Remembering What I Ache For

I woke up this morning, my face wet with tears, hearing the opening lines of “The Invitation” echoing from my dreams: “It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for.” I pressed my hand to the ache in my chest.

I know why this comes today. Last night I went to hear CBC radio’s Eleanor Wachtel interview Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Things I’ve Been Silent about. Azar was inspiring- in the true meaning of that word- an in-breath of Spirit that lifts and reminds us of what we thought we could never forget: that the fostering of imagination and ensuring the free expression of our creative impulses are as necessary as bread and air and water to the life of human beings.

Caught up in the flotsam and jetsam of daily life, the painful story of separation, the wearisome details of getting information to lawyers, of sorting what to leave behind and what to gather for the next leg of the journey, I have wandered far away from the truth Azar speaks of and embodies with grace and elegance.

Azar lives in Washington DC and is from Iran. She told us stories about about men and women in Iran being jailed and killed for reading books we in North America could find on any library shelf. And she spoke with embodied passion about the power of literature, of story, of art to create and chronicle meaning, to stir the imagination for finding solutions in an increasingly complicated world, to ensure true democracy by educating citizens in different ways of perceiving and thinking and imagining the world.

And I remembered why I have read and written all of my life. I remembered how much I ache to write. At one point Azar said, “We write to retrieve what is lost,” and I wanted to weep. When we write or paint or compose or dance (or do any other kind of creative work) we retrieve parts of ourselves we did not even know were lost- the stories and characters that have peopled our lives, the meaning that was waiting to be uncovered and co-created, meaning that sustains us and can sustain our people (and who are not our people?) Receiving others’ creative expressions we expand our own vision, stir our own imagination and open ourselves to a broader, deeper wisdom.

Totalitarian regimes know about the power of the imagination and creative work, which is why they respond with what Azar called “naked violence” in an effort to control and curtail both.

When I wrote a book about doing our creative work I titled it What We Ache For, because I know this to be the central ache in our lives: to participate in creation by allowing the imagination to move us, lift us and guide us in offering something to the world. Our lives offer us a wealth of experience- the raw material of daily life- that can be spun into the gold of the stories and images and songs and movements that guide us in co-creating a world birthed in the imagination of possibilities.

Loss, as Azar pointed out last night, presupposes possession. We cannot lose what we never had. And those who have lost what we take for granted- like the men and women in Iran risking their lives to read or write forbidden poetry and stories- help us remember, value and participate in what we have been given.

I ache to write: stories, books, poems. And I am grateful to remember that I must trust this longing, must set it at the centre of my life.

Facing an Unfamiliar Truth

I am not fine.

There. The truth is out. Sometimes the truth I cannot say seeps out through my finger tips and onto the keyboard. Then the small black letters sit there, staring at me from the computer screen, the flashing cursor and me just waiting to see what comes next.

How is it that the world continues? The sun is just coming up. A single ray breaks through the cloud cover and fills the apartment with liquid gold. Birds sing the light into being. City traffic starts to move over rain-soaked pavement.

I always say I’m fine. It’s a habit. A way of reassuring others that I don’t need much from them, that they don’t need to be afraid. A way of reassuring myself that things are not as bad as they seem, that I don’t need to be afraid.

A year ago, early one morning in the city- before I’d allowed the thought that my marriage was unravelling- I phoned the tele-nurse to see if she thought I should go to a hospital emergency ward. I hadn’t been able to take a full breath for over twelve hours. There was a constant and penetrating ache in my back, as if someone had slipped a dull knife blade between my ribs.

The night before, preparing to give a talk at a local venue, I’d had to lie down on the floor and wait for my wildly beating heart to slow down. Lying on the carpet, I’d put my hand on my chest. Like a trapped and frantic animal, my heart seemed to be throwing itself against my rib cage, seeking a way out or a way to knock itself out and find relief in unconsciousness. It was beating at six times its normal speed, skipping an occasional beat, shaking my body from head to toe.

Minutes before, on the phone, my husband had told me he was not going to keep a promise. He’d forgotten. Made another commitment. Something more important.

I told myself I was fine. My heart begged to differ. There was nothing to do but lie on the floor, breathe slowly and wait for it to pass. And it did. Suddenly the rapid fluttering stopped. There was a pause, a moment in between tachycardia and a normal pulse. Silence. I felt suspended, as if a decision was being made at a cellular level, beyond or behind or below consciousness, about whether or not to continue. I waited and watched, unsure of the outcome.

Then, my heart resumed beating at a normal if slightly irregular rhythm, like someone staggering away from the scene of a car crash. That’s when the ache in my back had started, like a kink from trying an impossible yoga posture, as if some part of me had stretched beyond its limits in order to continue.

The next morning, I still couldn’t take a full breath.

The nurse on the phone asked a few questions. Then told me she was dialling 911. She thought I might be having a heart attack.

Really? I said. I’m fine.

An impossibly short time later, two firefighters, a police officer and two paramedics were leaning over me.

Really, I said between small sips of air, I’m fine. It’s probably just stress.

The police officer shook his head and went into the hallway. A firefighter put an oxygen mask over my face. One of the paramedics said, You are aware that stress can cause a heart attack?

I lifted the oxygen mask and reassured them all. I’m fine.

They attached electrodes to my skin, while I wondered if someone would put that on my gravestone: She said she was fine.

When I was growing up, my parents were worried about my brother- unhappy and sullen, smoking dope, drinking beer, skipping school to hang out in the small town pool hall. My mother told me they never worried about me. They knew I’d be fine. I’m sure she meant it in gratitude- one offspring they did not need to be concerned about. I’m sure she meant it as a compliment- a testament to my strength and common sense. I heard it as a job description. My job was to be fine, even when I wasn’t. So, I have very little talent for not being fine, for recognizing when I am not fine. Once in a while, I wonder: Am I fine? Who should I ask?

The firefighters left. Forty-five minutes later the paramedics told me they didn’t think I was having a heart attack, although they recommended seeing a doctor.

So now here I am, a year later. My marriage is ending. My husband and I are separated. Could I say I didn’t see it coming? My heart did. After a decade together, I am not fine with the loss of my home, marriage, husband and dreams of deep intimacy and a shared life.

There is some relief in being able to lay down the burden of always been fine.

I am not fine.

And that’s okay.

Disappointing Others

The stanza in the poem “The Invitation” that's raised the most questions is the one that asks if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. Simple but not easy.

Last week I received an email from a man who said the poem had been helpful to him during his (happily successful) battle with cancer. He was writing however, not to thank me, but to berate me for doing what he saw as turning the poem into “an industry.” (I assume he meant writing books, having a website and teaching etc.) Of course, he did not realize I had done all of these things for many years before the poem had been written and shared, and he had not read any of the books. Still he told me that “Oprah would be proud,” and he was “disappointed.”

The week before, a woman in Australia also named Oriah emailed. When I responded with a couple of comments about how I came to have the name she replied that she had already read this information on my website and was “disappointed” that I had only given what she assumed was a cut and paste reply.

Assuming we are not living in a hermitage, disappointing the expectations of others is something we all experience. Others- spouses, off-spring, co-workers, neighbours, friends and family- can and will have ideas about who we are and what we should or shouldn’t do. An even slightly more public life expands the opportunity for expectations and inevitable disappointments. I find it useful to notice my reactions to the disappointment of those who only know me through my work in the world, if I want to get a sense of how I am affected by the disappointments of those who are closer to me.

My first response to the above emails was a kind of who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are moment. Then, after I calmed down, I realized (of course) that their disappointments, like their expectations, are theirs and have little or nothing to do with me.

But I don’t want to dismiss how difficult it can be to disappoint others. Because developing the willingness and ability to disappoint others (not deliberately but just by being ourselves) is really a key factor if we are to have any hope of living true to our deepest selves. If I try endlessly to keep everyone else happy (ie- fulfilling their expectations of me) I will truly not be able to tell what my body, heart, mind and soul need or desire.

I have no magic formula for being able to disappoint others to be true to ourselves, but a crucial first step is to bring to consciousness our own fears about and difficulties with disappointing others. Do we feel we have to avoid disappointing others to earn love, and our place on the planet? (Two things that cannot and do not have to be earned.) If these fears are running us unconsciously it will be pretty hard to counteract them. If, on the other hand, we have some awareness of how hard it is to disappoint others, we can watch for that twinge of guilt or rage or fear and keep walking toward what calls us anyway.

When the people we love are disappointed in us it is harder than it is with relative strangers. As Jeff and I separate I am aware of how disappointed we each have been in the other and are in ourselves. I have failed to be who he thought, hoped, and believed I was. Some of this has nothing to do with me. His thoughts, hopes and beliefs were his, based on his needs, his projections, his unlived life. (Just as my thoughts, hopes and beliefs about him are mine.) But, of course, when we love another we cannot help but ache when the other is hurt and even, sometimes, wish (or try) to be who they want and think they need us to be. It just doesn’t work.

Because, in the end we are just ourselves, and it's not healthy to be where being who we are is not enough for someone else. In turn, we each have to acknowledge and take back our expectations and consider what aspect of our unlived life is speaking to us (about us) through our own disappointments.

The Pattern Unfolding

I taught my first workshop in the summer of 1972. I was seventeen. With all the confidence of the young who do not know what they do not know (yet) I volunteered to lead a workshop training staff at the United Church camp where I was going to work for the summer. The workshop was on introducing city kids who had often never been outside the urban environment, to a natural setting.

Nature programmes in 1972 were generally about identifying and naming the various species of birds, trees, flowers etc. This did not appeal to me, and I was guessing it would not bring the children who were coming to the camp any closer to feeling connected to the earth. The camp was in southern Ontario (outside the city of Hamilton) and I was from the bush of northern Ontario. I knew that the kind of feeling I had for being at home in the wilderness was difficult to cultivate in an urban environment.

It’s not surprising, given that I was a semi-permanent fixture at the town library, that I went to books to help me figure out what I would do for the training. By some miracle, I found a book, which I remember vividly to this day- Acclimatization by Steve Van Matre. The book suggested introducing children who lived in cities to nature by having them bring all of their senses to specific experiences and relating these experiences to their home environments. So, I had first the staff and then the children, stake out one foot square areas of ground and, lying on their stomachs, watch all the life happening in that area at nose level for fifteen minutes. Then I asked them to describe it in terms of their familiar territory. They told stories of miniature parks, of worker ants that were like the commuters in the city, of a whole “city” of activity going on. We did other exercises that brought each of the five senses to experiencing the environment.

I think back on this today and I can’t help but be astonished at how so much of what I eventually trained for, did for a living and love to do (group facilitation, taking people to the wilderness, teaching mindfulness practices, helping people align with their deepest selves and the earth . . .) was there in that initial experience. It drew me like a magnet, and some part of me (that was a long way from conscious) recognized this and ran toward it.

This comes to mind now, as I start a new chapter in my life. One of the great things about being in my mid-fifties is that I have a kind of freedom I haven't had since I was a young woman. Oh, I still need to make a living, but I am not responsible for anyone else. My children are grown and I am living alone. I find myself thinking about the young woman I was at the beginning of my working life, about the dreams and passions I had then and what aspects of that younger self I may have left behind and now want to retrieve. I got married the first time when I was just twenty (what were we thinking?) so I wonder what dreams may have gotten short circuited, what aspects of self did not fit my (woefully limited) ideas of being A Wife.

I don’t have a lot of answers to these questions yet, but I am enjoying the process of exploration. There are threads that are ever-present and ones that got dropped: the desire to write novels and pursuing more academic learning and teaching come to mind as the later, and I will weave these into my life now. But the thing that is truly wonderful to see is how much of what has happened- despite the detours, distractions and unconsciousness- has held a kind of implicate order, a coherent if sometimes chaotic tapestry shot through with the brilliant colours of a few of consistent threads. I could not have seen nor orchestrated such a pattern. I was just following my nose. Even the name of the summer camp- Restall- foreshadowed my own struggle with and need for rest, my own knowing that rest is found not only in being still but in going toward what we can do and be whole-heartedly.

When you look back on your life, can you see the pattern of what has always been loved, what has always drawn you? What intuitive wisdom did your seventeen year old self have whether or not he or she could have articulated it? What have you consistently given yourself to whole-heartedly?

Are We Having Fun Yet?

So, here’s my latest confession: I am not good at fun. Really. I’m great at work- any kind, all kinds. I practically run toward those situations (inner or outer) that have any kind of roll-up-you-sleeves-and-get-in-there requirement. But I'm not good at fun- at hanging out without any kind of plan or agenda or meaningful conversation. I get testy when people (usually those close to me) tell me I “should just relax.” Attending a workshop years ago, I felt my anxiety rise when directed to spend an evening “just playing” with movement. (Had I been told to dance I would have been fine, but the “p” word put me off.) Recently someone sent me an email suggesting that developing hobbies would be a good way to deal with the stress of my current marital break-up. I bristled. I don’t do hobbies.

There are of course, lots of reasons for all of this, and it’s hard to separate nature from nurture in my family background. We were the poster children for the Protestant Work Ethic. To this day my parents, now in their seventies, love to put in a full day of rigorous work around the house. Once, when I was imploring my father to slow down a little, he told me he would rather wear out than rust out. When I was a child we spent our holidays camping at provincial parks in Ontario. My mother brought along a child-sized gardening kit (small, so it could be packed easily) so she could rake-up the leaves and twigs and other “debris” around the campsite. My father wasn't really happy until he’d split a cord of wood for our use and left a neat stack for the campers who came after us. They both just shook their heads at a fellow camper who built a fire with gasoline soaked twigs and proceeded to sit in his lawn chair and used the toe of his boot to gradually push the end of a whole uncut log into the flames.

You can see how my work and play wires might have gotten crossed. Along with this, my basic personality was (and remains) pretty serious. Even as a child, I liked serious questions, serious dilemmas, serious efforts. There is of course an upside to this: much of what I do for work (writing, reading, studying, group facilitation, counselling and spiritual direction etc.) is truly what I enjoy. My work, in some ways is my fun. Given my upbringing and personality, choosing work I enjoy may have been a pre-emptive (albeit largely unconscious) move to ensure I'd have some fun.

But there’s a downside to this also. If you turn everything you enjoy into work you can become good at, offer to the world and maybe even get paid for, you can end up always working. So, while lots of folks have to ask themselves what they would love to do if they could get paid for what they love to do, I need to ask: what do I enjoy that has absolutely no chance of being shaped into meaningful or income-producing work?

At this point it's a very short list. Recently my sons introduced me to the computer game Rock Band- the Beatles version (since, as they put it- the songs, like me, are “old” so I know them.) Now playing computer game drums, guitar or singing with two people you love and enjoy (one of whom has absolutely no sense of rhythm) can be a lot of fun. As I sing “Hard Day’s Night” or miss a beat on the drums for “Yellow Submarine” it’s impossible not to laugh. Fun- pure enjoyment with no other redeeming features, no prospects of being turned into meaningful-contribution-to-the-world work.

Why am I concerned with learning to have fun? Because life is too short to always be working, even if your work is enjoyable. Because the human mind, heart, body and spirit needs fun, needs some silly time if it is to truly rest, rejuvenate and regain perspective on what matters. Silliness heals. Play protects us from taking ourselves too seriously. Of course, knowing this, I am tempted to say I am working on having fun, learning how to play, and practicing silliness. Maybe I could teach a workshop on silliness!

Sigh. Old habits die hard.

Not Taking Things Personally

Sometimes, the hardest and wisest thing to do when someone is behaving badly or taking actions that affect us adversely is not to take their behaviour personally.

My youngest son, Nathan, works at a company that finds participants for market research. He works on site, interviewing and selecting those who are most appropriate for the group and paying those who are not needed. The policy is that anyone who shows up more than fifteen minutes late cannot participate or be paid.

Last week, a woman arrived for a group, clearly flustered, sixteen minutes late- one minute after the person hosting the group had closed the door. Nathan told her she could not join the group, nor could he pay her, expressing his sympathy for her situation. The woman was furious. She started yelling at him and demanded to speak to his boss. He gave her his supervisor’s phone number and waited while she called.

He told me he could feel himself starting to react to her anger with a sense of indignation. Although he'd been polite he could feel his patience wearing thin. As he waited for the woman to get off the phone co-workers came over and sympathized with how unfair the woman was being. “But,” he said, “their sympathy didn’t really help. It just made me feel justified about getting upset with her. And then, I thought: I don’t know this woman. I don’t know what is going on in her day or her life. Getting upset with her only escalates the situation and makes us both feel worse. I don’t have to take her reaction personally. I can let her say what she needs to say and leave.” So that’s what he did. Wise man, my son.

I’ve been reading Pema Chodron’s book Taking The Leap. She talks about times when we get our buttons pushed- someone is rude or unreasonable or just won’t do what we want or hope or feel certain they promised to do- and we get angry or hurt or afraid. Pema calls it “biting the hook.” Emotionally and mentally we get dragged into a drama, a story that causes suffering. Jungian psychoanalysts would say a complex- an emotionally charged and relatively autonomous part of our unconscious formed around a past injury or trauma- gets activated. When we bit the hook or are possessed by a complex we go unconscious. Everything feels very personal, and we are reactive.

Of course, it’s one thing to maintain perspective when a total stranger is yelling at us in a situation where there is nothing we can do (and we often fail to remember it’s not personal even then.) But it’s quite another to stay awake and aware when the other is someone with whom we have an intimate relationship and his or her actions affect us profoundly, materially and emotionally.

Many of you know that I am going through a marital separation. It is heartbreaking and difficult, as these things usually are. But I ask myself- can I take what the other has done or is doing, even a little less personally? The danger here is that I will go into denial about the emotions that are arising in the moment. (Although I admit that these emotions are sometimes about feared future consequences or about past injuries, neither of which are happening now.) I do not want to deny painful emotions. On the other hand, I don’t want to add more suffering to my pain or to the other’s pain- and thereby escalate and prolong the suffering.

So, I try to do what Nathan did: take a step back, slow my reactivity down just a little, and consider what other choices I have. It’s not about being passive. I may need to say or do something. It's not about abandoning myself. In fact, it’s about a deeper level of self-care that does not re-wound the self by taking what the other does or says, personally. I remind myself, “This is what the other can do, right now. What he can or can’t do is about him. It’s not about me. I do not have to take it personally.”

Sometimes- not all the time- this creates the smallest breathing space around reactivity, buys enough of a pause to simply be with the emotion and consider what response is necessary. When we respond instead of react we’re much more likely to communicate clearly and that’s likely to lead to less suffering all around.

So, here’s to learning how to take things a little less personally, how to let the other be wholly other- an individual with their own struggles and stories that are not ours. From that place, finding right action and real compassion may just be possible.

Coming Up For Air*

Like a swimmer coming up for air after a long dive, I fill my lungs and look around.

What can I say about loss that you do not already know?

The thing that amazes me most is how surprised I am, every time.

Is this innocence or arrogance- this forgetting that all things will pass- that we do not control the world- that other’s have their agendas, their struggles, their choices, even as we have ours?

Grief is as kind as it can be, coming in waves instead of all at once- surely a flood that would drown.

It’s hard to predict when the next wave will hit. I miscalculate and have to abandon a shopping cart in the middle of the supermarket cereal aisle to dash for home and lay down on the cool white tiles of the bathroom floor.

All those years of meditating and praying, studying and reading allow a kind of holy curiosity. I do my daily practice and I rest in the arms of the Presence that is always with me, and watch the ache change from one day to the next.
Like shadows moving over the landscape as the sun traverses the sky and clouds come and go.

I notice how the body continues to breathe even when I cannot remember how, and I am grateful to be a living organism. Survival is built into our cells, our DNA. An aching heart still pumps blood.

Off the coast of Louisiana an oil rig explodes and the ruptured sea bed bleeds thick black oil into the blue water.

And I wonder: what have we done with the precious and fragile gifts we were given?

Friends call. It is good to know I have not been forgotten.
Private pain can make the world shrink.

Some bring cooked rice, spiced salmon and fruit-filled muffins. For the first time I understand why people bring food to the bereaved. The smell brings me back to my animal body, reminds me to eat. The taste says, “You are not alone. You are not done. You are alive.”

And still the oil spews into the sea. Two hundred thousand gallons a day. Experts begin to speculate about the damage to marine life, bird life, human life. No one seems to know what to do. The company that was doing the drilling says they do not know who is to blame.

The trouble with lies is that they stick to the stories that give us meaning, they contaminate everything, make us doubt our own experience of what we thought was good and true. We stop trusting our memories, our ability to tell truth from lies.

I outrun the pain with work. This has always been so, but I am more aware of it now- I watch myself sort and pack and unpack without pause, knowing that when the work is finished the emptiness must be faced.

Time works its magic. Healing happens when I’m not looking, and I’m pulled back into the warm chaotic mess of life. I notice the children running in the playground, the tree by my window in bloom. I am surprised how life works within me, on me, without my conscious agreement.

We are life, choosing life. That is how we are made.

Engineers and crew work to find a solution, to stem the flow of oil, knowing the destruction is worsening with every day that passes. Minutes are gallons. Time is not on their side.

Shifting perspective I can see my loss in the bigger picture, can see the opening it creates in my life and my heart for being more of what I am. I feel something working in me, and dare to think of transformation. Faith carries me.

The oil slick is visible from the space satellite. The big picture is grim. Wind and wave carry the black cloud throughout the life-giving waters. Rescue workers try to reach oil soaked birds. Already they are predicting a “dead zone” in the ocean. The question now is how large it will be.

Will I have a “dead zone?” Or will I keep my heart open to myself and the other, to the world, to the oil soaked birds, the blue black waters, and our human weakness for half-truths, for short-term pleasures and profits?

We have a choice. We can shrink in the face of wounding- personal or planetary- or we can inhale deeply, link arms with each other and enlarge our capacity to meet it all- the joy and the sorrow.

I am alive. This breath, this moment. It is good.
_______________________________
*For those who do not know I have recently experienced the dissolution of my marriage and the loss of my home in the woods.