AnnieModify

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

— Alvin Toffler

A rule (or boundary) turns a theoretical or philosophical stance into a clearly defined behavior: Do this, and your behaviors align with your belief. Congruence. 

Do that, and you miss it. Conflict. 

Internal conflict doesn't feel good.

Break dumb rules. Break arbitrary small rules (or don’t). Break rules that exist only to create convenience for one group of people. Break rules that are immoral even if they’re not illegal. Whenever you can, break rules that exist only to uphold a system. It’s important.

Don’t break the rules that define who you are…

…Unless that’s not who you want to be anymore. 

Break all the rules that define who you are if you didn’t choose them, don’t want them, or don’t like how they fit anymore.

Break ‘em all the time. Break them into pieces. Be prepared for a breakdown of your existing self too, since that’s what you’re doing.  Reconfiguring yourself is tough work and you’ll need to have naps and sometimes a small tantrum. 

Is there a rule in your heart that says you should feel the pain and bear the responsibility of things outside your control?

This is a good rule to break.

Break it now. Try it. Go ahead. Tough, huh? Feelings don’t cooperate with commands. They follow patterns, well-worn grooves. You have to keep at it for a while. You have to give yourself a new mantra and repeat it. You have to let your feelings be whatever they are and say, Okay that’s fine, yes, I hear you, ouch it sure does hurt! And then carry on about your business and remind yourself that feeling bad doesn’t change reality, so it’s okay to pay less attention to those bad feelings. Maybe over time they get quieter. Try it out, see what happens.

I am against the pattern we seem to have developed as an intelligent but oh so emotional people of feeling bad as a way of bearing responsibility. 

I am against it because it’s nonsense. Nothing changes in the world because I feel bad about it. The bomb doesn’t reroute into an uninhabited wasteland. The layoffs don’t reverse. The cancer doesn’t curl up and wither away. The bullet doesn’t retreat into the gun. 

So this is a dumb rule and one worth breaking. Feeling bad about bad things doesn’t make you a good person. But it does drain your energy so there’s not much left for action. 

That’s interesting, isn’t it? 

Maybe there’s a better rule to put in place. 

Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these rules as if they were laws.

— Epictetus

I am quite content to be alone except on a mild evening at twilight. 

During the quick hours of the day I am busy. Busy with things I enjoy doing, for the most part. Or busy with people I enjoy being around. I count myself among the luckiest alive. 

During the night I am dreaming. Night is dreaming time whether I am asleep or awake. The dreams are all mine. I stretch out in the bed and in my mind. I  never had such space before. Even in my childhood, my dreams were so small, so bordered. Always tied to some other person, some predetermined identity, some set of standards to uphold. Now my dreams and I can wander at will. For this spaciousness, this freedom, I gladly pay the price of whatever loneliness may peek over the headboard or rattle in the closet.

I don’t mean fantasies, here. Though the physical need for another person, another body, is real and present. That’s just a fact of being human, for most of us.  Not loneliness so much as lust. I handle both with the means at hand, and am largely content. 

But twilight comes. 

On a cold winter day, twilight enhances the coziness of my space, my routine, the comforts of my home and children and friends and hobbies. I can make a pot of stew and dance in the kitchen and get lost in a book and there are no emotions to navigate but my own. This is a peace I do not take lightly.

But twilight comes. Twilight comes on a day when the windows are open and the light is mellow. The sunset streaks of gray and orange and blue linger behind a row of trees. I want to turn to someone and say, Look. The music filters through an open door as a bird sings. I want to turn to someone and say, Listen. 

I want to let this awe and gratitude bubble out and be seen for a moment by another person before it lifts up and away and disappears, as all things do. I want to be a point of reflection for someone else’s awe and wonder. Or pain. We all contain multitudes.

Contentment is a spectrum. As is loneliness.

I have been together and I have been alone. Loneliness is part of both experiences but it has different flavors. 

I have been together and I have been alone. Contentment is part of both experiences but it too has different flavors.  

We have to decide, each moment, what problem we are solving. Sometimes we get so busy solving the problem of loneliness, or lust, or ambition, or insecurity, or sadness, or fear, that we don’t see the larger context. Our larger context, our story, in which this one emotion, this one want, is but a single piece. A significant one, perhaps. But not the wholeness of our being. 

I want to fold things in, not push them away. 

And he will never never never never never never never get to meet you
And I got to meet you
Yeah, I got to meet you.

—Mikey Mike

I write in praise of the ones we love: their weaknesses and fears and nobility, their moments of madness, their genius. Sometimes we hold each other and feel stronger, safer, better. Sometimes we stand in opposite corners and hurl things at each other: words, accusations, feelings, disappointments. And worse. 

We can be so cruel.

We get so confused.

But look at this magnificence! Look at it, look at them, look at us! Look in these eyes. Listen to these voices.

Feel what it is to be in the presence of someone you love.

Nothing is like it, nothing is like you, nothing is like me, nothing.

Love is worth the risk.

Here we are, us two, us three, us ten or twenty or hundred, us thousand or million or billion.

In our small way, striving. In our broken way, fucking everything up worse than it was. In our stupid way, feeling guilty for crimes we were never important enough to commit. In our slow way, holding on too long, grasping, clinging, fearing. In our own way, learning.

An organism, a colony, a civilization, a god: we know not what we are. To avoid the embarrassment and pain of not knowing, we define and split each self into its own piece of aloneness: I!

I, human. Individual, separate, distinct. An entity complete. A being apart.

Apart.

A part.

A part of what?

A part of all, a part of the whole, a part of this mad collective of all we have created, the good and bad of it, the big and small of it. There is never a place where you do not belong. Being is being part of all beings.

Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.

― Jill Bolte Taylor

If you’re not feeling as good about life as you want to be, that’s okay.

If you feel stressed about a lot of things, that’s okay.

If you get nervous, that’s okay.

If you feel overwhelmed, that’s okay.

If you freak out and yell, that’s okay. If you break down and cry, that’s okay.

If the uncertainty of every little thing is panic-inducing, that’s okay.

If your feelings fling you around, if you bounce between longing for the familiar and longing for the unknown, if you don’t know what you’ll feel any given moment, that’s okay too.

If you feel rushed and boxed in and panicked and unsure and unsettled and overwhelmed and under pressure and inadequate and afraid, that’s okay.

It’s not fun. It’s probably not how you want to feel.

But here we are. You, me, the feelings. 

All the feelings are part of this experience. Right now. Take a deep breath. Oh, hello. I am also here, on part of this planet, breathing. Take another deep breath. I’ll do the same. 

Okay. That’s not much better but it’s a little better. 

Sometimes we don’t get to good. Good is a privilege. A gift. A delight, when it happens, when we’re in it. But we don’t always get to be in it. And that’s okay. 

It helps to remember that good still exists, is still real, even when you’re not in it. The possibility of good is always present. The more you reach for it the more possible it becomes. 

Meanwhile, survival. Keeping on. Treading water. Breathing.  

If you cover up your feelings with a veneer of calm, that’s okay.

If you avoid the unpleasant and the negative, if you run from the deep discomfort of feelings you have not yet named, that’s okay.

If you turn sadness into anger because it’s easier, that’s okay.

If you choose frustration over vulnerability, that’s okay.

If you don’t want to face the guilt or shame rustling beneath the surface, that’s okay.

If the fear pushes its way up your throat until you have to scream or cry, that’s okay. 

All we are is children and sometimes we are afraid of the dark.

It’s okay to be there, wherever you are with it. It’s okay to let it be. It’s okay to let yourself be.

If the dark feelings come, you can let them be, too. They will seem like heavy burdens, like stones, like looming mountains, like terror or death. But they pass like clouds. They are not something you have to climb or conquer, just something you have to endure.

Don’t spend your energy fighting the feelings. We have other work to do. 

And we cannot do the work we are able to do if we are too busy hiding from the feelings. 

So let them be. Let them wash over you, through you. In and out like waves. It may feel like you will drown. Keep breathing through the waves. Cry or scream or run or hug or whatever helps you keep breathing. 

Darkness cannot drive out light. The clouds come and pass. The waves rise and recede. 

The world remains and here we are, in it. 

What can we do to make it better? 

Here are some ideas. 

For the new year, a resolution

How small that is, with which we wrestle,
what wrestles with us, how immense;
were we to let ourselves, the way things do,
be conquered thus by the great storm,—
we would become far-reaching and nameless.

What we triumph over is the Small,
and the success itself makes us petty.
The Eternal and Unexampled
will not be bent by us.

…growth is: to be the deeply defeated
by ever greater things.

from The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke

Today has felt like a deep, deep exhalation, an enormous, slow, long sigh of relief and releasing. Fitting, perhaps, that it is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I don’t have any rituals to mark it except for this one, what I’m doing right now: sitting on the couch with a cat curled by my legs, sipping whiskey, tapping these small words into a space that isn’t real (digital? website? internet? can’t possibly be real) but will somehow, perhaps, be read by actual real people in actual real places. Hello, friends. How are you? 

How are you, what are you, where are you, why are you, what’s happening with you, what are you thinking about, what’s humming in the back corners of your brain, what does your heart know right now, what makes your breath come faster or slower, how do you feel about this moment, what do you hope for, what do you fear, what would you ask for, what wishes do you hold tender and close, what desires do you lean away from, what rooms are laid bare, which doors are closed and which ones opened, what candles are you lighting and watching on this the longest night?

I have a few candles lit. I know what I would ask for and what I do ask for. Tonight is the time to look at the space between those points. To consider. To sigh a deep sigh of releasing. What could be different if we did not drag the past with us into the future?  

Let us lay aside every weight that hinders us 

and the errors that so easily entangle us

so we can move forward (with patience — gently, child, gently) 

on the road we walk, the reality of this moment 

which is all that we ever have