Despair, Distract, Distance, Deepen, Deliverance

I apparently have a new cycle during COVID19 that I’m working through, despite my desire to be calm and accepting of all that occurs.

Despair wakes me up at 4 am thinking of a new password and counting its characters with my fingers, as if I were practicing scales without a keyboard.

Despair keeps me scrolling through my phone during a zoom meeting, favoring a stranger's meme over the nuggets or nuances from someone’s sharing.

Despair gets me out the door, fitbit rebooted, obsessively meeting a 10,000 Step goal.

Distract becomes my new coping mechanism. See above during online meetings for an example.

Distract helps me read a novel every couple days, watch a new series, and perhaps motivates my new napping habit. (See the 4 am waking reference.)

Distance keeps conversation superficial, tears private and quickly squelched, hands busy tidying up.

Distance occurs on every vector: with myself, with others, and with my higher power.

Deepen is my new desire, but too often distraction inhibits the meditation practice that forms a bridge or perhaps acts as shovel.

In order to deepen, I need to journal beyond the tally of tasks accomplished, into the murky, shadowy landscape of today’s setting of pandemic.

Deepening inevitably means letting something go, sharing something raw, trusting someone, almost anyone, with my current state of being even before I can articulate it.

To deepen is to acknowledge this world—green, anxious, hopeful, corrupt.

To deepen is to settle into this body—fit, healthy, sober, achey.

To deepen is to accept this mind—busy, sharp, creative, restless.

To deepen is to welcome this spirit—expansive, settled, awake, curious.

And if I can acknowledge, settle, accept, and welcome, then I am delivered into what’s next. The ultimate unknown.

Which may well lead to despair, and the cycle begins anew.

The Great Pause

The United States has had a Great Depression, a Great Recession, and now we’re in The Great Pause. A friend of mine named it yesterday, and I’ve been thinking about the power of pausing. The suspension of normality is an invitation to notice at least two areas of life:

What did I take for granted that I no longer will?

What has been removed that I won’t pick up again?

Taking Things for Granted

I’m learning how much I value the in-person meetings I attend 3-4 times a week. While we meet online now, and it’s wonderful to see familiar faces and hear about their experiences, this virtual community cannot replicate the random connections I made when I sat down next to someone different in the room and chatted before we began. 

When/if we no longer need to physically distance ourselves, I intend to arrive earlier than I used to, hug more people, and linger afterwards to soak up the warmth of this community. Now that I’ve lost it, I know this particular community fills me like no other.

What Will I let Go?

Conversely, as I shelter in place and no longer run errands daily, I see how I used grocery stores to give me the dopamine hit shopping provides.  While I’ve always been aware I buy too many clothes, etc., I now see that I justified spending money if it was for food. Money is a drug like any other, and I could rationalize a little spree because I was out of jicama, for example.  Today when I notice a specific veggie’s gone, I remind myself that celery and radishes will do.

I’m not striving to be an ascetic, but I do want to occupy an inner landscape of enough rather than always wanting more. I’d like to use my creative energies to produce something useful rather than fine-tune what brings me comfort.  

How is the Great Pause helping you notice what you want to savor and what you want to release?