Whenever I’ve approached letting go, it’s always ultimately been temporary…probably because that’s the way I envisioned it.  Just thinking about it required an overwhelming amount of change on my part, so it seemed.  I like to hold things.  So just to let everything go is completely ridiculous…and not doable.  But the push/pull scenario…well, that’s event-related…I can do that…and it’s fairly small scaled…and it makes sense…and it seems easier.

And it is.  I’ve just tried this in small ways throughout my days over the past week or so…it has literally changed the fabric of my life.  Shockingly, nothing concrete has changed…I still walk in the same direction, my goals are still my goals and the troubles still my troubles. But there’s none of the weariness in dealing with all of it, a symptom brought on by the degree to which I was standing vigilantly and waiting to resist things.  If I’m pulling, not only do I not initiate the action but I also don’t work hard to stop it.  (This is ultimately “going with the flow”…but that always sounded condescendingly “new agey” to me.  I’m not a river…what does that even mean?!?)  But, like Liz Lemon, “I’m a pusher.  I push people.”  Turns out, being a puller is way better.  If pushing is trying, then pulling is being…I think.

I’d rather just be.

I’ve been doing this for a couple days and the degree to which I can breathe more freely and feel and see things more clearly astounds me.  Of course, like any good crash diet, the devil is in the maintenance of it.  Can I sustain it?  I’d venture to say only, “I don’t know.”  But my experience with crash diets has been the loss of the will because the demands are just too great to bear.  I’m not sure I’d lose motivation with something that makes me feel so whole. This may be a crash diet I can get behind.

It’s the Path of the Peaceful Warrior…the book, I mean.  That’s the title of the book.

My horoscope continues to be right on. And it’s starting to really creep me out.  But, in the weirdest way, I’m learning an interesting lesson.

My horoscope has magically discussed the fact that there’s been a friendship in negotiation over the past week.  This is true.  It also commented on the fact, last week, that I shouldn’t question the change; all would be for the best in the end.  I seriously agreed with that and, frankly, it was what I needed to hear…desperately…thus, I’m willing to listen to my horoscope to hear it.  I know it’s the right thing but in that moment in which the questions happen, it’s hard to keep a firm grip on that.

However, the commentary this week has turned to accepting the distance and letting go of worries about it.  That it’s the space between in which growth happens.  I agree with that too but, once again, I’m thrust (yes I used that word) up against one of my greater fears.  I would love the ability to go ahead and get lifetime guarantees on friendships.  Just sign on the dotted line, thank you, and I’ll be good to go.  Without that to question, I could conceivably proceed happily through whatever comes my way.

Of course, that’s completely untrue…in all cases, forever.  I’m completely aware that lifetime guarantees–even on material things–are a red herring.  We never can assume anything will be forever…in fact, Tom (my guru of sorts) constantly says to me “Everything will fall apart.”  It’s inevitable that things will just always change.  And if I really sat down to think about it, I’m not sure I’d want a lifetime guarantee on anything…because it only supposes what I know right now to be true.  And I’ve actually experienced the joy and wonder (and also scariness) of watching my entire world upturned in about one second.  We cannot guarantee the permanence of anything in this world…because this world itself isn’t permanent…and that’s good.

Because I can say that, I do wonder why I continue to want permanence.  I know I can’t have it, it’s not realistic, and that I really don’t want it…and yet in this moment it would be so nice to have…or so I think.

I think I’ve confused stability for permanence…and that’s be absolutely nothing but trouble.  I have stability; my day to day life is just as predictable as everyone else’s.  I can take comfort in that, just like everyone else.  And when I do, and let go of that idea of seeking something permanent, I can and do breathe better.

But what came into clear relief for me when I did accept my own stability is that I’m not necessarily happy with what I see there.  I think my problem is not permanence but contentment and that means only one thing:  time to clean out the closets (the figurative ones…although the real ones are often a sign of the figurative) and get proactive in getting the kind of stability I want.

With space comes the room to move.

Time to move.

I spend a lot of time on “waiting:” I myself wait for things to transpire, for people; I reflect on whether or not I should wait; I wonder if waiting ever does any good.  Given the number of years I’ve felt like this has become a kind of mantra, I’m becoming convinced that waiting is more a symptom of a particular kind of worldview as opposed to action.  Waiting almost seems antithetical to action; it’s non-action; it’s….waiting.

As I get older (and one would hope wiser…which I always think is the actual purpose of thinking about age at all–as a mark of life experience) I’m beginning to see waiting less as a courteous gesture on my part (I’ve always approached it like, “I’ll just sit here and wait til you get your shit together…don’t you worry about me.”) and more of a hunkering down–steeling myself against whatever kind of roiling storm is headed my way.  The bigger the storm, the harder I hunker.  I have a “wait it out” mentality…and I think I always have.  It’s how I’ve made it through just about every phase of my life.

But I think I’m becoming a cautionary tale for the hunker mentality; I have a really horrible relationship with the inevitable and as long as time is the mode by which our lives play out, inevitability is always going to be there.  The truth will out in the end…always…(by the by, I’ve never quite understood the grammar on that phrase yet this is how it’s used…a question for the ages).  And actually, when I push past what is a debilitating hunker impulse, I’ve watched the experience of inevitability work itself out.  Or at least present new opportunities that appear to materialize out of thin air.

This reflection is brought to you by the letter “I” and a conversation I had with a friend yesterday.  It’s a conversation that’s been long overdue…as I count it, it’s been about a year and a half since things have been “right.”  We’re both hunkerers so the unbearableness of the present was enough for me to finally draw a line in the sand and polish off my dueling pistol; said friend showed up with dueling pistol in hand…it was bigger than I expected. And thus I was swept into the inevitable, partially by my own hand and partially by the wake of my dueling partner’s efforts…and I couldn’t stop thinking, “This is it; the moment I’ve been dreading…I didn’t think it would look like this.”

It wasn’t an easy day.  It won’t be an easy week.  After that the stings that are there will fade.  My new reality will become “every other day” and everything will resume forward motion at its own pace and with new questions daring me to find new answers.  But in the midst of all of that, I couldn’t stop thinking two thoughts: I didn’t think it would look like this and How did this happen? I’ve felt alternating waves of guilt, then anger, then a simple old-fashioned giving in.  I kept wondering if the hunters and gatherers ever came to this point.  Inevitability was at my door and I just had to let it come in.

I didn’t think it would look like this. And today, it’s not a bad thing.  That’s the weird part about this inevitability; I can breathe today in a way I haven’t for a long time.  I can focus on what I need to do to get my work and, in a lot of ways, my life on track, a focus that was falling by the wayside. But mostly what’s missing is the worry associated with “what will happen when the inevitable comes?”  I’ve seen the inevitable…it was at my door…and in that moment it was okay for it to come.  And with it it brought Hope, Opportunity, and Peace of mind.  Also in it’s entourage were Hurt Feelings and Bruised Ego; those guys are nothing but trouble so I asked them to go. I can still see them poking their heads up over the windowsills, trying to peer in.  At least they can only look.

I’ve spent some quality time with Inevitable and I think there might be a spark of something there.  I didn’t offer him a beer or pull up the coffee table so he could rest his feet. But then, he didn’t ask for it.

Maybe someday.

Today is one of those days.  You know the kind…my brain is just churning out a lot of thoughts that are good but really disjointed.  So, for instance, as I was waiting for my post-yoga raisin toast to prepare itself via the magic toaster this was my train of thought:

I wonder why yesterday the toaster burned the toast and today, without touching the toaster or doing anything differently, the toast is perfect? Where did I leave my flip-flops? I wonder if an all-girls high school education actually made me more masculine than many men I know? I should take a shower. Almost done with IRB. That breeze is cool. I wonder how other people experience pain?

Literally…that was in two minutes.  I walked home from yoga this morning; it took about 25 minutes and I had a lifetime’s worth of conversation with myself.  Going in 25 directions.  Whenever this happens I feel the distinct need to write everything down as quickly as possible.  There could be good nuggets of something in there which only time will reveal.  But despite this mental chattering, there was one thought I kept coming back to, I think because it didn’t originate in my brain.

In the 2 or 3 moments in between crazy shooting thoughts, I actually felt compassion.  I’ve been reading this book by Pema Chodron called The Places that Scare You and I assumed it would be a lot about fear.  It’s actually more about the opposite of fear, which as it turns out, is compassion.  Who knew?  Maybe this is where I’ve gone wrong all these years. Here’s a picture just in case you want to read (and you really should…what else are you really doing?)

Anyway I usually don’t feel ideas; I think about them, dissect them, think more about them, start to worry about them, get anxious about them, then am exhausted and can’t sleep.  That’s usual.  But, I’ve really been working on “heart opening”–I interpret it more as willing myself to feel things rather than approach them intellectually.  It’s given more dimension to my ideas; we all think a lot about love or anger or hurt.  We ultimately want to manage them, so we approach them as events and then get a plan to deal with them.  But I’m learning that if we feel them, they actually have textures…things we can grip onto a little bit and push our edges.  In other words, I think I’m learning that if we feel things, we can grow in ways that thinking about them cannot approach.

But, back to compassion.  So, I think “heart opening” is working a bit.  I was practicing feeling compassion which isn’t empathy or sympathy.  In those, we place ourselves in the shoes of others (sympathy) or recalling when we’ve actually shared the experience of another (empathy) and felt with them.  Compassion, I think, is the following step.  In compassion we stay in our own shoes, recognize the place of another (be it filled with suffering or joy), and then love them as only we can.  It’s not sharing the experience; it’s just opening our arms and loving, regardless of what happens to us or what we’ll get out of it.  I think compassion is the act of giving away love unconditionally.  We always approach that idea from the receiver’s end…I haven’t really even imagined what it feels like to give it.  I think it’s a good thing.

So this is what I’m feeling about today.  Even writing this down has slowed the chatter.  And it makes me think that in order to give this…dude, you gotta tap into a kind of strength that you just have to trust you have…because I think it’s tough.  You may hurt in the process.  But its completely worth it, I think. I mean, I feel.

Ha-HAH. Caught myself there.

Did you know that the hips are one of the areas that can hold the most tension in the body?  Because I sure didn’t…and I can’t say I was surprised to hear this.  My hips are tighter than [insert image of something very tight...if you think of something good, write it in the comments].  My whole body is muscularly tight…I always attributed it to the 15 years of piecemeal weight lifting I used to do for various sports in high school.  You know…you do the stuff that’s the easiest (like calves, quads, hamstrings) and skip the other stuff (upper body).  What I’ve ended up with is a full set of seriously tight joints.  I never really thought tension itself was to blame.

Given this hip “issue,” I’ll tell you my life can really suck sometimes.  Sitting hunched at a computer for long stretches doesn’t help.  So, this is all a long way of saying, tight hips in yoga means pain (and not just stupid pain but gut-wrenching, fiery, scorching, lightning bolts of pain up the front, back, and sides of my legs)…in nearly every pose possible.  I can’t touch my toes, sit on my knees, or hang out in down-dog without trembling…why…you got it…hips.

So I’ve been really focusing on these things.  And you wanna know what I’ve come to conclude is working…thinking about them.  It’s Harold Hill’s “think method” from the music man.  I swear it’s working.  I’ve been thinking about my hips loosening up…and I think they are.  And here’s why I think it works.  Whenever I approached them as so tight, I think I would brace myself for the ensuing pain.  And it was real…because the bracing was a tension.  Today (and it helps that it’s about 90 degrees here), I felt like they were more open before I even bent anywhere and guess what…palms almost to ground.  Magical.

But so what?  Who cares about my hips?  Even I don’t care about my hips.  But I did think it’s an interesting lesson if applied elsewhere in life.  Imagine what would happen if every time we approached something we dread, instead of bracing for it and expecting scorching pain, we just thought about things as “looser”?  We might have a chance at being much happier and generally cooler than we have ever been in our entire lives.

I like the “think method.”  I think it could work.