Zen and Slo-Mo Metanoia

Of course as soon as I post Magnify the Good, I come up against a giant Monday through Friday sized barricade ala Les Miserables, but instead of a barricade built out of random wagons and barrels, mine was comprised of a broken water bottle, an anxiety tsunami (not my own, but I find anxiety contagious so it became mine), having those same old resentment scars poked this week,  still going on social media beyond my self-prescribed limit of just a quick 2x a day to post positive things and check on family/friends in medical yikes--and reaping the consequence of THAT fail (sigh, ugh, alas), driving all over Jersey as Mom-chauffeur, and the dog peeing on the floor because she was mad I left the house...twice...

At least the dog is really cute and lovable.

So many, many opportunities to practice staying positive!

Yup. That is exactly what  I di...gah, I can't even type it. I found everything challenging. I am the worst at practicing.

Full disclaimer (again), any time I suggest any kind of strategy for positivity or dealing with piles of ugh, you have to know I am saying that first of all to my own dang self, because I do not listen to me very well. Case in point, this week. 

About some things, I am a slow learner.  Zen is one of those things. Another is dancing. Some time I will tell you about my attempt at Irish step dancing in a Celtic Theater Company show...

My knees have still not forgiven me. 

Anyway, I really do want to learn, to grow, to practice healthy striving for zen. That's why I keep writing. That's why I started the new blog page. I want a "beginner's mind" (quoting Jonathan Fields).  LEARNINGS GALORE!

To that end, recently I read a quote by John Paul II describing metanoia, a super cool word that describes a radical change of ideas and mindset--the BEAR LEFT! BEAR LEFT! moment in life that goes hand in hand with the original theme of this blog years ago. You know,  Movin' Right Along with Kermit and Fozzie. :)   Life is a road trip, don't panic if you inadvertently end up in Rhode Island when you thought you were going to LA. Make the most of it.

This is where I feel the last two years or so have really been leading me--towards accepting new roads, towards radical change in a lot of areas of life while understanding that we are on a road chugging forward, not static or trapped in one spot--but perfectionism and anxiety and resistance and ugh just keep getting in the way. 

But really, don't we all have to change? Nobody is the same person they were 5 or 10 or 15 years ago.  We can all keep learning and growing--life forces us to, in some respects--and to magnify the good is to acknowledge that, really.

We don't have to be stuck in the things that weigh us down.

Admittedly, as much as I enjoy the word "metanoia", I loathe change (OH THE THINGS THAT CAN GO TERRIBLY AWRY!!!—Dr. Seuss’s unwritten sequel to Oh, the Places You’ll Go), but to keep moving on the zen path, I need to radically change my mindset over Do vs. Be, over seeking zen vs. trying to control every variable and force zen to produce itself, to demanding perfection instead of gratefully accepting and celebrating progress. 

Brene Brown’s facebook entry for January 8 clarified ALL THE THINGS caught up in my personal Wrestlemania of what the constant struggle is about, so I will let her say it better than I can. 

BRENE BROWN 1/8/19

…Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence. Perfection is not about healthy achievement and growth. 

Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us, when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen and taking flight.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. 

Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Prove. 

Healthy striving is self-focused – How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused – What will people think? ….

Oh snap. 

Herein lies the heart my personal struggle of Do vs. Be.  Healthy achievement and growth vs. perfection to avoid shame of failure. This is where I need ye olde metanoia.

It isn’t that we aren’t supposed to TRY, to work, to strive, to improve, to be faithful in the little things ala Mother Teresa. It is WHY are we trying—if our trying is to be perfect, to earn approval or cosmic brownie points, to protect our mind from our soul’s feelings, we are going to be frustrated and miserable.

I can personally attest to the accuracy of that. 

This is why Brene Brown’s work continuously blows my mind. Her research opened for me (for the first time) a window into why the heck I am the way I am—and by extension into why a lot of folks probably are the way they are.  Understanding that 20 ton shield that so many people carry fuels compassion—for others, and for me. Because nobody is harder on me than I am. 

And I know that spills over into me being hard on everybody. Ugh. 

So much of my life I defined my identity in doing, in meeting some standard of perfection, of doing things RIGHT. Either do all the things scrupulously so I would get the invisible (or literal) gold star…or avoid hard and scary things like the plague, because my fear of imperfection or failure swallowed my oomph to step out of my comfort zone and try new things. 

I have missed or avoided a lot of things in life that I wish I had not, because I was so very afraid of failing, of revealing my less than perfection.

When I can’t DO, or can’t do something well, or fear I won’t do something well, I question who I am, and do I even matter? NO,  I SUCK! 

It is a slippery slope that slides me right off the road of any healthy growth.

I am learning, oh so slowly learning, that I do matter regardless of flaws and perpetual failings. Failings are lessons, not condemnations of personal worthlessness. 

Ugh.

I find that even hard to type. Like, awkward pause…mental question, “do I say this?”…then type really fast.  Weird, right? I totally believe everyone matters, regardless of what they do—that is THE critical component of a consistent pro-life world view, that every single being has dignity and worth just by existing.

I am only a preference utilitarian with regards to MY value. Meh.  Work in progress. No pun intended.

I am grateful that in recent years I have learned to recognize my anxiety and frustration with imperfection to identify WHY I am plummeting into the depths on any given day, but I can’t remotely pretend I avoid the depths entirely. Instead of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”, now I am more “I tripped on that pile of expectations and I can’t get up!" 

An important step, I guess, but I’m still on the floor far too often for my liking. 

And that’s ok. If you are down here too—know you aren’t alone. We can get up again. We will.

I need me some more metanoia. I want some metanoia. I like saying metanoia.

also, it is fun to write metanoia

 

A radical change can be a knocked off the horse moment ala St. Paul in the biblical story of his conversion (I know, the knocked off the horse part got added in artistic representations later, but whatever, it's a memorable visual, especially you are the guy plummeting from the horse, artistic or otherwise)—OR it can be teeny tiny steps, like when Adriene Mishler says in a yoga video to take little steps to the top of the yoga mat…or jump, or float (?) or get there, "Yogi's choice". Little steps  still get you where you’re going--just choose to take a step. Little steps can get me where I’m going.

Slo-mo metanoia is better than no metanoia at all. It is the choice to change that matters.

I can’t jump right into radical change.  I am who I am. But tiny steps can lead down the road toward healthy, positive striving, too. 

I can practice tiny steps to self-acceptance (which helps me accept other people, that is why it matters). With practice, I can keep movin’ right along.  I choose THAT. With practice, we can all keep movin' right along...in a way that is healthy, happy, and hopeful.

How do you approach changes large or small? How do you make peace with the uncertainty in moments of change? Where have you seen your own "metanoia" moments? I learn so much from the things people share...

Also, how the heck does one "float" to the top of a yoga mat? How is this different than hopping? gah…

Zen and the Spotlight

“Turn up that spotlight, and though it’s not right, 

I simply can’t refuse its call….” –Nunsense

I cannot control all of the horrible things in the news. Wars. Poverty. Hatred. Exploitation. Racism. Sexism. Discrimination. Hunger. Disease. Hopelessness.

I cannot control the political and ideological quagmire sucking the lifeblood of our country. 

I cannot control people’s ideas, or behavior, or words.  Heck, parenting toddlers to teens taught me that (and really, the infant/adult versions of my progeny also taught me that!).

For a control freak like me, the litany of cannot controls whomps my brain, ramps up my anxiety, depresses my spirit. I feel like my friend’s cat who sleeps faceplanted into the ground. I feel you, Frankie.

Creative Napping credit: Frankie.  Photo credit Christine Dalessio

Meh. 

Saturday I reached my limit—again.  Maybe it is time to swear off all social media again, to stay offline except to check my email and what the Daily Markdown is on the LL Bean website. Maybe I just need to step away from all the noise and outrage (much of it justified!) and frenzied reactions and awfulness and go old school—like returning to the beta version of my life. 

But—

My far off babies are all online (ie my nieces and nephews who are piles of cuteness and love and bub-ness that are all that is good in the world). 

So many of my friends in the brain tumor and NF communities are in the thick of things right now, and social media is how they keep all of us who are pulling for them updated on things.

I only know about faceplanting Frankie because of social media. Solidarity, Frankie!

Slay the paper, then faceplant nap.

Photo credit Christine Dalessio

These are all good, meaningful uses of social media.

So—I don’t think a complete fast is actually going to solve the problem. My brain will just find different things to worry about.

Anxious and discouraged, I left my computer on Saturday to go to church ahead of a predicted storm. In the car I used yoga breathing practices to try and calm down, I felt that bad. And then at Mass, a couple renewed their wedding vows in honor of their 50^th wedding anniversary. 50 years of fidelity. 50 years of struggling through the reality of life together. The short, moving celebration of this goodness moved me deeply.  Despite the ugly outside the doors of our church, in this moment we celebrated good.

This was a sea change moment for me.

I cannot control the ugliness. But I can control what I focus on. I can control what I give my attention to, what I put a spotlight on. 

I can magnify the good.

This is my new mantra, my new practice of being—I want to be a magnifier of good.

I can put a spotlight on how pink the sky is when I walk Coco in the morning. I can spotlight the service projects my kid does, the Eagle Scout project my friend’s son is doing to benefit the hospital where he was treated  (which I learned about on Facebook),  the great grilled salmon I had at a restaurant in town. I can spotlight the things I am grateful for, the things that give me joy, the funny song or commercial that made me laugh.

I can magnify the good. 

yup, went Extra Large on this one. 

Magnifying the good does not ignore or invalidate the bad. Anyone who knows me in real life knows I have NEVER been accused of being a Susie Sunshine, all rainbows and lollipops and unicorns.  Not once. Never.  Hm. The bad is out there. WE ALL KNOW IT. The bad draws the spotlight to itself. The bad grows with attention. The bad festers and expands the more we feed it with “shares” and comments and focus and hyper-analysis.  

Zen means knowing how to acknowledge the bad while living the good. The bad does not get to win the day.

I simply choose not to magnify the bad any more by giving it attention it does not deserve.  I choose not to let the darkness grow in my mind unchecked. I choose not to wallow in that which I cannot control.

I choose to obey my own self-set rule and NEVER READ THE COMMENTS. Ugh. Failing on that this weekend; seeing people of my faith tradition referred to as “demonics” reminded me why NEVER READING THE COMMENTS is always a healthier choice. And this NOT reading is something I can control. 

I can stay informed without reading 50 articles about something. I can know what is going on and address what I can address without being consumed by the angst of a darkness I cannot control.

The darkness is large, and growing.  That is no newsflash.

I know that I cannot ignore it. Nor can I singlehandedly say “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” ala Gandalf to the Balrog.

BUT—I can magnify the lights amidst the darkness by how I talk to my children and spouse, what I write, how I post things online (and NOT in reverse order! Real life first!). One magnified light can literally burn a hole in things. What if we all tried to magnify the good instead of feeding the bad with obsessive attention? What kind of holes could we burn in the advancing darkness? Maybe enough to take the darkness down, together? 

So today—I choose to magnify the good. 

I am going to have to break some of my own habits. But it can be done. And when I find myself spiraling down a rabbit hole of EVERYTHING IS AWFUL (yes, sung like the Lego Movie song), I have to practice stopping, regrouping, getting back on the Magnify Good track...and keep movin' right along.

If you would like to support Davis Ammari’s Eagle Scout project, please check out the flyer below—and magnify the good this survivor kid is doing for others.  He is also accepting monetary donations--even $5 can really help make things less ugh for teens battling cancer. It is hard to be a teen onco patient when most support services are very much geared towards younger children. Thanks for doing this good thing, Davis!

Zen and the Inner Tube

Each step forward or sideways or whicheverways brings new questions, or new realizations. After days of working through ideas and drafts about Do vs. Be and zentasticness,  I found myself dragged unexpectedly back into an area of old resentments. Dagnabit. I can write about zen progress and do yoga and feel good and then a conversation or a facebook post leaves me chewing my pencil and growling about situations gone by. I become a walking dark cloud of interior ugh—which inevitably spills over into my exterior interactions with my family and friends.

Womp womp.

This week also marks seven years since my daughter started an ultimately disastrous clinical trial to try and stop her brain tumor progression. Due to a disturbing phenomenon called paradoxical activation, the trial drug actually made the tumors catastrophically GROW. I have made some peace with the outcome of the trial, after years of wrestling with really difficult emotions about the darkness of that time. Seeing the early days, the days when we so hoped this trial would be a magic bullet, the days when we had to start treatment after 5 years off with a teen and not a first grader (and all the new challenges created by a greater understanding of what was at stake)…seeing these reminders on social media of those early days hurts my heart.

And just like that I realize my wrestling match is not just in the ring of Do vs. Be, but in Get Over It vs. Be With It. 
Somehow I can be with the feelings about the trial fail and no longer be paralyzed with rememberings. Maybe this is just grace at work? I am not sure what it is, or really how I got here. Somehow I have to work/surrender to get to the point where I can be with those difficult unresolved situations from my daughter’s high school years and NOT be instantly dragged back into a cesspool of OH YEAH LET ME TELL YOU HOW THINGS REALLY WERE.  Or where I can see the images of my daughter bravely taking the trial drugs for the first time and not be tsunamied by the emotions of that time filtered through the emotions of 3 months later, when all hell broke loose.

I suppose there is some grace in being able to even write about it?

I am continually astounded by the constant work of mental, emotional, and spiritual health. How progress in self-care and healthy striving continually comes up against resistance and ugly stuff that seems to lie ever just below the surface, dredged up unexpectedly by an image or a word, then dispersing until the uglies settle once again to the bottom of the lake. 

Or road, if one forgets one used lake as a metaphor

 and then is too lazy to redraw and re-upload picture. 

Or imagine I am walking on water, ala Jesus. Uphill.
yergh.

As much as I try to build bridges over this lake, (er, road) I realized this week that I have to learn to be ok with the bottom, and to know that even when the uglies are swirling, they don’t need to drag me under.

It’s kind of like Lake George. Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains of New York is a pristine mountain lake, clear from the surface all the way to the bottom, even to a depth of 15 feet or so. 

Clear water at Lake George ...our happy place.

 We have vacationed there every year since Dave and I married; he has been going there since he was 7 years old. We love this place.  In the rare summer when the weather upstate gets really hot, I will actually float around on the lake (which is always cold. Don’t believe my spouse and third born who will swim in it no matter what. IT IS COLD). I will lie on a big black inner tube that soaks in the heat of the sun while my toes dangle in the cold water. Zen exists in its purest form in that moment. 

Rare photographic evidence of me

 in my inner tube, in the  lake.

Lesson number 1 of Lake Swimming (after COLD!!!): don’t touch the bottom. The bottom is soft and squishy and leaf covered and gross to feel—purely organic matter, just so squishy, and if you walk in it to get into the water the muck gets all stirred up and gross. I have perfected balancing on the tube and pushing off from the edge so I can float without stirring up muck. And if other folks stir it up, I just float in another direction…as long as I am not squidging my toes in yuck, it’s all good.  

Inevitably some little kid gets stuck each year…not literally, but they take a few steps past the sandy bottom and realize EW THIS IS GROSS and holler for mom or dad.  Lesson learned.

Anyway, THIS is what I have to figure out how to do in life. Keep on paddling my inner tube. Soak in the sun and let the feelings settle. I can’t deny their reality. Just like those soggy leaves and twigs and lake soil, the feelings and situations from the past are real and unpleasant—but the bigger picture is so much bigger. There are miles and miles of lake beyond that one roiled area. Just keep floating!

As I pondered this in the past few days, I brainstormed what helps (in an effort to get myself out of the visceral SO’S YOUR MOM! Feelings clawing at me).  Being outside helps. Grounding yoga practices help (YouTube has so many great resources, especially the Yoga With Adrienne series).   Praying helps (I pray all the time, sort of a running commentary with God—so sometimes I’ll go walk the dog, and thus have a little walk/outside/God talk when I am feeling ugh about the lake bottom stuff in my life).  Doing something for someone else helps. 

I have so many tools to work with, really, so many inner tubes to choose from.

                                                                              Rainbow Pegacorn, anyone?

At the same time, being frenetically busy to avoid those feelings can anesthetize the moment, but I know now that busy-ness does not address the underlying pain. I have to learn to Be With Feelings, just like I have to learn to Be OK with Myself and not just what I Get Done.

Get Over It invalidates experiences, squelches healthy understanding of self and pain and life. Get Over It closes down communication (even with our self).  Be With It acknowledges pain, but also acknowledges that we have as much power as the pain—it does not need to rule. I can float with it, and then keep floating on.

In a different context, as soon as I started to write the first draft of my wrestly moment  I felt an overwhelming surge of GOYA (Get Over Yourself Already!).  Like, who am I to even talk about any of this? I AM A MESS. A mess with cute shoes, but a mess.

But—maybe my mess can help someone. If I succumb to GOYA syndrome or Impostor Syndrome or any of the other things that make me want to be quiet and shut down, the match is over. I can’t be fake.  My authentic is kind of messy (um, totally messy. Hoarders episode messy).  My constant commentary with God has a lot of "Lord, what the heck am I supposed to be doing? I want to do what you want me to do…"

And while no giant hand has appeared writing on my wall (phew, that would be terrifying), ideas and thoughts holler WRITE US. So…yeah.

I am going to be with my discomfort and not let fear of vulnerability win. I am not going to Get Over It (whatever it is) and write sunshine without acknowledging the rain. I am blessed with a lot of sun, but I only know it because of all the years of intermittent cloudfest.  I am not going to let my GOYA force me into silence. If nothing else, I know that is NOT what I am supposed to do.

In my next moment of figurative lake muck, I am going to try to use the tools I have to acknowledge the moment and keep moving. I will let you know how it goes. Until then—let’s keep movin’ right along, through the questions, with the questions, and hopefully into a sunny place of zen. 

                                   and until then--I will dream of coffee, morning prayer, 

                                  and yoga by the side of Lake George in summer. Happiness. 

                                                      

Zen and the Restart

Happy 2019, all.

So…while math is not my first language, chronology is the language of my chosen profession—and I realize that this entry is in no way two or three days after my last entry. 

Oops.

I kept adding BLOG in increasingly urgent fonts to my bullet journal. I dug out my gold star stickers. And yet I could not write the words. 

What the heck happened?

Well—a few things happened. Thing #1: I started working more. Substitute teaching holds a set of challenges that keeps me on my toes until I get home and utterly collapse. As time has gone on and I have worked through most of the different schedule configurations and academic departments, I am starting to get more comfortable with what I have to do. Still, the drain on my mental and emotional energy is pretty profound—especially since as soon as the school day ends I am back on Chauffeur Duty for my daughters, whose schedules are extremely full. Staying awake past 9 has become a challenge!

I understand now why my mom has always been such an early to bed kind of lady.

I am profoundly grateful to be subbing, especially in such a great school where things are clean, organized, coherent (ie there are systems in place for any kind of situation or schedule that might arise) –for my anxiety-plagued brain, the ORDER in this school just makes me so happy. Both my mom and my mother in law have commented on how much happier I seem. I am grateful. This sort of busy just depleted my writing energy tank. 

Thing #2: Hospital Day. More accurately, hospital days, plural. Due to scheduling what-nots, we had to have my daughter’s MRI and neuro-oncology follow ups on different days, around her busy school schedule. The challenges of an evening MRI in Philadelphia, plus days in between, plus oh sh*t we are back in neuro-oncology (an out of body moment that happens every.single.time we find ourselves back in clinic)—all these things put my writing brain into severe overdraft mode. The scan was stable, really stable. There were some other things that had to be pondered/dealt with mentally acknowledged…and once again my brain couldn’t put together words. 

I am continually agog at this phenomenon, how going back into neuro-oncology world puts my brain into insta-survival mode. The mental muscle memory that kicks in as soon as we get on the road to Philly astounds me. If only I had that kind of muscle memory for things like roller skating or backbends…

Thing #3: aka The Big Thing: Enter a Crisis of Ideas. I finished reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton—I had been reading a chapter a day as part of my morning prayer/get set for the day time. This book blew my mind—for folks doing any kind of spiritual seeking, check it out. Anyway, the later chapters of this book broached the idea that we really can’t force zen (he didn’t say it like that, but that was the idea). We can’t structure or create inner peace, we have to get to a point of acceptance and surrender for zen to happen.  I am not saying this right—but basically, you can’t control freak your way to zen.

Hey now.

I like me an action plan. I want to DO THE THINGS AND BE ZEN. I SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONTROL ALL THE THINGS AND GET TO ZEN!

I want zen to be the first thing I can check off on my to-do list.

Not only that—not only can I not control freak my way to zen...there is no actual end point to zen. It’s not like I can do all the things and force my way to some Be all And End All of Zentastic Zenitude. I can’t just map a route to some magical place in the northwestern hills of New Jersey and be like Ha! Found you, zen!

Nope. Although note the skillful avoidance of 287 and Rt 80. No zen to be found on  those roads.

This is likely beyond ludicrously obvious, but my denial is industrial strength and honed by years of practice.

Years ago I used to proclaim that I thought running was silly because why would you run and not go ANYWHERE but back where you started? I could see running to Dunkin Donuts, or to get fries somewhere, but in a random circle? What the heck?

I hadn’t even thought of this in years until I started wrestling with my crisis of ideas. The zen quest is like running—you get a lot of benefit out of it, even if sometimes you don’t feel like you are actually GETTING anywhere. Progress is measured by a different rubric than a simple point A to point B hooray for fries kind of way.

In this wrestling I have found my task…er, focus for the new year. (How quickly I go right into Do It! mode …) How to reconcile the deep truth I see in this need to let go, the understanding that it is the trip that matters, the destination remains in flux…with the deep truth I see in myself, that I need to know/control/handle all the things. 

I am not sure I have figured it out. Rephrase, I KNOW I have not figured it out. Anyone who lives with me will assure you there has been zero figuring out. But I can no longer let my questions stop me from writing—I have to embrace the uncertainty and keep moving. In some ways, I think that is what Merton means. Similar ideas resurfaced in my subsequent re-read of Jacques Philippe’s Interior Freedom (another mind blowing read—on this second time through I took notes in the margins).  Freedom comes through letting go, not from holding tight. You get peace and THEN do the things, not do the things to get the peace.

HEY NOW.

As much as this idea initially rankled, (Elsa can keep her “Let it Go”)—I see its truth.

I can’t MAKE THE ZEN HAPPEN. But I can take steps to invite it in.  Brene Brown said it perfectly in this week’s “Dose of Daring” email—“The willingness to show up changes us. It makes us a little braver each time.”

I want to keep showing up in 2019.

I will keep movin’ right along.  I will try to move forward in letting go of resentments and embracing forgiveness as a PRACTICE.  I will try to use my life experiences to help other folks who are wading through the quagmire of yikes. I will keep Christmas all the year…ok, wait, wrong resolution. ;) 

I will share some more of the tools that have helped me—and honestly, will probably find myself wading through quaqmirish moments of my own (next hospital day is in about 5 weeks). But hey—2019 provides a fresh start on my search for zen—or at least my search for how I can let go and let zen in, while accepting that the work remains ongoing. 

Peace, all. And apologies if the Frozen soundtrack is now stuck in your head. ;)