Embracing the Circumstances As If You'd Chosen Them Yourself
Well hello again, friend.
It's been almost half a year since we last met together here, which gives you a sense of how life has been here recently. (How many toddler-distracted piecemeal attempts did it take to pull this one note together?)
No doubt you're navigating the ups and downs of your own version of strange-new-world-ness on this Corona-coaster ride.
One recent morning I sat on the floor with Audrey (who's going on one and a half, having spent almost 1/3 of her life in pandemic mode now), fire engine and heart stickers being stuck to my cheeks, her toddling to and from the bookshelf, dropping books in my lap, excitedly shouting, "Read, read!" and occasionally pausing for an impromptu dance party or spin.
So much sweetness and joy and delight twirling around in the micro-est of microcosms there on her play mat...
My internal landscape was a different story.
I'd woken up with a swirling mind and a sense of dread heavy in my body around the upcoming election. (Which lit a fire to start making phone calls to swing states.)
We've been hunkered down inside with windows closed and air purifier blasting for three weeks with air outside too thick with smoke from the local of the 600+ wildfires blazing here in California to safely go outside most days.
My heart hung heavy with the grief of more painful evidence of just how deeply engrained racism is in our society's DNA with the shooting of Jacob Blake...the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so painfully many before them (I started writing this on the 65th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till).
Feeling the pain of hearing the argument continue over the most fundamentally basic acknowledgement of humanity -- that Black lives matter -- and knowing the pain I'm feeling isn't even the tiniest fraction of the pain that people of color experience every day in this country due to the conditioned racism that's so the norm here that we white people have trouble even recognizing it as the water we're swimming in.
And feeling the physical, mental, and emotional wear and tear -- downright exhaustion -- of five+ months of juggling a toddler between two parents without the respite of outside care as we try to be present for our work and remain reasonably sane people and kind partners to one another while buffering this blissfully unaware tiny human from the stressors of this moment.
All of which is to say, this has been a lot for all of us. To say the absolute least.
You're no doubt bobbing and weaving through your own days sometimes quite gracefully, sometimes less than gracefully, too.
And one of the trickiest things about this ongoing moment is, it's calling upon our deepest reserves every day while simultaneously eroding those reserves.
We're being challenged to be more intentional than ever with what our minds are focusing on and leaning into habits that nurture our mental, emotional and physical well-being in a moment in which so many of us have less time, energy, or bandwidth than ever to fill those reserves.
For those of us with the privilege, the quaint early stages of Shelter in Place of learning to bake sourdough bread or binge watch Love is Blind seem like a lifetime ago.
Our stress responses have been cranking on high for going on six months now. It's just not possible to will power or positive think our way through or around this moment.
Our systems -- physical, mental, emotional, logistical, relational -- are being taxed to constantly reconfigure themselves. For most of us by this point, not only do our routines and schedules and the way we connect with community look different, but we feel different than we're used to feeling.
And the go-to practices you generally turn toward to fill your well may feel like they're just not working like they normally would.
For someone who's spent 10+ years as a coach and 20+ as a mindfulness practitioner and yogi oriented toward consciously cultivating a peaceful internal experience regardless of external circumstance, I've found myself having some comically reactive moments in my sleep-deprived, resource-drained, cooped-up-inside states.
And yet...
Even as my grounding practices have gotten squeezed out by daily circumstance and it often feels like it takes more energy than usual to focus my mind on the good and stay connected to the present moment, here's what I still know for sure:
All these years of mindfulness and self-compassion practices have allowed this incredibly challenging, often deeply painful moment to not have a bunch of unnecessary suffering layered on top of it.
My mind hasn't been (mis)taking these circumstances as personal or permanent and there's been no judgmental inner voice berating me for my moments of stressed-out, under-resourced reactivity when they do pop up.
There's been -- mostly -- just an ongoing recognition of what's happening in this moment, externally and internally, and enough space to be with it.
That's not to say there hasn't been plenty of inner resistance to the circumstances.
Only to say that the mindfulness muscle we cultivate (particularly during less stressful times than these, when it feels easier to build the muscle) allows us to more easily lean back into awareness and watch the fluctuations of the mind and weather the emotional tantrums as they come and go mostly without adding the additional layer of suffering that comes from taking it all as personal or permanent.
When the roots of our mindfulness practice are firmly rooted, the fruits of our practice ripen. Even - especially - during tough times.
If you've been nurturing a regular meditation practice for some time now, I'm guessing you've been noticing some of those fruits pop up throughout all this wildness. Nothing fancy. No fireworks. Maybe just a background sense that there's space enough for whatever's arising in experience -- inner or outer -- to move through.
A background sense of okay-ness even through the roller coaster ride of the whole human spectrum of thoughts and feelings.
But of course it's still completely natural that you might feel out of control right now, helpless amidst the circumstances. One question you can play with when you're feeling out of control with it all is:
How can I embrace these circumstances as if I'd chosen them myself?
This question is not posed as a means of bypassing whatever pain you're experiencing. It's rather an inquiry nudging toward leaning into the moment as it actually is, rather than letting our mind run wild in suffering-inducing directions, wishing things were different than they are.
Because the reality is, no matter how we'd like the circumstances to be, they are as they are.
A friend said to me in the context of an un-sugar-coated conversation as the pandemic's reality settled in early on: "You have a high tolerance for reality, though."
Which I thought is about the most perfect articulation of the fruits of our mindfulness practice there could be.
So if you've been practicing, you're well-equipped to meet this moment.
This is the material we've been given to work with in this moment. That's always true, pandemic or weighty upcoming election or fire season or not.
Life is presenting us with the challenge - the opportunity - of a high-level practice of embracing it all these days. Circumstances outside and in, as they are, in each ever-changing moment.
The opportunity to practice extending ourselves as much space and grace as we can given that the current circumstances are incredibly difficult.
The opportunity to practice expanding our minds into the territory of both/and rather than contracting into black/white, either/or thinking.
The opportunity to loosen our grip on perfection-driven habits that, while may have supported us in "normal times," require the flexibility to update to fit/meet the current moment.
The opportunity to practice trusting that even when it feels like these current circumstances will never end, they will.
The opportunity to practice surrendering into the reality of this current moment as it is while simultaneously taking control of what we do have control to change in our current situation.
So, what might happen if we embraced the difficulty of it all?
The anxieties and insanity of it all, the "impossible" and reactive moments within it all?
What might happen if, instead of continuing to force our way forward with our "old" thinking within our old paradigms, we were to lean into this moment as an opportunity to forge a new path forward from a place of greater internal awareness and compassionate collective alignment?
What might happen if we acknowledged that the old way was -- on so many levels both personal and collective -- just not working and surrender into that reality rather than fighting it, so we can begin to forge a new, more inclusive, equitable, and compassionate path forward together?
What might happen if we surrendered into the reality that's actually presenting itself right now in order to move forward from a place of greater understanding and alignment, rather than from the same old effort and force?
Maybe we'll find we're able to, paradoxically, feel more in control of our individual and collective beings rather than less as we surrender into reality as the launchpad from which to move forward.
Maybe we'll remember -- in even just the occasional moment here or there -- that we, as a species, are capable of not only making it through moments like these, but of evolving into higher versions of our hearts and minds through them.
No one knows how to do this moment.
But we can choose to trust that we're equipped to figure it out as we go, and to come out wiser and clearer-seeing and more understanding through the struggle when we decide to consciously, intentionally, purposefully lean into those sticky spots, eyes wide open.
Maybe your meditation practice feels and looks different right now. No problem.
Tune into what feels like the wisest, most loving action you can take for yourself within the circumstances -- outer and inner -- of your day/moment, and do that with intention and kind attention as your practice.
You're allowed to - you're called right now to - stay flexible in your practice.
Just keep pausing. Noticing. Tuning in. Dropping in. Getting quiet where you can. Listening deeply. Being aware that breath keeps moving through you on its own.
Be extra gentle with yourself these days. The more we slather ourselves up with self-love and kindness, the more we'll have in the tank to take wise, useful, compassionate action where it's needed.
You're doing great. And you can do this.
And if you could use a little help returning to that sense of trust and spaciousness, this meditation I've made for you might help. Or this one or this one.
Wishing you lots of moments of remembering that you have within you just what you need to meet this moment with friendliness in whatever form it shows up, and that you're spacious enough to hold it all.
And wishing you well-being through it all.
Lots of Love,
Melissa
PS - While this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the incredibly rich resources out there, I thought I'd share some anti-racism resources I've been finding useful on my path to keep untangling the weeds of unconscious bias, in case something in here may serve you on your path. In the name of us all remembering that none of us can truly be free until all of us are free.