Ready for the Bounce !
Whoa - It’s been quite the year! Once again we are in the throes of a Covid surge while regular life just keeps rolling on over us. Life is always a thrill ride - the ups, the downs, and now with Covid on the top, it’s the ride that really none us signed up for. Some of us lost our jobs, some - all of a sudden, had too many jobs - like kids needing to be home schooled. Some friends lost everything in the wildfires, and some of us faced family sickness and tragic loss. Our world has descended into chaos along with a political freak show to accompany it.
In early March I had the inside track, this virus was going to be bad. Optimistically thinking I thought we would be through the worst of it come June, I recalculated, well maybe it will be August, I will just coast for a bit longer. And now it has become clear I can no longer wait on the sidelines for this virus to go away and for everything to return to normal. Foolishly , because I have known, as already having been rigorously taught, Nothing ever returns to what it was, going backward is not really ever an option. So how do we maintain a healthy body and mind in this pandemic?
No more pretending, no more looking away. This is our reality and I have decided I need to pay attention and to get prepared for the Bounce. It’s going to arrive and I want to be ready, want my body to be ready, to seize the moment, the moment when the world will seem to right itself again and offer up its pearlescent array of possibilities for growth and adventure. The moment when our conversations will shift in excitement and colors will shine with brilliance. I can almost hear the world let out a big sigh of relief for the moment when Covid will slide back into the history of the past.
I am so far from being ready for that moment right now. At times my body is weak, my mind is mushy, my habits have slipped into utter distraction. After 9 months of rationalizing that I needed, I deserved, the urge to escape, I am beginning to see through all of that right now.
How to adapt to our Covid environment? Mere tolerating the situation month after month is not the answer. No on the contrary, this time is calling on the best of us - our creativity, our strength, our faith. For me after years of letting go, I am feeling the need now for a discipline, or regimen, to hang onto. The will to coax my mind body back into a place that has the capacity to bounce because the time will come. And I want to be ready. How about you?
Slowly, slowly, my minutes of gentle feldenkrais exercises in the morning are coming back, along with the sit ups and the newly determined push ups that are starting to click in, my body does know how to do this. The afternoon hill walks with 65 pounds of lurching dog on the leash end, are also helping. My meditation practice is thrilled after waiting ever so patiently for my return, and my sugar habit - well there is still a lot of work to do on that. My mind too needs revitalizing, and I am confident it will sync up once my body moves into its’ renewal phase.
I am continually inspired by those of you I know, who found your creative vein to make the best of this situation, challenging though it is. You Inspire me to engage! This is living and not just waiting.
· Embarking on weekend kayaking trips – camping by the water’s edge for that midnight cruise in your inflatable kayak
· Creating visionary artistic expression – curating local artists for outdoor light sculpture installations
· Developing new skills for satisfaction and some badly missed income - designing a pattern for exceptionally comfortable mask wearing and then crowdsourcing to sell them from your bedroom window.
· Committing to a cause passionately - Driving to an unknown place to knock on unknown doors for persuasive conversation with unknown people and…you’re an introvert
· Embracing your fears – moving to a new place and putting down new roots after years of stability.
How about you? Where are you on this spectrum between living and waiting? The next few months, maybe more, are asking us to be diligently careful, along with resolute in creating what we need in this new place we all find ourselves. There is so much to learn, some of it practical, much of it hard to put into meaningful words, yet sage wisdom never a less. Our vibrant health is the most valuable thing we have, creative carefulness is our calling right now.
I would really like to hear what keeps you going, or what slows you down to that thoughtful pause, what intuitively you know might change in these next few months. It helps to have support in figuring out where your hope lives, as Barbara Kingsolver writes above. It helps to have conversations that motivate and clear the obstacles embedded in your mind. It really does help to have a plan, and I am happy to explore this with you.
Habits and routine can help us stay grounded when all feels adrift or confused. And we do live in difficult, confusing times. I find poetic beauty in Rumi – “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” There are hundreds of ways to adapt, to find your balance, to maintain a healthy mind and body.
The art is in finding the ways that work for you now given our new situations. Stay open to the chance that they may be different than what you expected. New habits for new times. Are you courageous enough to dive in?
As David Whyte writes ~ “Beginning is difficult and our procrastination is a fine ever- present measure of our reluctance in taking that first close-in courageous step to reclaiming our happiness.”
I don’t know if it is happiness, or a sense of well being, or contentment that I seek, but I know I am ready to begin again and in that desire and follow through I will be ready for when the bounce comes. I will begin again and again and again to find that new bandwidth of movement and strength for which to kneel and kiss the ground - Or maybe I will dance !