The Not-Knowing

We like to protect ourselves against the not-knowing, because not-knowing makes us feel insecure and at the mercy of life. 

So we make plans and develop ways of living that we think insure us against chaos: a tidy home, some money in the bank, taking care of our health, a good education; but even so, sometimes life sweeps us off our feet. 

It is so hard to admit that we don’t know anything really and life is full of mystery. 

We trust the mystery when we look back, we say, “That was a terrible time, but it taught me so much.”  Harder to trust the mystery going forward; we do so enjoy the comfort of fake certainties.

You do not know, you do not know, you do not know.

But sometimes you might hear the whispers of knowing.

And if you become very quiet and peaceful and give up thinking you know anything, then and only then, with the doors of yourself wide open, can the knowing fall in. 

It is not what you think it is.

An Undoing

Undo all of the tension.  Come to your mat, every day, every week; move and meditate and breathe in the way that you always should but rarely do.  Be alive inside your body and luxuriate in that.

Undo all the tales you have told yourself about yourself, all of the times you got angry or upset, the times you gossiped and were unkind, the hurts that still sting, the day that went wrong.  It’s ok, you are human: you make mistakes and you make amends.

Undo the harshness, the struggle and the striving.  The world can be a difficult place, you have had a lot to do and you have done it with as much grace as possible.  Rediscover your gentleness and vow not to let the hardness of the world work its way into how you live your life. 

Undo the limitations.  You alone set your restrictions (nobody else can do that) and you alone can expand them too.  Broaden your idea of who you are and what you can achieve (on your mat, in your life).  You will surprise yourself.

Undo the tightness in your body and brain: stretch out your muscles, flex your mind, remember how strong you really are, in heart and in body.  Move with grace and power, surrender and discipline – always that fine balance between the two.  Pay attention and you’ll know when you get that balance wrong.

Undo the judgement.  You are not too fat, too ill, too injured, too stiff, too weak.  There is a practice of undoing for every moment, for every season of living and there is a way of accepting all that you are with gratitude.

Undo the sadness, the disappointment, the little knocks that life will give you.  Release your own innate sense of joy and gratitude.  Your feet on your mat, your arms stretching upwards, the way you can move this way and that; there is beauty in this simple thing.  Sitting in meditation, you breathe and you watch your busy mind doing its busy thing and remember that you are part of something much bigger, perfectly small, yet absolutely integral to that great and wonderful whole.

Every day you are busy doing, accumulating stresses and strains as you go. 

So let there be a daily undoing: a practice in which you shed your accumulated tensions, stresses and judgements and find your whole self again.

Life Drawing - Creating Life After Lockdown

As we move out of lockdown and into something close to what we previously understood as normal life, there is a sense of trepidation.  Some feel nervous, embarking on life outside the home again – if you are living with anxiety, there might have been something comforting about the level of control and consistency that lockdown life can bring, even as the news outside raged.

But there is also a great opportunity here.  I feel my life is a blank canvas for the first time since my teenage years, when life seemed to open out before me with endless opportunity and possibility. 

What is it that I want to put back into my life?  Who are the people that I want to spend my time and energy with?  How will I balance the things I have gained during this strange period (a beautiful garden, more time for reading, silence and repose), with my desire to see new things (travel, the ocean, enlightening exhibitions)?

I am also 50 this year, which seems to mark a turning point.  There have been others, the turn of each decade seems to bring some new focus to life that wasn’t there before: young children in my 30s, work in my 40s and now this: grown up children who are a delight, treading their newly independent paths, increasingly away from home.

As I take some time to contemplate the colours, textures and accents with which I plan to paint, the one thing I know I don’t want to do is rush. 

There are some spaces that I will certainly leave blank: time, space, yoga and the luxury of silence are the four corners of living well for me.  But as for the things I will positively choose to paint across my canvas?  They will be deliberately and carefully chosen.  This is not the Jackson Pollock of my early years as a mother, the sombre Rothko of my early 40s or the riotous Keith Haring of my 20s.  This is something that only I can paint, with my half century of lived experience and wisdom. 

I fully intend to consider each stroke of the brush carefully, to choose wisely and from my own instinct.  The shining white spaces are very important and I will guard them carefully, but there will also be joyful explosions of colour and the paler shades of quiet times with beloveds; the dark shadows we all must face will be embraced by that colour and light. 

I simply don’t have room for the fruitless, pointlessly noisy brightness that shouts the loudest but contains scant benefit.  I choose something different this time.  How will you paint yours?