Old blog… new blog… Letting go…Letting be

My inability to let go, I believed was a roadblock to my happiness – or so I thought.

I start the letting go experiment blog – hoping it will remind me to let go easier. I start it, hoping I will write again – as writing feels freeing to me. I don’t post everything I write; I am not sure the thrust of the blog posts remains focused on letting go (or so thinks the former journalist in me).

After spending a good chunk of last summer in the hospital, I question the letting go experiment. I also question if my inability to let go has kept me alive. The many moments in which I think I will not make it, in which I doggedly refuse to let go. Grumpy, confused, scared, sullen, tenacious. The following may have had something to do with it:

Just as I am about to leave for the hospital, my daughter runs out and says in a serious tone, “Mom… don’t die, okay?”

I laugh it off and say, “Of course not. I’m going to be around to harass you for many years”

Truth is - I don’t think I’m in any danger and think I will be back soon. But things go south – as they sometimes do.

Perhaps she saved my life. Perhaps she saves my life every day.

The letting go experiment was never against strength and determination. Besides, things are different in a crisis and there are times we hold on with all our might and refuse to let go. We simply must.

Once the ‘big crisis’ is averted, there are often the ‘smaller crises’ or the aftermath to deal with and clean up. In many ways this is far more difficult. For in the ‘big crisis’, we pool in everything we have, we allow ourselves to be taken care of, to feel the pain, to be vulnerable.

Then we get up and stand on our feet again – for that is what we must do, right? Yet, the feet are wobbly, the pain still lingers, the fears still loom… Yet, we are back on our feet, we plod through our days and our lives. Good thing. Difficult thing.

In doing so, do we toughen up more than we can? Although I have written posts about letting go of tightening up and pressure, and expectations, and about self-compassion, and allow things to roll, something seems off.

I wonder if I am not giving myself permission to be sullen or scared, or whatever ‘negative’ emotion I feel - simply because as you and I both know -- these are things we want to “let go” of.

Yet, I needed to feel those things, perhaps I still do – to move past them.

In martial arts, the wisdom is that you have to first move in the direction of the opponent. Only then, can you divert or gain control.

Letting go feels like pressure, like yet-another-thing-I need-to-do. It makes me feel more discontented about who I am – in all my sullen, scared splendor.

Exhausted, I decide to simply let it be.
Besides that is the only thing I feel capable of. Sour grapes or not, I’m not sure. But I am relieved for the space in which I can allow myself to feel the pain, or fear or frustration, or anger, or sadness, without chiding myself for not trying harder to move past it.

It feels true. It feels real. It feels oddly calming.

The intention of course was not/is not to remain stuck in it (hopefully), in a stagnant morass of gloom.

But sweeping those feelings under the rug, or turning our back, or an impatience to let go of them, seems to make it worse. As in Vipassana meditation, maybe we need to be non-judgmental and show equanimity towards the emotions that arise, knowing they will rise and eventually fall.

And even if letting go is a wonderful thing, perhaps, there are times, when --

instead of letting it go… we simply need to let it be…


 

Real voice… Fake voice…

While clearing a bookshelf today, I may have found my fake voice. Ha. Nothing like a confusing statement to start a blog post, huh?
I may have found this fake voice in a tiny little booklet called Mind Sound Resonance Technique.

Simply put, the technique in the book, I had picked in India, is a kind of sound meditation. The idea is to chant certain sounds and feel vibrations of the chants all over the body. I decide to give it a try.

In a deep serious voice, I begin the series of chants – Aa… Uu… Mm… AaUuMm. Om…

I feel no vibrations. I remember trying it before. I remember not noticing vibrations. Total hogwash, I decide.
Hmm… could it be that perhaps some people are not meant to be spiritually enlightened yogis?

I decide to give up my quest – spiritual enlightenment can wait, I decide. That piece of chocolate, on the other hand, and my list of chores will not wait forever.  

Spiritual seeker or not, my curiosity is piqued. I go back to the book and sit down and close my eyes. Once again, in a deep, strong tone, I make the first sound. I study myself – so intent and serious. I wonder if I am trying too hard. I try a different pitch.  

This one isn’t as strong or important sounding as the previous. It seems more feeble, softer, gentler, less assertive or emphatic. It also feels more real. Somewhat disappointed, I continue.  

I realize I like the stronger voice better. Besides, that is my voice too. Yet, for whatever reason, it feels imposed and superficial. The softer, shakier pitch rings true. Seems right.

Even if both voices belong to the same person, the stronger one has more appeal. That would be who I would want to be, that would be how I would want to project myself – strong, confident, not-quivering. Why then does it feel more exhausting, less authentic?

In choosing the ‘better’, the ‘right’, the ‘sensible’, the ‘practical’, the ‘appealing’, the ‘acceptable’, the ‘approvable’, do we lost our authentic voice?

We’ve all done that. Smiled too wide, spoken in a pitch too high, smiled when we would rather glare, found our sweetest tone, when all we want to do it scream. Those are all our voices too. And to some extent, some of that may not be going away in the name of diplomacy. I can’t even begin to tell you how hard this is for the undiplomatic few. Sigh…

I wonder how we can remain true to our own voice. Our true authentic voice. How much of our life do we spend making sounds other than our own? How much of our life do we give up to these sounds? Do we snuff it out, no longer listen to it; does it seem less acceptable, too erratic, less predictable?  

I think of some shelved writing projects. Since last summer, I have not gone near any of them. A few short stories and a children’s book (that may never see the light of day).

Now writing can be a scary affair. It brings out authenticity and truth. I stopped writing for months last summer – fearful of what I would write, fearful that I would write only sad stuff. Perhaps I do.

In almost a year, I have not gone anywhere near the shelved writing projects, dreading that I will turn them into weepy tearful sagas. Yet the thought of sugar coating, or continuing in the vein I was writing them, seems phony and insincere. Why on worth would I want to do that? So I simply stay away.

We all know there is beauty in authenticity. Whether the voice is sad, or cheerful, or funny, or strong, or vulnerable – it will be beautiful when it is genuine. It will make sense, it will feel right when it is the real sound.

In the society we have created and in which we live, can we live only with only our authentic voices? How many times do I tell my kid, “don’t glare”? In “keeping face”, doing what we perceive is “better” and more “correct”, do we lose our authentic voice? Simply because it sometimes doesn’t sound as strong, or pretty or happy or virtuous, as the other ones we are capable of making?

Do we need to give ourselves permission to be who we truly are? Do we need to give ourselves permission to listen and to acknowledge our authentic voice?

Can we recognize the sound of our real voice?

Silken skeins – webbed or stray?

My daughter’s last annual medical check-up involves a blood draw. Eyes widen as she methodically evaluates each item on the tray – tourniquet, syringe, needle… The room steadily fills with tension emanating from her little being. As I watch her squirm at the thought of her looming fate, I wish for a giant syringe to draw out the tension from the room.

When the nurse momentarily leaves the room, two sets of eyes (hers and mine) stare at the tray on the table. Hers - with a sense of impending doom; mine – with apprehension about her reaction.

That feeling is familiar - that prickly hedgehog-like stiffness she exhibits. I have done the same on several occasions during my hospital stay. Rats… another wrong gene? 

“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask.

“Sure,” eyes still on the tray, tone suggesting a questionable level of interest.

“Sometimes,” I continue, refusing to let the tone discourage me, “I simply imagine that the person holding the syringe, is my friend. I even say a mental ‘thank-you for helping me feel better’.”

She lets out a sigh and an all too familiar shake of the head.

“That helps me relax and makes it all just a little bit better. Would you like to try?”

Her vague shrug serves as answer, but she seems to reflect (or continues to stare at the menacing tray).
…

“Did it help?” I am curious.

“Can we get ice-cream since I was so brave?” I laugh and give in.

As we lick our ice-creams, I wonder if she used my little trick. I wonder if she will remember it in the future.

I think of the many times in the recent past, when I had told myself, “This person is my friend. They are here to help me” and made a strange connection, to help reduce panic and ease the situation (mostly for myself – the other person was thankfully blithely unaware of this craziness and forced friendship).  But given that most health professionals are kind people, they probably wouldn’t mind.

Does a sense of connection ease panic? Does a sense of connection improve a situation? Does a sense of connection promote well-being?  

Is it really that simple? If so, why then are we not better at it, even if we seem to be programmed for it?

Would there be world peace if we simply connected better, if we shared the pain and sorrow, if we didn’t see ourselves so separate from others. If we didn’t try to guard ourselves as much – even in light of a menacing needle.

Is this self-protection? Is it ego? Just what gets in the way?

I know I get reclusive when I’m sick. My body gets into a state of guardedness that my mind doesn’t understand. It seems safer to be reclusive than to connect. It seems safer to not share this internal unhappiness, to spread the low-energy.

Yet, I understand life is more beautiful, more easy, more the way-its-supposed-to-be. We may only be a small skein in the larger web of life, but we need to attach, stay connected to the web to hold form.

In our webbed lives, how can we remain a stray skein away from the rest? All stray skeins need their silken counterparts to intermingle, to hold each other, to know that they are part of the web.

And even if the level of connections vary, the knowledge that we are more connected than we think, must help.

It must. If it helps me get through a menacing needle, it truly must.