Who knew that happiness was quiet? It is not exuberant exhilaration. It is a placid lake. It is sitting still. It is warmth in my belly.
Happiness is accessible. It is within. It is without. It is expansive. It reaches out.
Happiness is knowing with certainty that no one is disconnected, separate, or alone and that there is absolutely nothing that we must do.
Thank you to my friend, Emily, and her performance last night at A Family Affair. Before she began speaking we sat silently observing a film, a film of a person being mummified in toilet paper. In those seconds before Emily spoke a feeling came over me, an urge, the need write, just as she had done when she had witnessed the original mummification. But the moment wasn't about me. It was about her witnessing experience so I listened and was moved as much by her experience as by my own. What follows is what I experienced in 30 seconds of witnessing.
Free me of these bandages, this bondage of self which encumbers and prohibits me. I am screaming to break free. There is no one to hear me, no one to witness me.
There is no one with scissors to cut me loose. It is I who must free myself like a butterfly from a cacoon. It is in the struggle to break free that the muscles are developed to fly. I must do it on my own. No one can do it for me and I must do it because I have the desire to see the light of day, to spread my wings and fly. Daily I do what I can to chip away at that which binds me. Today is the day, the day I break free and fly.
I decided to do things differently this weekend. I chose to focus on myself by going for a hike and in doing so I was going to war with myself. You see there is a part of me that is all about change but there is an impudent child in me as well, a child who wants to maintain the status quo. The result is an intra-psychic battle.
As I began the ascent to Lake Valhalla, I observed my thoughts, “Ugh. This is hard today. Maybe I should have stayed home. Maybe Ben would have eventually wanted to go swimming or do something other than sitting in front a screen all day. Perhaps I am a bad mother for leaving him at home.” I listened but pushed on.
Soon enough my heart had reached a steady cardio rhythm. I found my stride and the status quo’s voice of negativity disappeared. The noise distractions and interruptions of daily life had been shed like a child’s coat after returning home from school. I was in flow, a moving meditation. My body, mind and spirit were synchronized and at ease with the surrounding environment. I experienced mental clarity and receptivity, the reason I hike.
I remained in flow for some time until the voices of other hikers calling after their dog, Oscar, crept into my awareness. We became traveling companions until at last our destination, Lake Valhalla, was reached. I, seeking the solemnity of solitude to eat and to reflect and to write, took a separate path.
Alas, solemnity was not to be. Though there were no humans in close range, there were the black flies. I moved. I swatted. I swung my extra shirt like a horse swishing his tail. I stood in the water. I stood out of the water. I ate. I didn’t eat. Finally I took a new approach. I sat on a log, closed my eyes and calmed my agitation. I listened to the sound of insect wings whirring past my ears, some growing louder, others softer. I felt the tickle as they alighted on my skin. I observed myself. I did not react. I was willing. Then one bit me. That was it!
I came to see that a seated reflection was not the purpose of this trip. I was meant to move and so I did. I moved to begin the return journey. I had plans for that evening to get home to, plans I was looking forward to. I allowed the thoughts of what was to come carry me down the trail and back to my car. I moved swiftly over Stephen’s Pass, past the Iron Goat Trail and the town of Skykomish. I checked my GPS for the estimated time of arrival at home. “That couldn’t be right,” I told myself. I sought another source of information and as I did, the traffic came to a halt. I single line of brake lights stretched out in front of me and disappeared around a bend. My heart sank and the voice of the status quo perked up with delight. “I knew you shouldn’t have come out here on a Sunday!” it berated. It called me stupid and what were you thinking, you should have known better. I took a deep breath and this is what came to me - acceptance.
The day had been an opportunity to accept life today as it was, with all of its imperfections, unrealized expectations, annoyances and changes of plans. It was an opportunity to accept my powerlessness to change any of the circumstances of the day and an opportunity to accept myself, impudent child and all. It was an opportunity to practice patience and to extend compassion to myself. What I got to experience was love.
I am discovering more and more how unworthy I believe I am of love. I see it in the way I sweeten the package (of myself) to make it more attractive. It is sneaky, in the same way as the disease of alcoholism and I am convinced that the codependent is suffering from the exact same disease where self deception and self-hate run the show like the wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
Recently I got to see how when I am attracted to someone I will default into flirtatious mode with innuendo. I do this because I believe that on my own I am not interesting enough to attract someone or that if they knew who I really was, they would turn away.
I got to see how I use sexuality to try to trick someone into loving me. It's only a matter of time before the sex fizzles though and you find little of substance or compatibility lying beneath it.
I got to see how I will glob onto any characteristic the other has found attractive and use that to try to bring them closer, to be ready to spend time with me now, and not make me have to wait some undefined quantity of time.
I got to see my fear as just that and I get to give to my needy little person what she had sought from others through relationship.
I am getting to feel her calming, being more at ease. She is feeling the freedom to skip down the street, abandoning her post on the couch where she had sat turned facing the back looking out the window waiting with vigilance for the return of someone who once left without a word.
Today no one is leaving without a word. Today someone has simply asked for some time, time she can use to build sand castles.
During my morning meditation, I kept getting this cramp in the arch of my right foot, a painful cramp which pulled my foot downward in a pointed position. I tried flexing my foot to release the tension and the pain. This provided only moderate relief. I placed pressure to the area where the muscle was contracting with my thumbs. This too provided only moderate relief.
Then a thought came. It was the same suggestion that my tattoo artist had given me. "Don't fight it. Go into the pain." So I did. I relaxed into it. I accepted it. I observed it. I felt the pain's warmth spreading outward, moving from a central point upward and downward along the length of the muscle. Soon enough the contraction let up and so did the pain.
I saw this as a metaphor for emotional pain. To what length do we go to relieve emotional discomfort? We deny it. We avoid looking at it. We avoid feeling it. We try to convince ourselves why we shouldn't feel the way we do. It was a reminder to me that to love and accept myself, I must honor my feelings, my pain, my disappointment, by observing them without judgement, by not trying to change them or fix them or squash them into a box. I honor myself by letting them be what they are. With quiet awareness I give them the space to be what they are, no more and no less and in doing so I am giving them the freedom to pass as they will naturally on their own.
Emotions are like molecules of gas. By trying to contain them, forcing them into a box to hide away like an unwrapped Christmas present , they become combustible. But when allowed the freedom of space, they will disperse naturally into the ether.
Today I will observe my feelings as they arise and give them the space they need to float away.
I had the pleasure of kayaking with a new activity buddy yesterday. We rented boats from NWOC on Lake Union. We were soon making our way across the boating lanes, scouting a spot to practice our wet exits. We gave way to the local cruise lines in their various sizes and degrees of luxury, rowed past sailboats anchored off shore and maneuvered around the many paddleboarders.
Finally I spotted calm waters and a hidden bay tucked behind a set of James Bond style house boats with attached personal high-speed watercraft. A teenage boy and girl sat facing one another submerged to their waists a few feet from the shore. I couldn't help but feel that we were breaking up a moment, but I figured that was probably not a bad thing.
After some hemming and hawing about not liking the idea of plunging myself into the feathery plant life that lay below, I finally rolled my boat upside down. Disoriented in that position, I managed to exit the cockpit and bob to the surface unaware of the plants around me. After another go of it, it was my partner's turn. I stood by as she situated herself in her boat. "Geesh," she said looking at me. A potent aroma of now legalized marijuana filled my nostrils. I turned my head. Through the wire grated sides of the house boat ramp I saw a cloud of smoke. A set a paddleboards, like lawn furniture, sat clustered beneath it on the water offering support to their riders. I imagined someone paddling up to them, nodding his head and grinning as he said, "waS'UUUUUP?!"
In June the weather became warm enough to open my bedroom windows and to leave them open for sleep. Every morning at 5 a.m. I was awoken by the sound of the birds. They seemed so loud. Some mornings I'd get up and with frustration close the window. Other mornings I'd pull a pillow over my head. After a while I simply grew accustomed to lying in bed for 30 minutes listening to their sounds before drifting back to sleep.
Now it is August. The temperature is warm and the days, though not as long as they were in June, are still long enough but there is something about the daylight that has changed. It is not as brilliant. The Sun no longer passes directly overhead and the landscaping along the back of the house, which just a week ago received full Sun in the late afternoon, now remains in shadow.
Restless, I turned the other day to look at the clock next to my bed. It was 5am. I wondered where the birds had gone. Before drifting back to sleep my ears focused. I heard them. The birds had not gone away. I had just stopped hearing them. A touch of sadness crept in. I missed being awoken by the birds! They were a reminder to me that the good days of summer were beginning and filled me with anticipation of the activities that lay ahead, the hikes I would make, the boats I would row, the tomatoes I would grow. The birds reminded me that one day soon I would don my bathing suit and sandals again, take my lunch break outside and absorb the warmth of the sun.
That I am no longer awoken by the birds is a sign that the end of summer is approaching. Though it has been fully satisfying, I feel a wave of nostalgia for summer's past. My children are no longer little and the time is past when I could take them to the pool daily. I have come to a period of my life in which I am truly happy but as the summer begins to fade, I feel the loss of all those years while my children were little during which I was incapable of happiness. I wasn't able to experience the joy that I now can at watching them grow. I am sad both for what I could not experience and also for I could not provide. It is then that I take comfort in knowing that if it weren't for the loss, I would never have experienced the gratitude for the joy I have found.
