Anticipation Sickness.

Anticipation Sickness.

“But what if, this time?”, the question echoes in my mind.

The silence in response is the same echoing kind.

I can ask the same question in half a dozen repetitive ways. “Why not, this time, this love, this job, this circumstance?”

I’ve given up on trying to get the question right because I’ve figured out it’s the wrong question to get an answer for. I’m beginning to accept the Universe doesn’t need for me to understand why not, at least not yet. And the day may never come, as so many of us who live with unanswered questions know. If there was an answer to be understood or learned for why my ‘What-Ifs’ have not become ‘What-Is’, I would have found it by now.

I’m not mad about it, just sad about it. It’s Anticipation Sickness, the same illness the ancient prophets and poets wrote of. Hope deferred makes the heart sick but unavoidably, Hope rises and the question, this time just a whisper, echoes again.

“What if, this time?”

An Optimistic Idealist.
We are our own worst enemies at times. A consumption generation collecting toys and experiences, living in a near-constant state of ‘What-Next?’ I, a Futurist and optimistic idealist, am guilty of living always with one eye on the future. It means hope and anticipation of What-Next is constantly simmering away within me, because I wonder if each step is taking me closer to this time, being the exact time my dreams fall within my grasp.

There is a lot of terrible, unhelpful advice available on the subject of dreams.

You have to be bold and grab hold of them. 
You have to be patient and let them go. 
You have to make them happen for yourself. 
Network with people and influencers who will help you. 
You need pray harder/meditate more / visualise more.
Do everything you can do and then do more. 
If it’s meant to be, it will happen. 
When you stop trying, that’s when it will happen. 
Just relax and let it be. 
Just accept yourself / your circumstance and then you’ll find peace. 

I have done all of these things – bought plane tickets and chased my dreams halfway around the world. I’ve done it over and over again. I’ve let it go and let it go again, burning candles and memorabilia. Not just one dream, but several of them. But I’m still left sitting with the question and with that unbearable feeling of Anticipation Sickness welling up within me.

What if, this time? What if I’ve finally learned the lesson that would make me ready, climbed the obstacle that kept me stuck or I’ve become good enough or strong enough or pretty enough. Maybe, finally this mysterious timing and God’s good will has finally caught up with me.

Hope is not a joyful feeling – hope is the gut-wrenching, white-knuckled sigh of the heartbroken, brave and vulnerable to look up, to say ‘Okay, let’s go again.’

A friend said sometimes we are presented with our hope over and over again because in our despair, loss and heartbreak, we learn something we needed to know. She’s right and yes, I have learned deep and good lesson from the heartbreak of hope lost. I know there is truth in that statement but I struggle to accept it as the entire truth – because it doesn’t ring true with my experience. Sometimes all I have learned in the losing is to persevere. But how many times do you need to learn that lesson, before it turns bitter? Surely the Universe has gentler, kinder and more creative ways to teach us that destroying us over and over?

Still, we teach resilience and embrace courage to be vulnerable and to try again, despite our heart-pounding and questions. I am facing my own heart-pounding What-If questions again. Hope comes racing back to the surface and emerges in my late-night sub-conscious, as if the day-dreams weren’t unmanageable enough.

This combination of hope and anxiety can be crippling. And that’s anticipation sickness. Knowing the risk you take to hope at all, knowing what losing hope will feel like, how our way of seeing the world will be again challenged. It’s the fear and anxiety that overshadows joy. Hope is not a joyful feeling – hope is the gut-wrenching, white-knuckled sigh of the heartbroken, brave and vulnerable to look up, to say ‘Okay, let’s go again.’

It’s anxiety in disguise, the kind only known by those who have experienced loss and disappointment. If you have lost hope and yet hoped again, you know what anticipation sickness is. You know the dread feeling of all you might lose again. So it’s hope and heartache all over again and the world clamours at us, with bad advice and little empathy.

It’s lonely, because everyday hopeful circumstances for everyone else , are not that simple or black-and-white for us. 

Montaigne sings “Heartbreak / Feels like an old dream / Feels like a demon / I cannot shake him / I’m not afraid to fall / I am still standing here after all / I didn’t die / That’s my consolation prize / I am alive / That’s my consolation prize.”

At times in my life, I have found myself unable to live in my current reality because it felt hollow and empty in comparison to the dream. But the dream is just a possibility. No matter how I reach for it, I cannot touch it or make it a real thing. No matter how I have tried. In my darkest moments, life has felt like a consolation prize, a next-best-option while I wait for the real thing.

Ask A Better Question.
Replace ‘what if?’ with ‘what now?’ and you’ll find a pathway to living in What-Is, the Present.

‘Whatever you have in your hands, that’s your responsibility.’
Nothing more, nothing less. What you have in your hands is now. You cannot hold the past, you only carry the lessons with you today. You cannot hold tomorrow either. What you have is ‘now’. And that is all you need, it’s all you actually have capacity for. Just today. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s what is in your hands.

What-Is stands exacting when What-If is hard to define. My heart, sick yes, with hope deferred and endless wondering of “what if?”, is not so inclined to trust. My disappointed heart is coaxed back to trust again by the experience of the present. I fiercely drag myself back to that brightly-lit day. What now, today?

How To Move Forward
The best strategy is just a plan, with a little understanding behind it. I’ve learned a strategy for being present today while moving towards the future is to break everything down into the tiniest steps. Most dreams will take months, years, even decades to eventuate. So when living day to day, it’s easy to feel dejected and that you’re not moving forward at all. But you can take a tiny step in a day. Today, you can do one thing to move you closer to where you want to be. A piece of research, downloading an application form, reaching out to the one you’ve been waiting to hear from. Making the call you don’t want to make. 

The Creative Spirit does not jest with us, not once, and understands the fragile human heart. The Universe does not crush our hopes nor tease us without mercy, nor hide themselves from us. We just go looking in the wrong place for God in the future, when God is present in the Now, in the What Is. Present is the only place to find peace in the wake of Anticipation Sickness caused by what we hope for, what we long for, what may yet be.

What-Is is I Am, I Was, is Ever Will Be
What-Is the moment and the day, present
pressing us closer to the Light revealing masterwork 
still barely seen, the ripples in each day
but at a distance of some What-Was,
the vast, expansive movement of Love is bright.

What-Now becomes again joyful, no consolation prize.

 

 

I Was A Dancer, Once.

I Was A Dancer, Once.

I’ll say it sometimes, dropped into the lull of a conversation about somebody’s graceful movement.

Or somebody might ask, ‘You know, what do you call it, that step?’ and I will answer without thinking, ‘that is the pas de basque’ or I will say, ‘that was a ballonné’ and keep to myself how the hands may have been more precise.

Then to quizzical and bemused faces, I will explain it quietly, ‘I was a dancer, once.

When I was a young girl I loved the feeling of my hip flexor stretched to pointed toe in a fluid, long movement. The smell of a new leather ballet shoe and the extension of my torso while my legs shifted into fifth position with hands at two; ready to leap into that old and elegant language of bone and body.

I craved the forward propulsion of movement that came from the pirouette and the barre exercises that dominated my classes. The discipline of dance taught me to prize technique in every aspect of my life. Everything I learn now starts the same way – the movement in completion, then breaking down the steps until I have mastered each technique before bringing it all together. Ballet taught me the strategy of moving artfully from one place to another, step by carefully selected step. Technique will take you places talent alone cannot, so now my fingers move over the keyboard as fast as my thoughts move and my knife can dance across a chopping board. In learning to dance, I learned how to learn and learned how to execute.

Then I learned at 5’2” with curved, wide hips and too busty for my height, I would never be a ballerina. So I turned my attention elsewhere, put my ballet shoes away and took two buses to music lessons instead. For a long time, if left to my own devices on an empty stage, the dance would erupt from within me, my body didn’t know I wasn’t a dancer anymore. I would shut myself in the living room at any chance, turning up the stereo to dance freely. I would commandeer the empty school assembly hall in the brief moments of early morning to practice the steps that were not yet faded from memory.

Last week, I found myself alone in the gym, looking at the open space and remembering I was a dancer, once. I did not resist the urge to cartwheel, leap, lift and spin my extended right leg into a twist and finish in a plié. No one saw or questioned, laughed or scoffed. I just danced, as I am prone to do.

As it turns out, I can still pirouette, precise and straight from east to west across the room, and land a leap with leg extended and toe arched into submission. I can still feel the fibre of muscle and definition that lies underneath the soft curves of my body that will bend when asked, into concave and convex shapes or spread into a split with ease. The difference is that now my body dances alone in the dark, unwatched.

In all my dancing, I danced alone. To dance together requires a shared language, an assented understanding between two parties. Regardless of whether you dance for an audience, if you dance with another, you must dance for them too. That is what I have wanted to learn.

The first time I was taken to the dance floor with a partner – my hips froze and my body found resolution. Resolution to not move, to not engage. I needed language that I had no words for and nothing to take the place of words. Words couldn’t tumble out of my lips to make sense of what I didn’t understand or the questions I couldn’t ask.

Alone in the room, with an empty floor and only my own rhythm to follow, I can effortlessly freestyle and push my body beyond imagined limits. I am unhindered by the thought of who is watching or with me. I can make my own steps and choose the most interesting ways to move across the floor.

When I am not alone in the room, each of my steps is a response and will be responded too. My breath must change to accommodate new rhythms. Patience and bravery is required in new ways. All of a sudden I am aware of my dance space and the space of another. My body is less willing to leap and spin so freely; for the first time I lose confidence in my technique. Technique that has never failed me before.

By now, you should know this is both a true story about dance and a metaphor. I am a paradox of confidence and innocence, sometimes imagining more quickly than I can learn and sometimes learning more than I can practice. But there are a few things I know to be true.

I am changed. Still insecure, wary of misstep, but also brave I step into rhythm; willing to try without the security of technique to guide me. I am intrepidly exploring trust that makes me brave.

In this moment of exploration and discovery, I realise how much I have missed being taught. I have missed instruction and the security of being guided to perfect technique. And my desire is perfection that bears creation, experimentation and re-creation. I want to move more than I ever have, but a new way of dancing.

These old moves have been my safety net, the trusted and known. Suddenly I am inspired to new rhythms. I want new language for my tongue to stumble over and finesse until I speak this language with ease. I find myself wanting to dance for another, to move beyond technique to intuition.

I want to practice as I have never practiced before, bending flesh to my will and making beauty from my sweat, strain and gasping breath.

A long time ago, I wrote a poem about learning to dance. I find myself here, nearly twenty years later still learning and wanting to learn.

there’s a peace coming for a time
we will listen to the air for a while
competing and combining in breath and gasp
from two sets of crimson lips
tarnished hips and bruises
from this dance you teach 
teach me how to breathe
and move again
I will not run or hide 
I will try a little harder
keep slightly closer,
follow you and watch myself
imitate and learn this rhythm
you already know
and i have yet to learn
but there is peace coming 
neither will care who
knew what when we began

this will be our dance for a time
circling, entwined
i will learn the things you speak
and never speak
that from limb and soul
peace does grow
what is new to me
can be new again for you

i will make it so
a gift to another, my other
your gift to me new language
for one who knows a thousand words
a thousand more will rise and descend
in sweet and heavy songs
and the ghosts will go
leaving us to dance
speaking to only each other

Beyond The Brick (The Story-trader).

Beyond The Brick (The Story-trader).

‘You can read it, if you like.’
(The story written to explain the chapters of life before now, where we intersect.)

He said it with nonchalance and maybe because the words were light leaving his tongue but heavy by the time they landed in my ear, I was struck off-balance. I imagine at least, that the words were not heavy with meaning for him, because how would I imagine that those words leaving his lips are as costly for him as they are valuable to me on hearing them?

They landed in my ear and my hand at the same time, little stones dropped into a lake and their ripples sweeping out and down my limbs.

I do not trade in stories lightly, I want to tell him. I hold the stories of others as precious as I hold my stories close. Stories are secrets and trust and truth.

Truthfully, my stories are kept safe behind a tall, brick wall. Stories of my doing, they are like climbing roses on the outside of the wall. Pretty, sweet and sometimes funny I can tell these stories easy and only those who pay close attention will see the bricks behind the flowers.

Lately, I have been thinking about taking some of those bricks down.

Beyond the brick is a wild garden. It is fragrant and sweet, full of fruit and nut trees. There is a river through one corner and the sun falls nicely on the grove of trees. It is both wild and well-tended and it cannot be defined as one thing or another. It is not English nor tropical. It is all things, all being, all stories in their raw and imperfect state. Unfiltered, unrestrained.

Lately, I have been thinking about taking some of those bricks down.

It means something to me, this exchange of the wild, unbound stories. Stories are trust; credit in the bank of understanding. Not understanding as assurance of anything but acceptance and the safe bravery of being Known.

Grace and meaning come from trading stories in my world. Knowing your stories is one step closer to knowing you, the real you – outside the carefully polished mannequins we live inside. At least, I assume it is that way with others, as it is that way with me.

It is a precious thing to hold somebody’s story in your hand. And it is never one story but a collection of tales that weave together one and then the next and the one after. You can traverse sideways, backwards and forwards through the story of another; moments of history and glimpses of the future. So one story could mean all the stories, if you navigate well.

“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” James Baldwin

I keep a rose garden, that grows on a brick wall. The roses thrive on the sun, strapped in obedient lines against a sturdy spine. Well-practiced stories chosen for each moment. A careful selection of which practiced line is safe to use.

Here is the secret, buried in the brick. If I say the wrong thing, tell the wrong story, express the wrong feeling or tell you what I think before I know what you expect, need or want for me to say – then you, whoever you are, will disappear. A terrifying fear that I am responsible for my aloneness by never being the right thing; good enough, funny enough, wise enough, sweet enough, fierce enough, never enough. 

Not an uncommon secret, but mine nonetheless.

Beyond the brick, there is a garden I have come to love. I’ve been living in it, behind the wall my whole life. And lately, I have been thinking about taking down the bricks.

There are some brave and patient ones who have made it far beyond the bricks. They have found crevices through which to crawl. For them, the wild and untamed self delights uninhibited. The storytrader gives freely there and the garden is bountiful. People eat and find shelter and laugh and love is made the whole day long and into the night. The land is good. I peek over the wall and through the window in the gate I hid so well and wonder now, whether I dare wait for those intrepid enough to make their own way through the wall.

Life beyond the brick is good and sweet and sensual and gritty. Lately, I have been thinking about opening the gate or taking down the bricks.

Have a Not-So-Perfect Christmas

Have a Not-So-Perfect Christmas

The trouble with Christmas is not the commercial underpinnings or the trappings of food and wine that see us creeping back to the scales in shame. The trouble with Christmas, is how it perpetuates the myth of perfect. This is an old post but one that still rings true. So here’s an updated version for 2015.

1. Christmas gives perfect stereotypes an unfair spotlight.
I love Christmas movies but I hate the stereotypes they portray. Career girls being visited by ghosts of Christmas past to learn that family is the most important thing. Childhood sweethearts being reunited. Even the most loved and abhorred ‘Christmas’ movie ‘Love Actually’ has very little to do with Christmas and everything to do with tragic romance gone wrong. Christmas is not about romance, nor are those stereotypes realistic.

2. Christmas creates an expectation that we should have ‘perfect’ moments, from family dinners to carol services.
Those perfect moments come with their own set of expectations too – perfect food, perfect decorations, perfect happiness. This shallow view of happiness is ill-informed and unrealistic. The nuance of emotion that is layered into a truly happy moment will touch the spectrum of joy, sorrow and everything in between. Therefore the kind of happiness we see depicted or try to create is largely an inaccurate and unachievable kind of emotional experience.

Of course – the expectation or desire for creating something ‘perfect’ is largely only something that hinders those who have not found peace with defining their own sense of perfect.

The biggest challenge around Christmas and its myth of perfection, is the annual challenge it poses to those who are still wrestling with their own imperfection, or still seeking the ability to find perfection in the imperfect.

What’s the perfect Christmas?
It starts with acceptance that we have the opportunity to participate and create new traditions and meaningful moments by acknowledging and communicating our needs and hopes thoughtfully with one another. Not inspiring enough? A perfect Christmas is one where everybody comes openly to a shared experience and are actively involved in creating a celebration that expresses shared meaning.

Even if you have found a sense of acceptance and self-awareness within yourself, Christmas thrusts many people and their hopes (expectations) together. Therefore, while you may find contentment, others who are seeking to ‘get it right’ in hopes of meeting their own Christmas expectations may still look to you to play a part.

Is this selfish? Is this wrong? No. It’s a natural part of human interaction but in the same way that weddings can, a shared celebration and experiences creates a set of dependencies on others to try to achieve satisfaction.

1950s-Vintage-Americana-Family-Photo-Kids-Cowboy-Christmas-Movie-Projector-Holiday-Advertisement_0Whatever ideals you hold regarding your family and close relationships, it is nearly impossible to remove those from the way we celebrate and come together.

So where does stress, anger, frustration, emotional outburst and tension come from at Christmas? It comes from trying to meet these expectations, often relying heavily on others to do, say, make and be what we hope for. This tension of hope and expectation can squeeze our emotional and mental capacity beyond breaking point. Our hope that ‘this year will be different’ pushes against our expectation that ‘it will be the same as it was before’.

It may be you have not experienced this before, but for increasing numbers of people who come from divorced and mixed-families, those who are adjusting to the loss of partners or children, those who have suffered abuse or trauma in family relationships – this is an unspoken norm at Christmastime. Even for those away from home for the first time, Christmas takes on a significantly different shape.  It can simply be overwhelming for those who are lonely at other times of the year, to experience the pronounced focus on close relationships and family during this season.

At the most basic healthy level, balancing the needs and desires of multiple family units is challenging. Making decisions about which grandparents get to see the grandkids on Christmas Day and when can be tough. But if a single person in that family has a deep emotional need to feel validated during that time – instant complication. Most tension and emotional escalation comes from a core human need – trying to get what we want, to get our needs or expectations met.

The habits of family arguments, old behaviours and our oldest vulnerabilities and insecurities flying unchecked can escalate before we have a chance to grasp hold our control of the situation. And again, this is normal. Human beings are creatures of habit, therefore choosing alternative ways of being – particularly in family units where the oldest ingrained behaviours usually begin, requires discipline and self-control.

When we fear that others will not meet our expectations or the ghosts of Christmas past raise their voices in our heads – we have a choice.

1. We choose numbness. We intentionally pull back our emotional investment so as to navigate complex situations with the least amount of stress and emotional impact.

2. We relent to the power of old behaviours. There is a strange comfort and security in patterns we are at least familiar. We play our parts in arguments that we have every Christmas. We wrestle with the same feelings of disappointment over unmet expectations. The most dangerous phrase is “I was secretly hoping for.” An unvoiced hope is like an illness, affecting us day by day.

3. We reset our expectations and apply tactics to resist old behaviours. This is the hardest choice, because it requires a certain commitment to your personal emotional stores. It requires doing some internal work to rationalize what the unmet expectations and unbearable feelings around those relationships are. This requires a bunch of work, but for good reward.

So, it’s December 8th. You have 23 days, give or take a few hours. Seeing you can only work on yourself, not others – here’s a list to get you started for a less stressful Christmas. As with most things, good communication is the start. Communicating what we need, what we want, what we hope for and then listening just as hard to all other people involved.

  • Identify the insecurities and vulnerabilities that feel particularly present this time of year.
  • Pinpoint any obligations you feel or where you are striving to meet the expectations of others. Are they really reasonable?
  • Rebalance expectations or obligations – what can you actually do, what do you want to do?
  • Deconstruct your insecurities – what can you do to build your esteem? You’ll feel the benefits as soon as you start.
  • Identify your own expectations and hopes for the Christmas season – are you hoping for particular feelings or certain shared experiences? It needs to be a little more specific than ‘I just want everyone to be happy’. Ask yourself the question ‘what will happiness look like, or sound like?’. The answer to that question is probably a great description of what you really want.
  • Be realistic about how much of your circumstance you can control or influence. You can make choices to control more or less, but each choice has a consequence. Start with being realistic about what is inside and outside your control.
  • Acknowledge that no one person is likely to have all of their hopes and expectations met. Accept that you might compromise some of your own hopes in order that others might also experience fulfilment. It’s highly likely many hopes will be shared.
  • Peacefully communicate your true hopes, desires and expectations to other people in your family. Invite them to do the same.
  • If possible, find other family members who are willing to talk about new strategies and tactics for meeting some of these hopes.

Good luck. The bonus is that using this strategy of good, simple communication will bring benefits into many other parts of your life.

The Power of Surrender & Letting Go

The Power of Surrender & Letting Go

As I wrote last week, there’s a post-it note on my desk with the quote,

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has clawmarks in it.” David Foster Wallace.

Letting go of anything means change. Change is constant and uncomfortable. Very few human beings are wired to thrive on the thrill of the unknown. Most of us believe forewarned is forearmed and that minimising change is the utopian dream. We crave stability, without realising that stasis is the first stage before death.

While I echo Wallace’s sentiment, I can’t support his implied proposition – that to fight and cling is somehow noble. But Wallace committed suicide in 2008, having lived much of his adult life with depression and under medication in order to be able to work. I think Wallace’s fight to hold on and to resist change ultimately contributed to the ongoing breakdown of his life. You see, what we invest our energy into grows.

Change that we resist is usually an external pressure or energy; something that comes upon us. When you resist external force with internal force, the energy evaporates in the combustion of that reaction, but the energy is also lost. No one party gains from the other.

Over time, a resistance or refusal to respond to change depletes your energy and resource.

I experienced this a number of times in my early working life. The loss of a project, the change in a plan, the loss of a job. I clung and fought but each battle became harder to fight and each victory less sweet, such was the price of the battle.

So now, instead of fighting to resist change – I’m learning to surrender to it.

It may feel uncomfortable because in the Western world, our idea of surrender is most often associated with loss. We only surrender when we are in a losing position. But in Sanskrit, the word ‘surrender’ is translated to ‘give yourself wholeheartedly to something, to embrace the flow of your life.’

This idea of surrender is about where you put your energy and what you resist instead of embracing, what you embrace instead of resisting. A negative attitude towards change is a toxic learning environment. Learning should always be a by-product of change. A negative attitude towards change alienates and disengages you from those who would help you navigate it.

Surrender is powerful because it reframes our thinking away from bad conflict habits.

Surrender is powerful because you cannot embrace again without first letting go.

Surrender is powerful because it truly is the path of least resistance. Resistance is the enemy of hope in the face of change. We get to keep our energy for other battles.

Surrender is powerful because it focuses us on the posture we taking in learning, the resilience required to live with inevitable disappointment and the power of humility.

It is in surrender that you are embracing humility. Knowing yourself truly; good, bad and ugly. Confronting the secret and alone parts of yourself that are still laced with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being unsuccessful, fear of being unloved, fear of being wrong.

When I was confronted with the biggest change I’ve known as an adult; I fought it with all my might. I rallied in every conversation, I maintained an excruciating level of intensity because losing this project was not an option for me. I fought myself, my mentors, I fought with my friends and then I lost it anyway. I entered the dark shadow cave; confronted with loss and with blame. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t held onto what I had clung so tightly too in the past. Letting go felt like failure, but later I realised not letting go fast enough meant I had no time or capacity to embrace the lessons right in front of me. Change came and continued out without me, because I wouldn’t allow myself to get on board the train.

No matter what kind of change you’re undergoing, major or minor – we yearn for peace. We find it in surrender. Surrender to knowing that while we may not see the end result of change; change is assured. Change in of itself is not scary. Change can open new doors of discovery. Change can also be very, very wrong. But like a tsunami wave, it will not be stopped once started. Accepting change is a doorway to peace. Surrendering to the flow of your life is peace entering in.

Surrendering to change pushes us into the unknown, which is where we must be if we are to learn something new and to learn something new, we must ask the right questions.

  • what will I learn
  • how can I learn best from this
  • how will I respond
  • how will I help others

Surrender is the art form of leaning in, a gateway to vulnerability. As the world responds to us, change is quickened. As change is quickened, we are more truly ourselves. The more change we embrace, the more we have the opportunity to embrace the lessons that come with it.