It's
quite something, to be young, experience challenge and complexity, and just
know deep inside of you that there are ways of digesting difficult experiences,
so that you can manage better and better and the present moment.
I used to tell my children, and my clients, that one of our goals in life could be figuring out how to digest injuries to our knees or difficult experiences, enough that we don't have leftovers.
As a counselor in agencies for many years, and then acupressurist in practice, I saw all those leftovers in people all the time.
In the process of living a life time, we can continuously learn to refine the ways that we use these tools. Stabilize relationships. With ourselves. With dear ones. With the ones we don't necessarily like. And we do all this work, with great benefit.
That doesn't mean that life is easy, or simple, that difficult things don't happen, that we don't experience loss or harsh circumstance. It does mean that
I used to tell my children, and my clients, that one of our goals in life could be figuring out how to digest injuries to our knees or difficult experiences, enough that we don't have leftovers.
As a counselor in agencies for many years, and then acupressurist in practice, I saw all those leftovers in people all the time.
In the process of living a life time, we can continuously learn to refine the ways that we use these tools. Stabilize relationships. With ourselves. With dear ones. With the ones we don't necessarily like. And we do all this work, with great benefit.
That doesn't mean that life is easy, or simple, that difficult things don't happen, that we don't experience loss or harsh circumstance. It does mean that
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like mountain goats, if we wish? With practice and intent, we grow our agility.
Our stamina. Our resilience.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
And then, if we live long enough, in some form
or another, the shit really hits the fan.
Oh, and earlier on, we thought so many difficult experiences were the shit hitting the fan. But, later on, come to find out, no. Hard? Yes. Heartbreaking? Truly. And somewhere inside of us, we had a sense that there were experiences bigger, more penultimate .
And yet, one of the big surprises is that all that work during our entire lifetime comes to some sort of fruition. It doesn't make things easy. But we have facility by then. We have grown accustomed to allowing emotions and the leftovers of difficult experiences to come up from within us, to be attended to.
Whether we cry or sing along to songs in the car alone, sob at a wrenching movie, do EFT, contain things with EM DR, imagine ourselves sitting along the stream, watching big things that are thoughts or emotions rise up in front of our very eyes, and inside of our bodies, our hearts, feeling them, and then watching them pass by.
Gardening , fixing a car or mowing the lawn, while we empty our mind, and find rest.
And we do learn that there are times for all things under heaven.
When the shit hits the fan, there are times to assiduously focus, to be vigilant, to understand urgency, to come up with solutions or responses.
But we also learn that this is not a sustainable state. And if we want to be sustainable, and not crash and burn, then we need to recede from that sort of focus, back to some sort of modus operandi that's more manageable.
Like different speeds on a bicycle, we need facility. To shift from one functioning to another.
The problem is when one aspect of our lives comes up close to our face, out of necessity, for problem-solving, focusing.
And we do, we do the best we can, and then it needs to recede, or it becomes disproportionate. It begins to seem as if that is all that exists. And that wears us down. It's harmful. In a difficult situation, or just normal every day tough stuff life.
The other interesting thing is that if we've spent our lives having the intention of having an honest perception of the life we experience, if our intention is to see things in perspective, to gross relationships that are as strong and healthy as possible, then when the shit hits the fan? There are the fruits of our labors.
It's really kind of amazing. It's kind of everything you always wanted, in the midst of heartbreaking stuff. And no, it's not perfect. Crap still happens. You got mixed up, others get mixed up, things are tough.
But in the midst of all that? There's this beautiful thick rich soil of your life. Of your relationships. That you can come back to. That you can count on. And rest in.
Singing a song out our back porch. Figuring out a meal we particularly want to cook and then enjoy with the sunset. Laughing with the neighbor over the mailboxes. A great book. Even a mediocre book, all of these things help us regain our sense of proportion.
Oh, and earlier on, we thought so many difficult experiences were the shit hitting the fan. But, later on, come to find out, no. Hard? Yes. Heartbreaking? Truly. And somewhere inside of us, we had a sense that there were experiences bigger, more penultimate .
And yet, one of the big surprises is that all that work during our entire lifetime comes to some sort of fruition. It doesn't make things easy. But we have facility by then. We have grown accustomed to allowing emotions and the leftovers of difficult experiences to come up from within us, to be attended to.
Whether we cry or sing along to songs in the car alone, sob at a wrenching movie, do EFT, contain things with EM DR, imagine ourselves sitting along the stream, watching big things that are thoughts or emotions rise up in front of our very eyes, and inside of our bodies, our hearts, feeling them, and then watching them pass by.
Gardening , fixing a car or mowing the lawn, while we empty our mind, and find rest.
And we do learn that there are times for all things under heaven.
When the shit hits the fan, there are times to assiduously focus, to be vigilant, to understand urgency, to come up with solutions or responses.
But we also learn that this is not a sustainable state. And if we want to be sustainable, and not crash and burn, then we need to recede from that sort of focus, back to some sort of modus operandi that's more manageable.
Like different speeds on a bicycle, we need facility. To shift from one functioning to another.
The problem is when one aspect of our lives comes up close to our face, out of necessity, for problem-solving, focusing.
And we do, we do the best we can, and then it needs to recede, or it becomes disproportionate. It begins to seem as if that is all that exists. And that wears us down. It's harmful. In a difficult situation, or just normal every day tough stuff life.
The other interesting thing is that if we've spent our lives having the intention of having an honest perception of the life we experience, if our intention is to see things in perspective, to gross relationships that are as strong and healthy as possible, then when the shit hits the fan? There are the fruits of our labors.
It's really kind of amazing. It's kind of everything you always wanted, in the midst of heartbreaking stuff. And no, it's not perfect. Crap still happens. You got mixed up, others get mixed up, things are tough.
But in the midst of all that? There's this beautiful thick rich soil of your life. Of your relationships. That you can come back to. That you can count on. And rest in.
Singing a song out our back porch. Figuring out a meal we particularly want to cook and then enjoy with the sunset. Laughing with the neighbor over the mailboxes. A great book. Even a mediocre book, all of these things help us regain our sense of proportion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So that
we can settle down once again, with what is.
No comments:
Post a Comment