Comfort
2020 is a never-ending year. I have no sense of time anymore. It’s before pandemic life or now, where the days run into each other. I feel a little more disjointed about the whole thing because I was in the midst of a personal crisis when COVID made it’s way into our lives. I was eight months into recovering and rebuilding my life after my marriage fell apart, and my family was struggling. I was in a state of constant vigilance, prioritizing everyone’s survival, anxious about what would happen if I fell apart. I had such a grip on this fear that I couldn’t look at it. To see it was to experience it, and the fear of the pain was too much to bear.
Then COVID seeped into our lives, the fear building slowly since January, finally locking us all in place by mid March. The collective quiet and stillness was unfamiliar. The loneliness and fear I had been experiencing suddenly felt small in the middle of this great unknown that was impacting the entire world. I felt connected to the world in a way I had never before experienced. I had been reading Pema Chodron's Comfortable with Uncertainty. It compelled me to anchor myself in the now. But it felt like a lonely endeavor until COVID hit.
The global uncertainty that we are all experiencing has helped me heal. While everyone has been distancing and isolating, I have felt more connected simply knowing that we are all struggling. As daunting as these endless days feel, I feel held in the collective uncertainty. When my mind leaps toward quick judgement and grasping of facts and fixes, I am grounded by the fact that nobody knows what to do or what lies ahead. Judgement is impossible! It doesn’t stop me, but I consistently arrive at a conclusion that I am not in a position to judge anyone, that every move I make is simply my best effort but not necessarily the right one. The same goes for everyone else.
The suffering that we are all enduring has the potential to soften or harden our hearts. I feel the hardening in my chest, a tight grip of fear. I know it well enough now to recognize that I need to investigate the grip when it comes. The softening feels overwhelming and usually brings me to tears, and it happens whenever I’m truly aware and absorbing everything around me. The simple fact is the hardening feels bad and the softening feels good. I’m learning to engage with my feelings when the fear grips so I can move toward softening. It’s what comforts me in a life of uncertainty.
Speaking of uncertainty, please take good care of yourself over the next days of uncertainty around the election. Practice yoga with me if your schedule allows. If you’re local, I’m leading a class at GIllson Park on 11/4. Email me to find out more. If you’re distant, head to my offerings page for links to a class I’ll teach on Wednesday evenings. All classes are free through 2020. We will get through this.
