I didn't dress warmly enough for my lake walk and, given the artic blast we're experiencing, it was more of a slogfest than its usual near~rapturous undertaking. And as the recent benefits I've received from P.T. have taken a nosedive, knee pain was my walking buddy.
While making breakfast, gravity was against me. It seemed everything I touched fell to the floor, and when I poured tea into my water bottle, a lemon wedge lodged in the opening and water gushed across the counter. Then, I didn't think to wipe off the bottle's bottom and it left a ring mark on the table.
Those are just a few of the lowlights. Suffice it to say that I haven't been able to get out of my own way all day long. It's not lost on me that yesterday was the exact opposite. I'd taken a retreat day, and it was everything I could have hoped for. It was meditative to be sure, but I also felt intensely alive and in sync from start to finish.
I like those days much better. I want to live on the mountaintop always, rather than merely visiting it on occasion. And yet we all know that is not possible, though spiritual practices can illuminate the pathways to those peaks so we can dwell there more often. Anyway you look at it, this Yin~Yang life is a mixed bag. To play with the metaphor, it includes not only minor valleys, like I've traversed this morning, but sewers as well, places we'd rather not be and understandably would prefer to avoid at most any cost.
One of the things that was weighing on me this morning was knowing I needed to write this blog—a commitment I keep to monthly, believing it builds character—and me with no idea what to write about. I decided, though, to adhere to advice every budding writer is given: write what you know. And in this moment, this is what I know. I am familiar with chunks of time when nothing is going the way I'd like it to, when metaphorically speaking everything I touch falls from my fingers and life~giving waters don't make it to my mouth, but leave blotches on the table instead.
So what to do during those times? First, I need to acknowledge what is. We humans often try to jump over this part right into the fixing stage, and spiritual traditions often seem to encourage this. But the cart can't be put before the horse, not if forward movement is one's goal. This first step, therefore, is not a step at all. It is a non~step. We still ourselves. We come into the moment, just as it is, rather than trying to force it into the shape we'd like it to assume. Force, after all, is not conducive to healing. It does violence instead.
By simply telling the truth to ourselves and perhaps to another supportive soul, we abandon efforts to escape what is. Even if we need to grouse a bit, as I did just now with you, this truth~telling is essential in preparing us for the next step: to accept. In doing so, we stop the argument with life, an argument we can never win because it is one~sided. Life is not debating with us, after all. It is simply what it is, and the sooner we accede to its authority, the easier it will be to decide the best course of action.
That is the third step. After we stop, and once we accept what is, we can then choose wisely from the options available to us. And we are more likely at this point to find possibilities we never imagined when we were stuck in malaise or frantically spinning and flailing.
Only then can we zoom out to see all that is going well, a possible fourth step. While we may try to tell ourselves that others have far worse things to deal with than sore knees, we likely won't feel that truth until we attend to our own suffering. Counting one's blessings is not just a good strategy. The practice can actually help rewire our brains, brains designed to attend to what is wrong and potentially life~threatening. We are, after all, each alive today because our ancestors focused on disaster.
And this tendency lives on, as Krista Tippett reminded us in a recent TED talk. "We are fluent in and very familiar with the narrative of catastrophe and dysfunction and disarray. And that is real. But it's not the whole story...There is also an abundant reality of things going right."
"We don't know how, "she continues, "to tell this generative story of us as vividly. We don't know how to take it as seriously as that story of rupture." We must "actively, consciously orient ourselves if we want to attend to and get riveted by what is good and redemptive."
There's no denying that the world is a disturbing place. Not only are major wars harming our fellow humans and threatening to engulf us all, but there are the smaller tragedies, like mass shootings in Maine a few miles from where I lived and worked for several years. But whether the ruptures are huge or embarrassingly minor, as in my own morning's challenges, we don't help anything by forgetting what is good and right and redemptive.
Our task is to tell the truth about it all, as we also look for ways to make a difference. In Krista's words, we need to "orient together away from what is death~dealing and towards what is life~giving." And to do so in the small and large moments of our very personal lives.
Here's wishing you extended stays on your own mountaintops, and wishing you, too, the ability to bring that wisdom back down with you. And to live it with grace, while offering that grace to the world.
