remembering
“sometimes i wonder what more is there, insisting within myself that i should forget trying to be everything to someone or something to everyone and just remember perhaps the two most beautiful string of letters ever married together; be. just be.” ~ Christopher Poindexter
When I glanced outside, darkness had overtaken the sky. The clouds were almost black, as if they were angry. Furious, rather. The deep dark mass moving through the sky announcing that something is coming. It certainly looked and felt like something really dramatic is going to happen. In an intense anticipation of it, I felt fear moving through my body. A contraction in my belly. Shallow breathing. A fast moving energy in my upper chest. I know that feeling so well. It is so familiar. For a brief moment there, I managed to remind myself that I am inside and safe. Shortly, however, the sensation came back. I knew it had nothing to do with what was going on outside. As always, it was coming from the inside.
Habitually, I would want to do something about it, quickly. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to run away and remove myself from the place. Instead, I started taking longer and slower breaths through my nose, and exhaling long throughout my mouth. That helped a little. Slowed me down, at least. Anxiety responds well to this. I placed both of my hands on my belly and just stood there, at my dinning room window, breathing, with my eyes closed. I could feel things reorganizing and rearranging inside of me. As if all my organs and body parts communicated with each other and spread the message around that the danger is no longer present, and that they can all go back to their usual duties. Slowly, I started feeling more grounded - my belly more soft and spacious, my throat more relaxed, feet firmly planted on the ground… It was gone. For now, at least. I can go on with my day…
“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.” ~ Virginia Woolf
Sneaky little fucker that anxiety is. Shows up out of nowhere, just like the darkness suddenly covers the whole sky. And it just takes over. It has a power of covering everything else up and just demanding one’s attention. It seems almost impossible finding any other emotion or quality inside of me when anxiety shows up. It freezes everything else, holding everyone hostage. There is a meditation practice that I like that allows for slowing down and noticing how anxiety is never the only guest at the party, but just one of the many. It allows us to see that we are so much more than anxiety although it seems so overpowering and it can take over every cell in our body. In the given moment, it does seem and feel like it’s the only thing present.
Sometimes I can feel it slowly creeping in. Feeling it quietly, while it’s doing its thing… trying to come in and mess with me, sabotage my doings and silence me, all the while believing that it is protecting me like it did in the past. I know very well that moment when the anxiety is approaching, I can feel the silence in my bones. On the outside I freeze. On the inside, though, there is a lot of energy, a lot of movement, that comes in and I let it take over. Sometimes it is a contraction in my belly that makes me stop breathing; other times, it is a shallow fast breath. Either way, it doesn’t feel like I have a choice in the matter, really. I can’t shake it off of me once it is here. It claims its place. And threatens to stay for a while.
“One day, the mountain that is in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance. But the person you become in learning to get over it? That will stay with you forever. And that is the point of the mountain.” ~ Brianna Wiest
And then, have you noticed when you’re trying to resist it and desperately want it gone, how stubborn it becomes?? Just like when the darkness covers the sky and the storm is just about to hit, I want it to be sunny and calm with every part of my being. Or when I have a simple cold, and it annoys me so much that I get upset and restless, and I feel even worse than I would if I’d just allow myself to experience the damn cold! Or when people are not behaving the way I expect them to behave, when the driver in front of me slows down before the yellow light, or when a friend changes her plans last minute. It’s ridiculous… Resistance only makes it worse, more painful and so much more uncomfortable. Every single time. And every single time I forget about that rule, and I try to compete with life and the workings of the universe.
The biggest wave of anxiety for most of us comes along with the disappointment around the expectations that we have from life itself, as well as those that we have from ourselves when it comes to all the things we want to accomplish. I have realized that I most often expect something grandiose - a grand adventure that will be happening at all times, magical and unforgettable moments. A sense of novelty that has a daily presence in my life. But, life’s not that. Rather, life is a series of small moments that often are insignificant and meaningless - and I don’t mean this in a negative and cynical way. It is a series of actions that simply need to be done in order to sustain life and move forward, sometimes just to survive. It’s similar with love. Love is not what has been shown to us in movies, it is not all rainbows and butterflies, grand gestures and super compatible partners - it is this delicate and dainty moment, this transient emotion, and a lot of work. Same goes with happiness, that many consider to be their life purpose. Well, that doesn’t make it a sustainable goal. Happiness is nothing else but a fleeting moment, a rare emotion, that we all somehow crave and grasp for. We should certainly recognize those moments when they arrive, and rejoice in them. However, we get attached to the idea of happiness being this permanent state, and it’s simply not. It can’t be. It’s unnatural. In the words of Virginia Woolf, it’s a “fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold on to”. And, of course, once we realize this, once we really understand it, live it - that’s when a great sadness comes and most often, the anxiety.
Man… the tricks we play on ourselves to keep up with our own impermanence… Someone reminded me the other day of Tara Brach’s meditation where you are asked to imagine having only a year left to live - at your present mental and bodily capacity - what would you do with it? Then you imagine you only had a day left - what would you do with it? Then only an hour - what would you do with it? It boils down to priorities, really, as it is, of course, all about facing our mortality.
“Denying reality never works, though. It may provide some immediate relief, because it allows you to go on thinking that at some point in the future you might, at last, feel totally in control. But it can’t ever bring the sense that you’re doing enough — that you are enough — because it defines “enough” as a kind of limitless control that no human can attain. Instead, the endless struggle leads to more anxiety and a less fulfilling life.” ~ Oliver Burkeman
In the end, the essence of our human quandary is that our capacities are limited, our time here is far from infinite, and we have no control whatsoever over how the things will unfold. Life is one great dash of uncertainty and we are lucky to even experience ever being born.
“When you realize you are mortal, you also realize the tremendousness of the future.” ~ Etel Adnan
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Marina