It's Up & Down...
“It’s up and down.”
I keep hearing this. From a friend when we had our now-weekly phone call. In a coaching call. From family members. And I keep feeling it, too.
This is what we feel during this pandemic, as we continue to focus in on our day-to-day reality and then zoom out to a larger acknowledgement of the bigness of what is unfolding, yo-yo-ing back and forth between this moment and the unknown future. This, it is important to say, is also what we feel almost all the time, even in “normal” life— it’s up and down. Our experience, like everything else on earth, changes in each moment.
And when we feel and say that’s it’s up and down, we often qualify, sometimes almost with embarrassment: If my loved ones and I are well, if my household is financially stable, do I even have a right to feel down?
Do I even have a right to feel down?
Let’s address that question first, with a resounding YES. We have a right to all of our emotions, and when we acknowledge the ones that are most unpleasant, this is what affords us the opportunity to grow and to cultivate compassion for ourselves and others.
To ask whether we have a right to suffer even if we’re not suffering the MOST is like asking if we have a right to be grateful even if we are not the MOST fortunate. Yes and yes— what we have to work with and to practice with is our own experience, such as it is.
This question, as with so many questions, is not a situation of either/or but of both/and. Yes, it’s up and down. We can acknowledge and give space to both of these experiences, and everything in between. We can acknowledge what challenges us even as we practice gratitude for all that sustains us, even as we practice compassion with those who are suffering greatly. As Walt Whitman noted, we are large; we contain multitudes. We are complex beings who can hold all of this, and our task is to grow big enough to allow all of it, up and down as it may be.
Low-Key Terrified
Right now, I am preparing for the next iteration (the first time online!) of the course “Thriving Amidst Uncertainty” and I came across this quote:
“So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going?"
— by Rainer Maria Rilke in "Letters to A Young Poet"
It seems to often happen that whenever I’m getting ready to teach a course, I get a big helping of what the course is about. I should be careful with what I choose to teach about! :) I’m joking of course, because it’s actually the other way around: I can only teach about what I have experienced, what I wrestle with, what I have been taught by.
Anyway, since the course on courage and uncertainty is beginning soon, of course, I have been having my own experience of uncertainty, of the fear that can arise seemingly out of nowhere.
I wrote in my journal, “I wake today with a somewhat familiar feeling, this sort of gentle horror, low-key terrified, a bundle of fear and doubt…”
And like Rilke admonishes the young poet, my knee-jerk response to this feeling is often to “persecute myself with questions.” My mind loves to be the one with the answer, so it jumps in first to try and sort things out: “What is causing this? What should I do about it? What’s the solution?”
What Does Trust Say?
This year, TRUST and INTUITION are two of my key words. So a practice that helps me to move past my mind is to ask, “What does Trust say?” When I ask this, the interesting thing is that a response comes! Trust and intuition are right there within, just waiting patiently to be called on when I tire of fixing, solving, and fluttering about.
This time, when I listened to the voice of Trust, she said, “Sit with it.”
No need to grab this feeling and wrestle with it, chase it down, fix it, or poke it. Just sit here companionably beside, with care and curiosity. Just sit with it. Let it be.
Is this easy? No, it isn’t. That’s why all the figuring and the solving, all the distracting and the numbing. We have many, many tools and tricks to do anything else rather than sit with it. Sitting with it sounds easy, sounds passive, sounds like nothing at all.
But what actually happens when we sit with it?
Here with this curious question, my friend, is where I leave us for now. There is no way to know what will happen when we sit with it… except by sitting with it. Truth and dare. I dare us to sit with what is occurring within us, frightened though we may be, in service of truth and growth.
Want to dive deeper?
This course is just one of the self-access resources in the Flourish & Bloom membership platform, and you can work through each module of teachings, meditations, and reflection prompts at your own pace.