Staying Awake and Shaking the Dust

My biggest missteps in life have been when I haven't been fully awake.  You know those moments, you're on auto-pilot, the to-do list is your guide, and you just keep moving forward without actually looking around or listening to what's going on inside of you.

Sometimes it takes something really big to wake us up.  Sometimes, it's a lot more subtle.  The subtle reminders are the ones I'm most interested in at this moment.  These are the ones that will sustain me. Subtlety sounds really nice right now.  I feel like a lot of us wake up and make big changes, but can fall back easily into sleep as we try to move through and navigate what's in front of us.  We can make excuses:  I'm just going to push on until _______.  If I can just get _____ done, then I will ______.  I made a promise to myself that I would not go back to sleep, but I'm also finding it difficult to do when I feel like so much of my world is in flux.  A nice, long, sleep sounds pretty lovely... Staying awake, however, is a constant practice.  I don't always succeed.

I am shedding skin of late.   I'm "shaking the dust" (Thank you, Anis Mogjani:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u--_-tyuejc)  I feel like I'm plucking barnacles off, and saying goodbye one by one.  I have burst into tears randomly (or have wanted to)--as I look out at my students and hear their insights, as I ride my bike home from work, as I settle into deep relaxation at the end of a yoga practice-- and with each "welling up," I realize I'm simply saying goodbye.   I'm saying goodbye to a period of time, a particular place, particular routines, and an experience or two I wouldn't have minded skipping--but many more I'm glad I've had.  And I'm stripping back down to what's essential to me and in me.

I'm trying to remain present, awake, and alive as I continue to move forward and make changes in my work, my living space,  geographic location, my academic pursuits--and there are times when it feels so overwhelming that I just want to coast through the next two months with my eyes closed.  I try my best not to close my eyes:   It would be a waste of a beautiful Tucson spring, for one.  And, for two?  I run the risk of not moving forward with eyes and heart wide open.  It would be a pity to have come this far, to have worked so hard to put all of these changes in motion...and not even be fully awake as the work comes to fruition.   I slip into moments of hiding from it all, shutting it all off, but...I forgive myself for these moments (and sometimes thank myself for them)...and I move on.

So here's the work:  To remain open even when life feels overwhelming.  To be patient in the midst of flux and uncertainty.  To stop and notice when things are beautiful, and to stop and notice when they're not.  To not cling too tightly to any step along the way, because it's all "along the way."  To remember that even when our skin feels like it's flipped inside out, that it's so much better than going back to sleep and going through the motions.

"Walk into into it, breathe it in...so when the world knocks at your front door, clutch the knob tightly and open on up and run forward and far into its widespread greeting arms with your hands outstretched before you...fingertips trembling, though they may be."--A. Mogjani

Creating Space

I've been purging material things.  My house is on the market as of this week.  I want for very little in my life, and I know this.  I'm aware that I live a pretty simple existence. ( I am by no means claiming to be a simple person...my friends would laugh at me for that.) I like meaningful work; I like playing outside; I like good food and good drink.  And that's pretty much what I need.  A good dog?  Bonus.  My Beautiful Friends?  More than bonus.  Right now?  The ability to run free and without limitation is enough.

What am I letting into this space that I'm creating?  I'm looking for fierce companions who not only acknowledge their own worth and beauty, but who are willing to truly see those around them.  I will make some missteps along the way and continue to let in people who feign these qualities, but, for the most part, my bullshit meter is pretty attuned these days.  I'm looking for fearlessness, honesty, courage, brilliance, and the ability to be both interested and interesting.  I'm not reserving spaces for anyone in particular, but I am hugely open to experience, and welcoming human connection.  I'm interested in intimacy and connection with people who are unafraid and who are not harboring allegiance to storylines that don't serve them.  I want genuine, authentic connections.  I want rich communication.  I want transparency and the joy and freedom that accompanies this.  This is what I want to fill my space with.  I don't need "things"; I need purposeful and real spaces to inhabit with people who are on this same journey.  If I can meet people honestly, and without artifice?  And they can meet me in this same place?  Then this space I'm creating is filled to the brim with everything I could possibly want and need.

Demons and Destruction and Love

I'm not usually a big one for celebrity gossip, nor do I particularly feel like there's great social import in knowing the in's and out's of people's lives who I don't actually KNOW.  And I fully recognize that the world is filled with tragedy, horrific experiences, and challenges in life that go so far beyond what we, in our western mindset can even begin to fathom.  BUT, if we (in all of our privileged "glory") can't even get it together, then what does that say about us as a culture?

For whatever reason, some things have hit me this year, and have indicated that quite possibly, there is a larger issue here than being a "celebrity" that is causing some amazingly powerful and beautiful women to self-destruct.

And I'm thinking that we haven't "come a long way baby."  I am a forty-something woman.  My cohort was raised by some pretty traditional folks, for the most part.  Regardless of our parents' marital status or their marital happiness, I'm guessing that most of us grew up believing the narrative:  you meet a boy, you get married, you have children, and you're happy.  Even though few of us saw the data that supported the "happy" hypothesis, we bought it anyway.  And pop culture sold, and continues to sell it.  Whitney Houston, the woman who's brought me to my tipping point on this topic, sang, "I want to dance with somebody...with somebody who loves me..."  Well, for crying out loud.  Here's an amazingly gorgeous and talented woman...and she falls prey.  Amy Winehouse.  Demi Moore (not dead, but trying to be).

I spent the bulk of my life rejecting these narrow ideals, but, for some reason about 10 years ago, I decided to give it a go.  A friend of mine, who is very generous, says, "Well, you just had to try it out and make sure...now you know..."  And I realize, at this point in my life, that there is nothing that matters but love. But this love?  This love is for self, for friends, for family, for fellow humans who are on this same path of life.  There is no room for fear, for ego, for ignoring those in need.  What if we all just loved as big as we wanted to be loved?  What if we all were grown ups and respected each other?  Not a bad space.  And for those people who are going to run in fear from themselves or hardship?  I think we should create a small colony for them...and insulate them (though I think this might be a large segment of the population--those completely afraid of authenticity).

Put the baggage down. Put the ego down.  I'm tired of fear. I'm sad for people for whom aging is a negative thing.  I'm sad for people for whom the body is their definition.  And I'm sad for those of us who have, at one time or another, been affected by people who can't see true goodness and what is beautiful in humanity.  There's enough ugliness in the world.  I want to revel in my friends' authenticity.  I want to know that beauty goes beyond a size 6.  I want to know that what is inside of each of us is what makes us who we are.  And if you insist on judging yourself or others by their weight?  I remind you that most of us have been at our skinniest when we have 1) developed a drug problem; or 2) have been in the middle of a divorce.

And I am hoping beyond hope that we won't continue to sit back and tacitly accept bad behavior or lack of ethics as "okay."  Every single person on this planet has the capacity to grow, to deepen their understanding of themselves and others, but to sit back and excuse them when they can't behave gracefully?  Or when they do true harm to others?  That's being complicit in their stunted sense of self and the world.  I hope we will all call each other on our shit.  I know my truest friends, and the people I trust more than any one else in this world, will always, always (usually quite tactfully) let me know when I need to make an adjustment.  If only this honesty was extended to all. Our growth trajectories would be significantly more positive.

What's concerning me most at the moment, is that there isn't enough love.  Our one renewable resource, and we can't seem to generate enough of it to reach out to one another.

Passion and Play

I read an article in Elephant Journal this week that's been tossing around in my mind...
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/01/love-is-selfish/ (which I will reference throughout this post)

This is an article by someone I've never met (Waylon Lewis).  But someone who has articulated a vision of love and marriage that hit so close to home for me, that 1) I thought I should probably marry him (or at least meet him, since, truly, I'm really not interested in "marriage" as a formal institution any longer); and 2) made me realize I'm truly "married" to my passions and my work.  And, 3) If I define marriage as a lifelong commitment to loving completely and vulnerably...well, I'm married to quite a few people.

And then I started exploding out this idea of what it means to be fully committed to the work I do and to the love I have for the people in my life, and I started thinking about how much bigger that was than anything else I could possibly imagine...and...well, my mind has been a little blown.  And Maya Angelou's statement that her heart had been broken so many times that it had been simply broken open comes to mind.  I see so clearly that every moment of heartbreak, every moment of pain has allowed for empathy, for strength, for clarity...

Let me back up.  I'm happy, blissfully so...  But not for the reasons I thought I would be.  I'm happy because I have finally stopped apologizing for the fact that I'm on a mission.  This mission is self-chosen.  It's both selfish and selfless.  And parts of it are infinite and there are tasks that are finite at the same time.  When I think about what I'm here to do, I realize I'm here for the work.  Play is fabulous.  It sustains me.   But the work?  It's the driving force of "me." The work is to make sense of our society, to figure out how to make it better, to make the world of education make more sense--in whatever way I can.

And the play?  The play is love.  The play is the outdoors.  The play is new experience.  It's openness.  It's the recognition that in order to take things seriously, we have to have spaces in which we don't.  The play is laughter.  And the work and the play are the same:  It's all passion.

I have realized, as I've been sifting, in the past year, through disillusionment, through anger, through hurt...that what this whole process has been is a re-awakening of who I am.  And there's no fear here.  There's only excitement, and the realization that I didn't so much have faulty logic in a choice in partner, I simply wasn't astute enough to make assumptions  supported by data. (I have finally let go of beating myself up for my choice to marry a person who I wish I hadn't.) Red flags should never be ignored.  I chose a partner a decade ago who I thought was the person who would help me look outward--that we would help each other do so:
"Two friends* facing the same direction together, symbolically east, the direction of the rising sun, as in ever-awakening fundamentally a-ok human nature. Walking the path together. Helping one another to be of benefit." (see Elephant Journal article referenced above)


And I finally realize that my vision of love wasn't misguided, but my choice of partner was.  "I don’t need to go on a lifelong romantic picnic I have things to do."  


Indeed.  I do.  


And my version of work and of love is really big.  I'm here.  Living is hard. It is.  And I can't imagine living without being of service: 

“And while I’m here I’ll do the work.  And what’s the work? To ease the pain of living — everything else, drunken dumbshow”  – Allen Ginsberg

And I'm pretty positive there are a lot of people out there with the same agenda.

We don't have that long.  We aren't here for ever.  I'm reminded of this daily.  However, I also want to be reminded, by the people around me, that we're all in it together.  And that we're all, in our own ways, trying to create spaces and opportunities for a better world to emerge.

I will love big.  I will love without reserve.  And I will not forgo "the work" for a blissfully ignorant view of what real love actually is.  And I know, without a doubt, that I have some pretty fabulous company on this journey.

Refuse to Stay Quiet

I am wondering how many conversations continue to be squelched and how many voices we lose because we're afraid of hearing things that might rattle the comfort of the status quo.  In Arizona,  many of you know, the state has banned Mexican American Studies classes--of both literature and history.  There is so much fear and hatred behind this decision that it's actually difficult to wrap your mind around.  I have a lot of things I'm angry about in the world of education, but studying multiple perspectives and disrupting the belief that history is a single narrative that we can weave neatly in a 300 page U.S. History textbook?  That's not one of the things we should be angry about.

We should be angry about the fact that high school students, specifically students of Mexican American and African American descent are dropping out of high school at rates that should alarm even the most callous person. We should be angry that we live in a country where income disparity and class distinctions have become more and more rigid, and more and more difficult to move beyond.  We should be angry about the fact that education has been co-opted by corporate drones who perpetuate the myth that thinking is actually a negative thing, and accountability (in all of its misguided forms) is the answer.  And we must stop making decisions that are driven by hatred.  Our responsibility to our youth has to be borne of love, of trust, and the belief that doing what's right is not always what's easy, and it doesn't always benefit someone's bottom line in the short term (read:  prisons), but the dividends in the future are exponential.

And we take a day out of school to honor the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.  And I wish, very much, that we would spend the rest of our days in school with a little more focus on his memory, his ideas and ideals.

When did creativity, critical thought, and willingness to engage in civil discourse become scary?  Ahhh...  yeah,  it always has been, at least to the people for whom the status quo is hugely beneficial.

I work with students every day whose families have come to the United States from places that are battle grounds, where potable water is in short supply, where caste systems and racial distinctions have left them without citizenship in any country.  And I work with students who believe that America is a land of opportunity.   And I want so badly for this to be true for them.    I have a dream.

Wings

Copious reminders have surfaced of late regarding the power of happiness, and the power of sharing our own happiness with others.  I was afforded the opportunity to spend some time with people who love me unconditionally (and who have known me as I lived through more interesting times, and who love me anyway) in the past while.  And in the safety of this space, I realized how much more I have to offer the world when I am exactly me.  And my resolution this year remains to spend time with the friends who I love so dearly my heart aches just thinking of them.

And on the wings of this experience, I found myself laughing genuinely with my students today as we talked about the power of exploring multiple perspectives, reading and learning, and...I realized that it really is this simple.  Emily Dickinson writes of wings that carry us through "dingy streets" of life and lift us above through the power of imagination.  And I realize that we each carry this within us:  the power to explore the stories of others, the power to learn, to grow, and to believe...and to fly above.

I'm going to fly.  I'm going to leave the confines of my current reality, which is perfectly fine, but perfectly fine doesn't suffice.  I have wrestled and wrestled with practicality versus sanity, and responsibility versus risk.  I'm a very pragmatic person (fortunately or unfortunately). I have come down on the side of responsibility, but finally, finally, it is responsibility for myself and my own happiness.  And nothing ever comes too soon or too late when we're listening carefully.  I couldn't have made this decision a year ago, and I would have berated myself for a whole litany of things if I had.  There comes a point in time when we can, with no apology, move on, move beyond, and do so gracefully.

And this freedom, borne of a decision that's been a long time coming, allows me to share my happiness, genuinely, with others.  And this brings me back to Pema Chodron, whose words have helped me conjure these wings:  "The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you've come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening.  This is yet another opportunity to develop loving-kindness for yourself, which results in playfulness--learning to play like a raven in the wind."

Time to assemble the wings.  Time to offer myself the space and perspective to envision, revision, and believe.  It is time.

Wait

I've just finished Sharon Salzberg's text Faith.  I don't know any more if this was recommended to me by a friend or if I simply picked it up.  It was on my shelf, and had been started at some point in the past year.  And I spent some time moving through it in the past week.

Some lines I have to share:

"One of the most subtle ways fear can bind us, so quietly that we hardly know to call it fear, is what is known in Buddhist teachings as 'fixated hope.' Fixated hope, like hope itself, resembles faith in that both sparkle with a sense of possibility.  But fixated hope is conditional, circumscribing happiness to getting what we want"  (p. 81).

I hope we all have a sense of the world around us 'sparkling with a sense of possibility,' but also with the acknowledgement that happiness lies in a space that doesn't depend on an outcome.  

"Is it necessary to go through despair on a spiritual path, to endure a proverbial dark night of the soul in order to deepen our faith?  I don't know the answer to that--but I do know that it is necessary to strip away the entangling, unhealthy ways of relating to ourselves with dislike and diminishment that we are accustomed to.  And I know that we need to let go of many things, undergo loss, and unhook from the world's insistence that we cover up our pain in order for us to see what is really important to our lives" (p. 121).

I thought this was particularly salient as we move into the new year.  An artificial marker, yes, but a time when we are all looking to return to what's really important to our lives.  I'm hoping that's what our resolutions lead us to.

"If there is nothing we can do right now but wait, then, as T.S. Eliot wrote, 'the faith is in the waiting.' If we can but wait, we may yet emerge from despair with the same understanding that Zen master Suzuki Roshi expressed:  'Sometimes just to be alive is enough"  (p. 123).

Wait.

Sometimes just to be alive is enough.

I remind myself.