The Answers are Inside
[First Name],
I wrote most of this last week before, well, before we faced yet another heart breaking moment in the United States. The urge to rage and blame and sink into despair or desperate action can only be suppressed for so long. We all have it in us. Where and when do we let it fly? That is an important question. No matter how good we are at finding peace, doing good deeds, thinking intelligently, we need to express and release the darker thoughts and emotions as well. They live inside us waiting for the "last straw" that triggers us. We can kid ourselves and ignore all the warning signs but it will be to our detriment. Dis-ease, whether it be physical, mental or emotional will take over. When we ignore all of the warning signs or push them out of our awareness in favor of keeping on keeping on, the insipid truth of our pain will manifest. It may catch us off guard, shock us, leave us praying for our lives and perhaps then, we might have that moment when we realize that we knew we were headed for trouble all along.
This time of the COVID19 pandemic provides us with an opportunity to s l o w d o w n. We have this chance to re-evaluate our priorities, to make changes and yes, to experience our emotions. We have this time to really see what it is we do tamp down our darker emotions. This is our moment to feel. This is our moment to ask for help. This is out moment to change the course. We all have to do it from the place we are in. Do not jump on the nearest bandwagon. Do not hook-up with the people who are yelling loudest or the group who has the 1 right answer. Go inside, rely on your loved ones. Become vulnerable and give someone else in your life a chance to be vulnerable. Listen to each other, hold each other.
From January 5th:
My in-box has been flooded with e-mails that presumably want to lure me into opening them with messages that read: "Last Chance.", "Final offer", "Don't miss out". Ironically they come from the same senders that sent the same warnings just before Christmas, leading me to believe that it is really not my last chance to purchase something on sale, to sign-up for a new class, or to donate to the Democratic party. Unless I die suddenly or some trauma prevents me from functioning, it will not be my last chance for anything... or will it?
Perhaps, it is always our "last chance". When I think about it, many things in my life have come to pass that I will not experience again in the same way that I once did. I didn't know when I heard my mother singing, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in the car on our way back to the Nursing home in 2007 after our Christmas Eve Celebration that it would be my "last chance" to hear her sing. I did not know on a random day back in the mid- 80's that it would be the last time I would bathe my young boys- them being on the verge of only wanting to take showers. I did not know, in January of 2020, when I sat in Clayton's in Yarmouth, eating a splendid sandwich and sipping a latte while I wrote in my journal, that I would not be able to do it again this year or maybe even next year.
Almost very person I spoke with this past month mentioned looking forward to 2021, anxious to at least put a new number on the place we find ourselves in, ready to be rid of 2020 and all of the havoc that came with it. We are longing for some "normalcy". I hear people talk about getting back to the way things were. Well, there really is no going back. Change is the natural order of life. Albeit not all change is completely a force of nature (our human existence has a profound effect on nature). We can not recreate, return, turnback or go back except in our memories which rely on our individual imperfect perceptions. Being both a writer and a bodyworker, I am all for revisiting. I like to make sense of things, or when I can't, I like to feel my way through things. That is different than expecting to return to a life that was.
So if we can't go back there, the way most be to move forward. Except that right now, it is hard to plan. Where can we go? It is a question that most of us think of in a very literal way every day. "Is that store open?" "Can we visit with so and so?" "What is it safe to do?" Then there are the When? questions. We aren't really able to come up with answers about when right now. When will we be able to go to concerts, movies, have big parties? When will we feel comfortable around our vulnerable loved ones? When will it be safe to go any where we want to without thinking about masks and quarantines? The future- forward - is hard to think about except in small increments. What can I do today?
Ahh, so that leads us to right now. Right now is what we have. How can we be in our right now? We can be peaceful or nervous. We can be grateful or ticked off. We can be kind or cruel. We can be sad or joyous. We can be creative and thoughtful. We can be passive and restful. We can languish and we can be industrious. What is important is that we notice what we doing and feeling and know that it is worthy of our attention. We are worthy in this now moment. If we pay attention to how we are being, we may find that above all, we are resilient. We can face the next moment. That is all we really need to do. Face this moment and when the next one comes, face it then.
So the ambitious vendors are not wrong after all, every moment is my "last chance."
I want to thank all of you. You who brave coming in and being vulnerable, you who have had to stay away, you who have cancelled appointments out of caution when you or someone you knew was sick. Every single action and decision has led to the collective now moment.
Yours in ease and peace (and sometimes in anger and heartbreak),
Liz Jackson
