The trees outside our kitchen windows glow like warm butterscotch in the sunrise.
Butterscotch trees. (Photo: Frank Bergland)
Stuck in traffic, I see a small murmuration of starlings explode off a power line, swoop around for a while then return and land.
The murmuration I saw was WAY smaller than this, but no less extraordinary.
A new song took my breath away.
There is so much left undone – on my to do list, in my community, in the world – and at the end of the day, I have my own small celebration for what did get done. Progress on a project. A meal made and shared. Connection with others. Care taken.
Can you give yourself credit (and even a celebration) for what you DID do? (Photo: Rebecca George Photography)
The world is dark and precarious. Perhaps counter-intuitively, navigating frightening times is best done from inside our tender, vulnerable bodies. In an overwhelming and dangerous world, our bodies uniquely allow us to feel, process, settle, rest and act. When the headlines – global, national, state, local and personal – are piling on the chaos and dysfunction, your body is the place to be.
Our bodies also (and again counter-intuitively) give us access to wow. To wonder. To beauty. To delight. To gratitude.
The world is a mess. It is a violent, ugly, terrifying place. And it’s also unbelievably, breathtakingly beautiful. It’s Both/And. When we are deep in dark difficult days, often all we see is the darkness. Staying in our bodies gives us access to both.
When I staggered into therapist, James Yates' office carrying the mess of my life and the world, he would tell me: Give it a wide pasture. Open your peripheral vision (and your peripheral all-your-other-senses) and see that the mess is there, for sure, and that it is part of a larger picture.
I got all kinds of cranky when James Both/And’ed and Wide Pastured me. I wanted clarity. I wanted an answer. I wanted black and white. But that’s not how this works. This world is full of a whole lot of everything.
An embodied approach to navigating difficult waters is to stay in your body/boat to ride out the storms and also to be up in that crow’s-nest-lookout-thing, seeing the wide view.
How often have I been knitting my eyebrows, reading Heather Cox Richardson and missed the sun spilling through the trees? How often have I been stuck in traffic, grumbling at the bumper stickers in front of me, missing the dance of birds? How often have I been stuck in my busyness and didn’t take the time to listen to a new piece of music? How often do I discount what I accomplished and focused only on what didn’t get done?
Our brains are designed with a strong negativity bias. We pay much more attention to what feels scary or threatening than to what feels good. But as Rick Hanson teaches, we can take in the good. We can practice paying attention to both.
A practice that helps me get out of my narrow, death spiral thinking is to write down 1-3 things that wow’ed me during the day (Double Gold Star Bonus if it’s something you’ve never noted before). This helps me open my curious eyes throughout the day to look for today’s wows. You can use a journal, sure, but it’s not necessary – a scrap of paper works great, too. If you wake up and read the news first thing, that’s just fine. And also promise yourself that you’ll make a note of the wows of the day before you go to sleep.
Part of how to get through the shitty parts of being human in this world, is to look for the wows. Stay in your body to feel and process and act, yes, and keep part of you alert for the wonders that are also always present. Give it a wide pasture, because this world and our lives are one big fat Both/And.