erectlocution
Sit with it
Patience is a recurring theme for me lately. I've been pondering some changes in my life and circumstances, and when I hit a point of discomfort or feeling unmoored, I struggle to make sense of the feelings and what are the potential solutions. One approach I'm thinking about is to sit with the discomfort, the listlessness, and feel it fully. Maybe this demystifies the feeling, casts light on its shape and limits, makes it more tractable, rather than letting it go bump in the dark as some emotional boogeyman.
I came to this through my ignorant attachment to what little I've gathered about the practice of Zen Buddhism. I don't know anything about Zen Buddhism that wouldn't fit on the back of a pack of gum. The two things that stick out to me, though, are: the idea that returning to your goal path is as "simple" as stepping back on that path; and that suffering arises from an attachment to a notion of reality at odds with reality itself. The first idea is useful for moderating the notion of self-discipline and how it may or may not be relevant to things I want to have done. For example, I want to have done the work to learn about differential topology, but I'm not necessarily inclined to actually do the work. I can save myself from grief by realizing I don't currently have the mettle or stomach to actually do it.
The second notion, though, feels transformative to how I've seen my life. I am an especially sentimental person, prone to pathological nostalgia, and so am attached to states of the world as they once existed. Or which were manufactured whole cloth from impulses and neural activity masquerading as memories. Like, no matter how strongly I hold on to the notion that my body is flexible and strong enough to do what I want, my left knee is always on the verge of popping out of joint. I can be frustrated, which is a flavor of suffering, but that won't change anything. Instead maybe I should sit with the reality of my knee's condition and come up with accommodations to make the best of what it can actually still do.
"Sit with it" to me evokes a reflection on the shape of suffering. It calls me to understand how things are and how different my aspirations might be. Rather than rage about what I want to be real, I can accept the state of the world and give my disappointment room to breathe.
But when I consider letting go, of pain or guilt or sadness, my suffering, I worry that I'm going to lose touch with some piece of myself. Or worse, I'll fail someone or something, fail to appreciate them or fail them in some unknown but unforgivable way. For instance, it's as if letting go of the guilt I hold for how poorly feel I advocated for my older kids means I'm somehow abdicating my responsibility to them. Or it's as if letting go of the guilt for taking a cat I loved to a shelter because he was harassing another of our cats implies I'm ignoring my absolute failure to find some other solution, and so demean him and our friendship. It's hard to tease out where accountability ends and an irrational sense of guilt begins, and sometimes the very effort to do so feels ingeniune, sleazy.
Brené Brown says in this interview:
"When you are in uncertainty, when you feel at risk, when you feel exposed, don't tap out. Stay brave, stay uncomfortable, stay in the cringy moment, lean into the hard conversation, and keep leaning. Stay brave."
I don't think she's talking about Buddhism in any sense, but she is talking here about how to manage the dissonance between what is and what we want. It's only by staying brave, by staying uncomfortable, that we can see what's on the other side. Like I've quoted previously, "The fears you don't face become your limits," and I don't think it sounds fruitful to let our discomfort become the limit of our lived experience.
