I get these rushes of energy sometimes, waves of electricity that dance up my arms into my head and get lodged there for awhile, asking me to listen. Usually they’re telling me to do something: to make a new plan, take on a new project. And, in my Type A way of addressing the world, I take out my paper and pen, sometimes my calendar, and I start making lists. And spreadsheets. I fill up the coming weeks with new resolutions.
Often these rushes arrive after I’ve read something. If you’ve been here awhile, you know this about me. After reading Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, I launched one of my own. Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food changed, for awhile, my approach to eating.
My problem is that my resolutions never last long. I embark on these projects with great excitement – I’m going to identify my spiritual masters just like Gretchen did! – and my enthusiasm sustains me for awhile. But then – and there’s always a “then” – one of my kids gets sick or we have house guests or it rains for a week straight. And I abandon my new plan as quickly as I started it.
After my doctor’s appointment last week, I went for a walk by myself. I breathed deeply and felt tears sting my eyes only to be crowded out a moment later by a giant goofy grin. I thought about what the doctor had told me and a wave of euphoric sadness washed over me. On the one hand, I was deeply relieved that my tingling hands were not a sign of something more serious. On the other, I understood for the first time – in a long time? ever? – that the way I have been living isn’t working. That I need to change.
And then I got another one of those rushes. But this one was different. It didn’t buzz around me, asking me to make lists. It didn’t lead me to add things to my calendar. It made me close my laptop and leave my iPhone on the counter all day. It asked me to slow down.
A friend of mine used to have a postcard in his office that said “Proceed as the way opens.” Even though it doesn’t fit with my own tendencies to plan and power my way through any sticky place, I’ve always liked the expression and have even deployed it myself when doling out advice to a friend or a student. I later learned that the expression is Quaker in origin, meaning, according to the New York Yearly Meeting, “to wait for guidance from God; to avoid hasty judgement or action; to wait for future circumstances to help solve a problem.”
I think that’s what I’m doing now. I’m remembering the routines that always make me feel good: running and stretching and sitting still in quiet places. I’m getting cozy with the idea of who I can be when I start breathing again. I’m listening.
Image: Plumeria seedling by Ewen Roberts via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this image. I’ve never read that particular line before, but it is familiar and makes all the sense in the world. I suspect that you, like me, have generally been able to muscle things into the shape you want them to be … I know those rushes of energy! But the way that life bangs down the door of that impulse, and reminds us that there is something we must submit to, rather than master, resonates so fully with me. I love this. xox
Your words about learning to submit rather than master made me think instantly of savasana, which continues to be the pose in yoga that I struggle with most.
Grind out some time in chair? No problem. Hold Warrior 3 until my thighs shake? Sure. But stop and succumb for several minutes? Really, really hard.
I wonder if you’re the same.
xo
I find savasana impossible. Impossible. My mind starts racing the moment my body starts to relax. I was recently exploring the few times when my mind shuts off. One of the only times is when I am reading.
Kristen, I think maybe we are sharing a brain.
No, seriously, I am so often trying to make things the way I think they should be instead of enjoying them the way that they are. Which makes no sense to me because things really are good. I think that is my problem, and maybe yours, too – recognizing the difference between good and “right,” or what we perceive as “right.” Does that make any sense to you? Because I think that I just had a lightbulb moment over here. (Sorry for using your comments section for my therapy today.)
It definitely makes sense, Shannon.
As a corollary, I struggle with trying to match my ideas of “right” to someone else’s. So I’ll read Gretchen Rubin and, because I think she’s smart, I’ll decide that I’d be happier if I only adopt all of her resolutions. That’s not what she’s asking, of course, but I use that kind of technique to distract myself from the real issues on my plate.
Now it’s my turn to ask you if that makes any sense? :)
Makes perfect sense.
Gretchen lives in my head, too. As does Michael Pollan. Unfortunately, neither one of them live in my house.
I really relate to this a lot, Kristen, and it will probably come as no surprise that I tend to rush forward in the same manner (and get thwarted in the same manner). I recently read “proceed as the way opens” in an email and just loved it — I think I even jotted it down in a notebook. Remember the happiness/anxiety article I sent you from the NYT awhile back? I think it speaks to our American tendency to make everything a project, to shoulder our way through things — “I WILL be happy!” — and that just isn’t always the way around complex problems.
I’ve kept that article – here for those interested: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/america-the-anxious/?hp – in my inbox since you sent it. I think about it all the time and keep finding new ways in which it applies to my life right now.
It’s funny: while I was writing this post, I thought of the essay you wrote this summer in Taos about your mom and Abra and your use of the expression “shoulder through.” I remember thinking at the time, “That’s just what I do!” And lately the phrase has been bubbling up again and again.
I guess it’s no wonder that our shoulders are sore?
So. Sitting on the other end of decades of “muscling through” – let me say that trying to ease into this sort of change is a terrific idea, and better sooner rather than later. I’m still trying (and believe it or not, somewhat better than I was 3 years ago or 5 years ago or 20 years ago), but it’s not enough.
The need to “be” – just be – is so much talk in this culture, but not compatible with our achievement-at-all-costs society.
All of which is to say – anything you can do to loosen up the need to go, go, go-achieve, achieve, achieve… the better.
Peek here. Very different approach, similar conclusion… (You may enjoy.)
http://www.peripheralperceptions.org/2012/10/17/n-is-for-naomi/
Thank you, D, for your advice and for the link. I am a sucker for a good story about a historical woman and the tale of Naomi is one that especially resonates right now.
Funny, I just made a few lists myself – those things that need doing to keep the house running and a list of joyful things that feed my soul. Just singing a song or walking slowly or writing a letter shift my whole world.
But I love proceed as the way opens. Somehow it reminds me of ‘don’t borrow trouble’.
Sometimes being here now feels harder – muscling through or out seems the only way – but the more I surrender to my now the less it troubles me.
In my humble opinion, a list of soul-feeding, joyful things seems like a mighty fine place to start proceeding and waiting for the way to open.
I put the kids on the bus today, so I was home, alone, in the house for a while (when I should have been driving to work), and I started looking around the kitchen at all of the mess and disorder, and visualizing the mess and disorder in other parts of the house I could not even see, and thinking about the writing and reading I need to get done, and about the Halloween costumes I need to make and the quality time I haven’t spent with my children lately and how to make up for it and I started to make a list for the weekend and panic started to rise up like something strangling me from the inside. There is no way I will ever, ever get it all done. Not in one weekend, not in my lifetime.
Thanks for this reminder today to slow down, breathe, and wait for the way to open. Inhale, exhale.
I so get this: the snowball of frustration that can gain momentum just as we look from one room to the next.
My friend Rebecca says that resolving to put her reading glasses away after she used them – an idea which seemed impossibly easy when she thought of it – helped change her entire relationship to expectations and guilt. I think you might enjoy this post of hers: http://altaredspaces.com/2012/10/lower-your-expectations-and-get-more-done/
“Proceed as the way opens.” I really like this quote. It implies we have a ability to make decisions on how we move forward when opportunities present themselves. Yet, we always need to be ready and willing to change course if needed.
I’ve seen your comments over at Daily Plate of Crazy. I’m enjoying reading your other posts and plan to now be a regular reader! :-)
Thanks, Lisa! It’s great to meet you. I’ll look forward to connecting with you here and over at your place.
I just read “In Defense of Food” and loved it and was happy to read that I’m doing 99% of it right!
Kristen, this really spoke to me deeply. And the timing was perfect. Thank you!
Routines comfort me–it’s the chaos that makes me jangly and on edge–but let’s face it, life with kids is chaos. But if you can find your own little routines during the day and stick to them, I think you’ll feel so much better. xo
This is beautiful! I love that you are making choices that lead you closer to your heart and trusting yourself. I have been noticing lately what I say yes to and what I say no to and I find I say yes to things I want to say no to. I am very inspired by this and have learned from you and am going to bring this to my own life as well. Thank you for being so brave, friend!
That is me in a nutshell. I’m such a people-pleaser that I reflexively say “yes” before I think about what it will cost me.
I’m getting better about taking a deep breath before I immediately agree to something via email. In person? I’m still a goner.
Great quote and wonderful narrative. I feel something similar. I don’t know how to slow down. I don’t know how to listen. I don’t want to get suck to learn, but I’m worried that might be what I need.
Lovely precept requiring stillness and watchful waiting for that opening. Sort of the opposite of “ready, fire, aim,” which is more a plan for extroverts.
As U2 sings I am “running to stand still.”
I used to approach every challenge as something I would overcome by going over, under, around or through. Didn’t matter what it was, I knew that determination and force of will would be enough.
And then I encountered a few that thwarted my desire and stopped me in my tracks. Once I stopped trying to figure out what I was doing wrong I started listening to what was happening around me.
It made life much more enjoyable. Not always easier, but there are many more moments where I sit quietly and just enjoy being wherever I am at that time.
Ahh, one of my favorite songs from back in the day. I used to sit on my bed with “The Joshua Tree” cassette tape in my pink boom box and play that song over and over. Of course, I had no idea what it meant, but I loved it to pieces.
You are not alone, we all struggle. You are a mother of three that has a lot on her plate. Routine is great but not always possible. Breathe, things will get better. Xx
It’s comforting to know how we are so NOT alone in this! But sometimes it really takes something physical, medical, to wake us up to this voice asking us to please slow down and WAIT. I was floored by the word “wait” that repeated itself in your definition of the Quaker quote, because that is the one word that has been coming up for me again and again as I recover from my broken leg. It is excruciating to be so patient, but I’ve had to force myself to do nothing but be patient these last 6 weeks. My worry now, though, is how I might try to go 100 miles an hour once I’m completely on my feet again. I hope I don’t waste these months of learning.
I’m glad you’re listening. Our bodies really do have a way of trying to get our attention when it really matters.
I knew we were on the same page with this one, Cecilia, when I read your recent post about not rushing too aggressively into your recovery. This kind of tiptoeing doesn’t come easily to me – or to you, I suppose – but I’m learning that sometimes it’s the only way to get anywhere at all.
Just catching up on your recent posts, about the doctor visit and now this one. Just want to say that I’m so relieved that you’re taking your doc’s advice seriously. I think so many moms would just dismiss it with the justification that no other pace is reasonable in a life with three small kids.
I won’t offer advice as to the best ways to take care of yourself. What works for me might not work for you. And the business of figuring out the right regimen is best done by one’s own self. Nevertheless, I will say that I hope this resolution, of sorts, has more staying power than your happiness and food projects because it sounds like there’s a lot on the line with regard to your health. I wish you luck and peace and loose shoulders!
Your image of running and stretching really struck me! How often do I rush in from a run, never stopping to stretch those muscles that I just worked so hard, muscles that will only tighten up and aggravate me for the rest of the day! But the day calls and I must get back to the real world right away. Now, you really have me thinking that I must take the time to let my breathing slow back down, to let myself bend and twist thoughtfully, listening to my body, and to let myself think about the run I just had and savor the sensations of exercise — and slowly reenter my busy life.
I really like that quote! I firmly believe to go after what you want in life but sometimes, like now, you need to listen to see what is next. As so often with your blog posts, I completely relate to where you are at right now. I feel I am in a bit of a holding pattern as well not quite knowing what is next. I probably haven’t been doing a good enough job of listening lately though as I have been filling all of my spare time once the kids go to bed with work. I am not the best patient waiting type… Anyway, just know that I am over here in Idaho waiting, eager to proceed as the way opens as well. Cheers!
Usually, when I’m in that holding pattern, I come up with a big, dramatic plan just to have the sense that I’m moving forward. This time, I’m going to try slowing down and seeing what bubbles up. Let’s see how it goes. :)
I am comforted by routine. When it suffers, I immediately feel the effects. I then question why I let it lapse . More often than not, the answer is the lack of discipline and the interruptions from the external that throws me off-centered.
Enjoyed this post and the discussion.