Cassowaries are the third biggest (flightless) bird after the ostrich and emu. They are colourful, have a hard and prominent casque on their head and their middle claw is a 12 cm long dagger. They can jump two metres off the ground, run at a speed of up to 50 km, stand up to 6′ tall and weigh anywhere from 110 to 160 pounds.
A Cassowary is a BIG bird. They eat and poop a lot.
Cassowaries predominantly eat fruit and the enormous piles they leave behind are full of undigested seeds and berries. They walk great distances and are responsible for the distribution and germination of all kinds of plants. Cool, right?
My first encounter with a Cassowary was in the Atherton Tablelands just north of Cairns in Australia. I’d ventured there with another traveller I’d met, Merry. We decided to hike the waterfall circuit trails after all the rain of a recent cyclone.
One of our first days hiking, Merry and I came across piles of dung so large I felt like a dinosaur would dip his head down through the tree canopy at any moment, see us and indulge in a mid-morning snack.
Cassowaries were already on Merry’s radar though. She hoped the piles meant we would see one of these great birds in the wild. I was less keen. At the entrance to one of the hiking spots there was a trail sign that warned about the Cassowary’s fighting prowess and the ability to (and this next word I recall quite clearly), ‘disembowel’ it’s adversaries with its dagger-like claws. Those piles of poop looked ominous to me.
A day or two later, we met Henry.
He’d been mentioned in the notes given to us by the owner of the cabin we rented. In addition to the directions to find the place (turn onto the private road with the passion fruit vine at the country gate), he gave us all kinds of tips on getting the most out of our time there. Specifically, he mentioned that there was a small creek on the property with a resident platypus and that we should keep an eye out for Henry who was a local character known for his frequent public outbursts of anger.
Henry was a Cassowary. On the day we saw him in action, he believed he had met another equally angry and aggressive Cassowary. They were a stunning match for each other. Every move Henry made, the ‘other’ Cassowary made an equally cunning and fierce rebuttal. Henry was relentless. His antics alone may have inspired the trail sign about disembowelment. On this particular day, however, Henry wasn’t fighting a living adversary. He was fighting his own reflection in a van and he was definitely winning. The van looked awful and Merry decided she didn’t want to see a Cassowary in the wild anymore.
Henry makes me think of this quote by Eckhart Tolle from his book, The Power of Now,
“…your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.”
Consider when you have been engaged in a toxic relationship, work environment or involved in a reactive and heated confrontation. How did you reflect that world in your interactions with others? How did it feed the story you tell yourself about ‘them’ and ‘the way it is out there’?
If your perception of the world is that everyone is a fierce Cassowary then you too may react to challenging situations as a fierce Cassowary. Or maybe you cower to the reflection, placate the reflection, ‘attempt to fix’ the reflection. How might you be Henry creating the world that you believe in?
Is it possible to consciously shift that particular relationship, negative experience at work, and difficult confrontation by altering your own perspective? What if everything out there is an illusion of your way of seeing? What if changing ‘them’ is irrelevant if the way you see and respond to life’s challenges is the only real source of change.
It is something worth thinking about and exploring.
Body wisdom provides each of us with an amazing, innate source of guidance. We know so much through our bodies. We are gathering information all the time. If a recognition of messages and then a willingness to practice a response to this wisdom are the first steps toward living fully and authentically, what is the next step?
Here is what I have been considering since last week’s post…
A clearly expressed response to a deep knowing is more powerfully received by others, and the imprint of this (how it feels in your body when your authenticity is received) is helpful in strengthening your relationship to your inner guide.
When I did some yoga training in India, the first part of my trip I spent at an ashram and then I went off travelling on my own for the remainder of my time. Leaving the ashram was sobering. I was plunged into a very different world. It was still vibrant and alive; aromas, colours, the people, animals and all the activity. India continued to be magical in so many ways but my nervous system had immediately moved into high alert.
The first taxi driver that took me from the ashram to the train station grabbed my breasts instead of my bags.
The first market I explored, I literally had a crowd following me through it. I had told one woman my name when I was looking at bracelets and by the time I moved on from there, I had my name carved into all kinds of things that I was told I had to buy, like a wooden dagger and a creepy doll with my name etched onto her forehead.
I met a healer by the River Ganges who asked me to write the first names of my loved ones in his book so he could include them in his prayers, he then placed fresh flowers in my hands, waved incense, chanted and said if I didn’t give money, in American dollars, that the powerful Mother Ganges would seek revenge on the names I’d written in his book.
I endlessly paid for taxi rides to nowhere because regardless of where I said I wanted to go, I was almost always dropped me off somewhere else entirely.
I paid for a tour to visit landmarks only to visit vendor after vendor near the landmarks to buy goods. On and on it went.
What I didn’t realize was that India was grooming my relationship with my inner guide in a way I didn’t recognize until my final week. I met and travelled with a woman who had just arrived in India from Europe. With her at my side the contrast was undeniable; she was who I had been when I arrived.
I began to recognize that my ‘no’ had gradually become grounded and valid. Hers wasn’t. When I said no or requested a direct answer to something, I did so with my entire body. She said the word no and hoped. I also had miraculously shifted from believing that being hustled was the same as being hassled. It wasn’t the same at all. I could find joy through interactions but she was still too on edge. Generally, the people I met had simply ‘tried me on’. I was basically asked over and over and over again, “Will you accept this as your reality?”
How do you do the same thing in your life? When do you respond to life’s pressure, expectations and challenges with an averted gaze, with a soft no or coerced yes. When do your survival skills depend on avoiding the hussle and the hassle. When do you hide and bury your head? When do you allow yourself to believe that when someone else ‘tries you on’ that you have no choices available to you?
There are plenty of times that I have resorted to the don’t-rock-the-boat programming of my upbringing. Sometimes getting along and going with the flow is appropriate and other times it is a poor choice. Your body knows. And it is all learning.
Something to try: This week follow through on what your body knows even when a situation falls outside the line of comfort for you and others, or it places your need to be liked at risk, or if it means that you must be willing to lose something that you want. Be open to observation on how it feels in your body to recognize the message, to be willing to practice a response and finally, to notice how it feels when what you authentically put out into the world is received. Notice it all.
After I finished school, I went on my first solo trip abroad. Travelling on my own meant that I met a lot of amazing people. It also provided some real lessons for me on why being ‘nice’ isn’t as important as being true to myself. Here’s one of them:
Early one morning, I began my journey to the airport to travel from Aukland, New Zealand to Sydney, Australia. I was the first person to be picked up by an airport shuttle service and the driver asked that I sit in the back since I was taking an international flight and it was the last drop off point. Domestic travellers were directed to sit closer to the front. I was travelling light and my backpack was on the seat beside me.
A man in his late 50’s was the next passenger to be picked up. He had so much luggage that most of it went in the back portion of the van. The shuttle was empty except for me but he walked straight to my seat, took my backpack and moved it to the seat in front of me so he could put an additional bag of his where mine had been. He then sat down between his bag and me and sat so close that I was pressed between him and the window. We soon discovered he was on the same flight to Sydney before connecting to a flight bound for South Africa where he owned a holiday house.
He’d had a big night out prior and still smelled like alcohol. From his carry-on he produced a small photo album with pictures of his second home that he showed to me. He tried to make a case for why I should change my plans on spending the next part of my travels in Australia and come with him to South Africa first. His wife would not be joining him for several weeks.
There is enough in this part of the story that sets up this blog post for a strong theme about speaking up when an interaction with another person doesn’t feel right; when acceptable boundaries are crossed. Our bodies know when something isn’t right. I knew the moment my knapsack was moved. Everything that followed, made me more and more uncomfortable but the very first action of this other person was all I needed. Instead of responding to my internal alert, I smiled. I then listened. I complimented him on his second home that he was obviously proud of and I politely declined on his offer to visit him while his wife was still in New Zealand.
When do you participate in a version of this in your own life? When do you override what your body is telling you? Do you grin and bear it when the wisdom of your body is guiding you to respond authentically?
Meanwhile, the shuttle was filling up with predominately domestic passengers. The man beside me only paused to stop talking about himself when it clicked for him that I was travelling with a single backpack and only a smallish handbag.
He quickly developed a plan: We would sit together on the plane. I would check-in his extra luggage for him pretending it was mine. He would save money on that leg of the flight and simply recheck those bags once he arrived in Sydney. He also had plenty of ideas about our time together in South Africa regardless of what I said to the contrary.
True to the word of the shuttle driver, we dropped off passengers at the domestic terminal first, including a man in his early forties who I would see again soon; sweaty, out of breath and clutching his side.
At the international terminal, the man headed for South Africa had so much stuff that I knew it would take him awhile to get inside so I planned to check-in quickly and lose him. Once I was through security I could easily stay busy inside the shops until boarding to avoid him. The problem though, was there was a long line to check-in so I went to the bathroom and waited and waited and waited. When I finally emerged, the coast was clear and that’s when I saw the man who’d recently been dropped off at the domestic terminal.
He looked like he’d just run a marathon in a business shirt. When he saw me, he was so relieved, that for a brief moment, I thought he might cry. He placed a hand on my shoulder (his other hand was pressed to his side like he still had a cramp from running) and he said in a shaky but emphatic voice, “Neeeeeeeever agree to check someone’s bags for them.”
I assured him I didn’t…wouldn’t…and he said, still out of breath, “Security has taken care of him. You don’t have to worry. That man was drunk and who knows what he has in those bags.” He went on to explain that he had run all the way from the domestic terminal, saw the man in the check-in line and pointed him out to security. He had promptly been ‘taken away’ just moments before. Apparently, there had been quite the commotion and I’d missed all the action.
I was relieved. I also saw my circumstances from another perspective and felt a bit embarrassed but mostly I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this stranger in response to his concern for me. He had his own flight to catch but he gave me a big hug and then with a hand on each of my shoulders said, “promise me, you’ll be more careful?” I agreed I would.
I checked-in, went through security and found my gate. I was shaken that I had behaved in a submissive way. I had already been travelling for two months and felt like I was savvier then that. Why hadn’t I dealt with all of it better? I wasn’t a mouse. Why didn’t I communicate clearly? I had no plans to actually take his luggage for him but I mostly had pointed out why that would be inconvenient ‘for him’. Why had I continually allowed my brain to override the feelings in my body that I wanted to get away from him?
I knew the answer: I wanted to be nice.
It was almost time to board so I decided to get a Snickers bar and a magazine. When I got back to wait at my gate, I was still deep in thought about how amazing it was that a perfect stranger had gone to such lengths for me. I took a bite of my snickers and noticed someone was yelling about something and people were stopping to look. And then, I quickly realized someone was yelling at me from a distance. It looked like I had company on the flight to Sydney after all.
The area was crowded so the view of the man was obscured. He was calling out, “Kathy! Kathy!” I have never gone by the name Kathy which is also why I didn’t realize the disturbance had anything to do with me at first. I still had a mouthful of my snickers. I watched and listened while feeling disconnected from my body as the rest unfolded.
“Well, thanks a #$@% lot!” he yelled when he realized I was looking his way. “I was nothing but kind to you. I invited you to my home and then I was treated like an animal.”
I can still hear his voice all these years later say these words in particular, “The things they did to me because of you!”
By this time there were a lot of eyes on him and on the source of his outrage; me. Security officials seemed to appear out of nowhere and were blocking his path toward me. His rant continued with more “you…”, “you…”, “you…”, along with aggressive finger pointing and strings of expletives. While he was still a couple rows of seating away, security moved in close to him, spoke with him in hushed tones and finally escorted him somewhere. I didn’t see him on the plane after that but there were lots of eyes on me as I boarded, like I had done something really, really bad.
There is no doubt things could have unfolded differently that morning.
My choice to be nice was a disservice to myself. It was also a disservice to the running man who thought I was going to jail for drug trafficking. And it certainly wasn’t the best outcome for the man who (presumably) was still headed to South Africa; he has likely also retold this story over the years but with an emphasis on his experience of having a full-body cavity search performed by airport security.
Was my decision to be ‘nice’, nice for anyone?
Think about the times when you haven’t listened to what your body was telling you because you didn’t want to upset the people around you. Maybe it was an interaction with a stranger or perhaps with someone you see every day. Sometimes it seems easier to put off acting on what your body has to say about what is best for you. Is it really easier? Is it really the best scenario for anyone at all? What about when you repetitively ignore what your body is telling you? How does that impact how you make decisions for yourself? How does that impact your health? How does that impact all of your relationships and your life path?
Imagine your world if you deeply listened to the wisdom of your body. I’m not talking about being led by passing wants. I am referring to the deep listening of your enduring needs. Your body knows the people who are good for you, the foods that are good for you, ways to move your body that uplifts and nourishes you. Your body gives you feedback all the time about healthy environments, as well as guidance for day-to-day business, financial and personal decisions.
It may not be easy and you won’t always get it right. Mindful movement practices like yoga can help. Paying attention to your breath, to your life as it happens, can help. Meditation can help. Consider this week’s blog post as an invitation to get out of your head and into your whole body.
Here’s something to try: Get quiet and still and ensure you will be undisturbed for a few minutes. Intentionally spend some time noticing sounds around you, your breath, and any sensations in your body. You might scan the body; moving through it with your mind from head to toe. Next, place your hand on your upper chest and ask: What is it I need to know? Intend for this to be a feeling into instead of a thinking about question. If an answer comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, go on with your day and check in again at the end of the day or the next day at the same time. Create a small practice that carves out space for receiving answers from your body. Make it your clear intention to communicate with your inner guide.
When my sister’s and I were all still under ten years old, we returned home late with our parents one rainy night in the spring. We had been sleeping in the car and the expectation was we were to go straight from the car into our beds. My mom was ensuring we lived up to our agreement when we heard my dad call for her from downstairs with panic in his voice. My mom told us to stay upstairs but feeling scared, we all followed her anyway. My dad had just turned off the power from the breaker panel and everything was dark. It was hard to see but what greeted us could be heard and felt.
Our finished basement had seemingly been transformed into a fish tank that was rapidly still filling with water. We could hear it rushing in from somewhere. There were random things floating around that we would hit as we waded through to where my tall, lean dad was standing almost knee deep in water. His hands were on his hips while he assessed the brick retaining wall that had transformed into a water fall. Water poured in continuously. There was a moment that all of us just stared and then my dad decisively said to my mom, “Call Nick and Kay.” These were my parents best friends who had young kids of their own. It was after 11 p.m.
My dad immediately went outside in the rain to dig a trench in the flowerbed that stretched along the top back-side of the water-gushing retaining wall. My mom was doing her best inside to get some of the water out and using buckets stacked on partly submerged furniture to catch the water still pouring in. My sisters and I were busy ‘swimming’ and rescuing some of the things floating around our basement.
Once my parents friends arrived, our honoury Auntie and Uncle, it was after midnight. They’d organized for a neighbour to stay with their own kids much to our disappointment. My Uncle joined my dad in filling empty feed bags from our horse barn with sand and then they stacked them into the trench my dad had dug out along the wall. My aunt was inside with my mom dealing with the water. The more the feed bags were stacked, the less that the water flowed in. From our kid perspective, the excitement quickly dwindled to a trickle and it was late anyway. We went to bed but my Aunt and Uncle stayed to help my parents until the sky started to lighten just before the sun rose.
Do you reach out for help when life threatens to flood your life with unexpected challenges?
It can be tough to overcome the concern that a request for help might be inconvenient for someone else. The vulnerability required in admitting you need help at all can also be a big hurdle.
What if you consider the other side of things; the times that you have been given the opportunity to help someone who really needed it. How did that feel? Maybe it was physical help like painting or helping with a move, or taking care of kids when there was an emergency, creating a go-to recipe inventory during a health crisis, driving hours to pick up a forgotten key, helping to write the speech or the apology or goodbye letter, connecting someone with a job opportunity, or being the shoulder to cry on or the hand to hold, or maybe you helped to make the arrangements or call for reinforcements.
A request for help can often communicate, “I trust you. You are the person I choose in this moment.” These exchanges, this giving and receiving from both sides, are valuable amongst friends. It has enormous potential to deepen existing bonds.
Asking for help can be difficult. Saying no to a request can be difficult. There will also be friends who don’t know how to ask and are equally unwilling to receive. There will be times that you risk reaching out and the person you choose disappoints you. And sometimes when you figure out these limitations, yours and theirs, it can shake the foundation of a relationship. It can make you question everything while also help you learn something if you are paying attention.
There is always a lens you can shine on yourself no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the outcome. There are always ways to nurture a deeper awareness of yourself and of the people you have chosen to walk through life with…even if it is only for a little while.
Just like in meditation, be curious about it all.
Some friends aren’t the middle-of-the-night-save-me-from-the-flood people. And isn’t that okay? During different seasons of your life you might seek out different friends anyway and be enriched by those who are happy to swim around and look for treasures with you and then, when the excitement fades, have enough good sense to go to bed.
When I was in my mid-twenties I lived in Toronto and took the subway to and from work. One day, on my way home, I sat in one of the back-to-back seats that faced the rear of the train. Seated in front of me, in a bank of seats that lined the sidewall of the car, was a person I will never forget.
He was a burly, middle-aged man. If I had to guess, most of his working life had been spent doing heavy, physical labour outside. He was dressed in grey coveralls that zipped up in the front, wore steel-toed boots and sitting on his lap was a black utility-style lunchbox (one I imagined had a full-sized thermos snapped into the upper inner lid). He was covered head to toe in a thick coat of dirt or soot that was most obvious on his exposed hands and face. His presence had slid away from his massive frame in defeat; his gaze never left the floor, his dinner-plate sized hands didn’t move from his lunch box. What I remember the most clearly, were the tears that steadily streamed down his broad face leaving paths in the dirt on his checks. He wasn’t making a spectacle of himself or sobbing. He just continually, quietly cried.
My fairly carefree day shifted into the heavier place he occupied almost immediately; my chest felt like it might explode with grief. I wanted to reach out and hold this stranger’s hand but instead I watched, paralyzed. I didn’t feel like I needed to know the ‘why’ at the time although I have of course often wondered since. I wanted instead, more than anything, to communicate that I cared what was happening to him. I watched him but I didn’t move a muscle. No one else approached him either but I felt like everyone in that subway car had collectively stopped breathing.
I don’t know how many stops it took but eventually this crumbling mountain of a man, reached his destination, got up, shuffled out and I never saw him again.
In life and in friendship we so often have opportunities to participate in the intertwined beauty and fragility of others. Why might we be inclined to do nothing? To fix rather than ‘stand with’? Or to deny the present moment and replace it with a future that we have decided is the only way or a future as we wish it were?
Consider the times when you have chosen your own comfort over someone else’s reality.
When did you not act when you could have? When have you silenced another person through your indifference or with your well-meaning encouragement to ‘get on with things’ and to ‘look at the bright side’? What about when you may have used your own drama as a distraction?
Sometimes the reality of another person’s circumstances is big and heart-splintering. Other times the mundane aches and pains have built up over a lifetime. Either way, being seen as you truly are can be healing and being fully human requires an openness to a complete spectrum of experiences. We have a choice: we can hold onto our comfort and our story or we can show up for others inside their pain. Showing up might mean different things, maybe you are the shoulder, maybe you act as the seeker for a professional support system.
You are more likely to show up for others when you know how to show up for yourself
What happens when you are personally faced with difficult emotions? Do you battle and silence them? Do you brood and stay stuck inside your own story? Do you believe in a cultural narrative that says, ‘healthy and successful people are always happy’?
What if you stopped hassling with difficult emotions altogether and instead became curious about them? Allow them to be. Notice how they feel in your body. Honour them and listen to the information they provide. Difficult emotions are messengers. What is it they want to tell you? Pay attention.
Try this: Remind yourself every single day that you are a human being and that this body you are in is a temporary thing. This is useful information. Right now, place your hand on your own chest and feel your heart beating. Are you doing it? Notice the breath move in and move out. Don’t be in a hurry. As you read this, acknowledge that you are not in charge of your heart beating. You are not in charge of every breathe that moves in and out of your body. You don’t really have a direct say on how effectively your brain functions or if your liver will continue to be up to the task of its important work today. Come home to yourself like this often because the reminder that life is short is valuable in how you show up for what’s in front of you now. You are on borrowed time and so is your best friend, your parents, spouse, lover, children, coworkers, and the random man you might encounter on the subway.
Practice to reach across the divide you create within yourself. Find the tenderness in your own humanity, in your own grasping for joy and the fragile nature of things when joy is evasive. Practice to be with ‘what is’ so that you might also build the capacity to see others as they are. There is no reason why any of us need to be alone on a full train.
“Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.” ~ Plato
Today I wrote a poem for my writing group about pleasure during the restrictions of Covid. The process had me consider how valuable all kinds of discomfort can be.
Most summers I go on 2 or 3 portaging trips with my family. We carry a canoe and all our camping gear between lakes to explore backcountry areas. One of the best (and worst) things about portaging is the intimate encounters with contrast. I enjoy spending time outside most days but there is something about living consecutive days outdoors away from the convenience of home that sharply brings discomfort and pleasure into focus.
Expending energy paddling and hiking, setting up camp and taking a bit longer to make meals outdoors, for example, builds an appetite and sometimes ‘hangry’ companions. All of this also creates conditions for food to taste so incredibly good.
The physical challenge of paddling against the wind or extra long portages shouldering the weight of all the gear makes the reward of seeing a moose, an expanse of water lilies or finding ripe blueberries, exponentially pleasurable.
On one of our trips last summer, we went portaging with some good friends. There was no wind our first night. We explored our little spot looking for fire wood, cooked and ate dinner sitting on some rocks by the shore, saw some turtles and watched the sunset. And then, while we chatted around the fire, the magic evaporated into thick buzzing clouds of hungry mosquitos. Talking had become a hazard because we were literally eating them. We went back to our tents earlier than usual but sleep was illusive in our tent until we finally made the buzzing stop and our tent looked like a crime scene. The feeling of pure luxury that followed is hard to describe. We slept beautifully and gratefully.
On the last day of that same trip we packed up and made the journey back in the pouring rain. I’d made sure my husband and my daughter had a raincoat but realized I forgot my own. Changing into dry clothes in the car after hours in the rain was such a simple and complete happiness. So too was having a hot shower and climbing into clean sheets that night.
Doesn’t discomfort lend all of us opportunities? What about other opposites in your life; Love/Indifference, Courage/Conformity, Solitude/Companionship. Aren’t each sides of the coin crucial to the existence of the coin itself?
Think about an experience in your life that currently bristles you. And then, be on the look out this week for all the ways pleasure is made richer because of it. I would love to hear the discoveries you make that surprise you. Respond in the comments or send me an email.
Here is my poem about the melancholy serpent of Covid restrictions and the implications of everyday pleasures…
When I was four I was given a ‘Scooter’ doll; a character from the Muppets. He wasn’t my favourite personality on The Muppet Show; that honour went to Miss Piggy. I received Scooter for Christmas and even though I was really little I remember wondering, “Why does Santa think I want Scooter?
Well, Santa knew something I didn’t. Almost immediately, Scooter became the doll who I loved with my whole heart. I took him everywhere and snuggled with him every night. He made me laugh. I loved his pliable body and heavy rubber shoes that kept his legs crossed. I loved his fuzzy face with velcro hands that made him seem so expressive and alive. I also appreciated the velcro feature because his eyes were painted onto his glasses and the hands could be used to cover up the view of the blank space where his real eyes might have been.
The summer that followed the Scooter Christmas, I went on a boating trip with my family and Scooter fell overboard. There is no easy way to remember it, he drowned. His shoes that had made me laugh so often (like when I’d hang his ankles over his shoulders) made him go down like a stone. I was devastated. I remember the orange and green hue of his head and shirt fading away into the depths of the water. Rescue efforts were futile. It happened so fast. (He also had no peripheral vision so wouldn’t have seen it coming.) Hoping to console me, my parents bought me a replica which I was convinced looked nothing at all like my Scooter. The replica lived on my toy shelf and not in my heart.
Is the over quoted wisdom of Alfred Lord Tennyson true; “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?
I believe it is true.
What love have you lost? A spouse, lover, best friend, an opportunity, loss of years passed or a future that will never be, a child, health, a parent, a dream?
Loss can be difficult. When the bloom in your heart is replaced with the heaviness of grief, how can presence possibly be a comfort?
What if comfort isn’t the point? Intentional presence or mindfulness might simply be necessary to heal.
Placing your hurt on the shelf and closing your heart to love can look different for many of us and at different times through the healing process. Do you start new projects or create a schedule to keep your mind and body busy? Do you attempt to replace what was lost with something new? Do you shut down and numb out? Do you faithfully contribute to the theatre in your mind about the past?
What if instead of perpetually pushing away the pain of loss, you moved toward the discomfort instead? What if, some of the time, you moved into the empty void left by the shrivelled bloom with your deliberate and unwavering attention?
Try to let yourself feel into something you have lost, right now. Or carve out quiet time for this intentional purpose. Watch your ‘story’ about the loss emerge but instead of engaging with it, keep coming back to the sensations your loss brings to your body. Feel it. Be with it. Return to it at the same time each day or any time you feel capable. Be relentless and also be kind. What does it have to teach you as it rises and falls away and rises again and falls away again? What did your love teach you?
Maybe, once you have given loss the space to ‘be’, there will come a time that you will recognize how the experience of love and loss has shaped you and how both have left seeds in your heart for flowers.
After a few weeks of the first lockdown last year, my personal variety of ‘weird’ had been liberated. A little bit of my secret-self had abruptly become unencumbered by over-scheduling, high expectations and too many yeses. I had free time and a freer mind for more of the day and since the whole world was turned upside down, weird just didn’t seem so weird.
A couple weeks in, the closet poet and abstainer from most things social media, posted a poem. I wrote and spoke with friends about a lot of things thereafter and I am still allowing myself to share some of the ideas my mind chooses to rest upon, work with and untangle. Sometimes ideas break me wide open and sometimes they mend the broken places. So many thanks to all of you who have shared part of yourselves in response to some of the things I have been writing about the past year. I appreciate you so much.
What is your ‘weird’? I really want to hear about it. Post your ‘weird’ in the comments or send me an email. It can be a word, a phrase or something more. Out yourself today in some small or BIG way. How would you spend your time if money wasn’t a concern? How do you dance with life when no one is watching?
Here is the poem I posted in response to the pandemic almost a full year ago now:
One morning when my daughter was about three we were running late to go somewhere and I was trying to get her ready quickly. She wanted to wear this new hairband with a giant flower on it and when I put it on her I somehow poked her in the eye with one end. She immediately started to scream and I felt instantly sick. After a few minutes when she still couldn’t reopen her eye, I became increasingly afraid of what I would see when her eye finally did open. I’m not sure if it was a look that came across my face or the sound in my voice coaxing her, “please, show me your eye, sweetie…” but between my daughter’s sobs she managed to get out the words, “It’s okay, Mama.”
I’d been forgiven.
Imagine in your own life being capable of forgiveness even when you are still hurting.
Forgiveness = Freedom
Being forgiven by another person is largely out of your hands. You can be sorry, make amends and do better from that moment on but if the person you have wronged is unwilling to forgive, there is nothing you can do to force forgiveness. Does that mean you still need to shoulder the burden until the other person can let go of the past? I don’t think so. Freedom is a choice. Accept your current relationship as a place to move forward from. Leave the past where it is; choose to be free.
Being the one who forgives is also not dependent on the behaviour, choices and perspectives of the other person. That’s because forgiveness isn’t about winning or being right or about receiving an apology. It is also not about condoning poor behaviour or admitting defeat. Forgiveness happens in your mind when you free yourself from your grip on the past and of your belief that someone was not who you hoped. It means that you can start fresh with that person or start fresh without them. It allows every experience to become an opportunity -no matter how painful- to learn.
Forgive? Never.
What about a time when forgiving someone wasn’t even something you could talk about never mind act upon? How did that feel in your body to carry around the weight of such ‘unforgiveness’? How did it exploit your energy that could have been used to cultivate joy? How did that voice in your head keep you rooted in the past by saying, “I can not get over what happened to me,” or “You were not the (parent, spouse, sibling, friend, lover, business partner) I wanted you to be.” How did the refusal to forgive hold you back from responding to life in the present?
‘Unforgiveness’ is exhausting. It is a waste of your resources and doesn’t facilitate personal growth. Holding a grudge against someone else, plotting revenge or replaying the story over and over again in your mind is one of the greatest injustices you can inflict upon yourself.
Think of it this way,
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”~ Anne Lamott
So how, oh how, can you forgive even the unforgivable? Therapy might be one way. Meditation may also be a valuable tool. Here are some practices to try…
Recognize the Humanity of Others
There is a meditation that I have worked with for many years that I have found to be valuable. It is a Loving-Kindness Meditation you can practice that could help you recognize the simple truth that you are a beautiful and flawed human being surrounded by other beautiful and flawed human beings. The meditation uses visualization and guided repetition directed toward yourself, a person you love and finally, a person or situation you find difficult.
Try the audio file of the Loving-Kindness Meditation available on the left sidebar of this blog.
A tip: Sometimes when I struggle with directing loving-kindness toward myself, those I love and especially those who I experience as difficult, I will try to imagine the person in my mind’s eye as vulnerable in a way that is relevant to me when I think of them or I visualize the person as a child.
Let Go Enough To Forgive – One Layer at a Time
Since there are some tough nuts to crack on the forgiveness front, here is another practice that I have been exploring that may be useful for you too. Again, I would begin this after you have allowed yourself time to move into a calm, receptive and meditative state. Watch your breath move in and out and gradually release places of tension in your body. Imagine the person you wish to forgive standing opposite to you. If it is possible (but it’s not necessary), imagine you hold both of their hands in yours, make eye contact and smile. Then imagine you say to this person, “I forgive you.” Without needing anything from them in return, continue to say the same words, “I forgive you.” Notice how this feels in your body as you imagine these words directed toward the person you hold in your mind. Watch how you might push this experience of forgiveness away or wander off into a daydream about all the ways you have been wronged. Stay focused on the person and your physical responses. Gently continue if possible, “I forgive you.” Continue without expectation of resolution, only with an open curiosity of how your body responds each time you direct these words toward the mental image of the person you wish to forgive. You might also begin to work with a phrase on your inhalation, “I forgive you,” and a phrase on your exhalation, “I am free.” Continue for as long as you have decided to beforehand. After awhile, when you feel ready, eventually allow the person (opposite to you in your imagination), to fade away from your mind’s eye as though the sun were shining brightly. Allow them to be released from your sight as they dissolve into bright light behind their back. Allow yourself to feel the freedom of forgiveness. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Enjoy the freedom of letting go of some of that weight you have been carrying.
Forgiveness Meditation
P.S. No lasting or serious injuries of eyeballs were endured if you were worried. Phew. Phew. Phew.
“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” ~ Bell Hooks
The image of a cold, winter scene with one silo feels pretty lonely. Solitude isn’t loneliness. Nurturing solitude is not a suggestion to be a silo; to cut yourself off from others. Nor is it a commitment to silo in like-groups. Solitude isn’t the same as independence either because we need each other to grow beyond ourselves.
Solitude can nurture deep and abiding love.
When I was a kid, my family downhill skied most weekends and we usually went away on a bigger ski trip in the spring with other families. I recall a couple who also used to join us on those trips. The man was a good friend of my dad’s and he had grown up in the Alps and had a true passion for skiing. The woman had a very gentle nature, a beautiful laugh, was a gifted artist and she didn’t have any inclination to ski herself. She would get up early and have breakfast with everyone, ride up the gondola to the chalet at the top of the mountain. She’d spend the day wearing cosy clothes by the fire where she’d sketch and read. No one else on those trips took days off or decided not to ski. Accomplished skier or newbie, ideal conditions or not, everyone skied. I recall some of the adults thought her choice made her selfish because her husband loved to ski. There were hushed conversations, “how could she…the poor guy…” What always stood out to me was that he would light up at lunch when he would see her. He was full of his own stories from the slopes and also full of interest and delight in what she’d been up to that morning while he was out skiing. She was the same. They would say ‘goodbye’ after lunch because they truly enjoyed and missed being in each other’s company. They also seemed content to be themselves.
How might acceptance of solitude with the self and for others create space and fertile ground for deep love between and amongst people?
Consider this passage written by Rilke:
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.”
Imagine giving yourself enough space to really know solitude. Think of solitude as time intentionally spent with yourself, hiding less behind busyness, distraction, addiction and increased sensation. Imagine knowing yourself intimately in a way that your compassion wells up so big that you cannot resist in extending this shelter of solitude to others. Imagine loved ones responding in-kind. How might your whole world be different? Interdependent? Interesting and diverse? If you start with yourself, wouldn’t it then be possible to be with others without using them to keep you busy, distracted, addicted and as a source of increased sensation?
Consider how powerful it is to begin within your own solitude; being in the moment as much as possible in your day and taking the opportunity to see what grips you. What feelings grip your body? What repetitive thoughts grip your mind? How might this solitary experience of space allow you to then give space to your child, your beloved, your friend so they can figure out what they like, ideas they hold true, passions they feel inclined to pursue.
Solitude is a place to begin: knowing yourself, loving yourself, being with yourself. Solitude is not a lonely silo. It is a place to gather the resources to gain entry into the art of truly loving another.
