Stretching
A friend and I were speaking yesterday about the fact that there is no arriving in life. There is no destination. It’s all about movement–constant movement. Yes, there are plateaus and periods of stillness and rest, but ultimately, we cannot hang onto any state of being.
This is a double edged sword. When we achieve equilibrium and a sense of contentment, we tend to want to stay there. Instead, something comes along and dashes our best intentions. We start feeling antsy or restless or bored or just plan depressed–life feels off again, and we question what happened. Life happened. Change happened. We are cycling through something, learning something, getting another perspective, whatever you want to call it. The break is over and it’s time to experience something different.
This can be frustrating and even agonizing, but imagine where we’d be if our feelings and state of being never changed? When we’re feeling depressed or out of balance, all we can think of is wanting that to change.
Accepting the full spectrum of experiences seems to be the only way to navigate this 3-D world. We can either be with what is as it is or we can fight against it. In my experience, resistance to what is, only makes it last longer and feel worse.
This is a tough thing to get. Perhaps I’m a slow learner, but most of my life has been spent seeking a solution to the way things are. The search for transcendence and enlightenment is all about wanting things to be different. I’ve always assumed that if I looked long and hard enough, I would finally find someone or something with an explanation that would help me escape the pain and challenges of existence.
The answer–acceptance–had been there all along, but until recently I didn’t like that answer. I saw it as giving up or resigning oneself to a life of quiet desperation. I didn’t see it as the powerful tool it was, until recently. A convergence of a number of circumstances in my life had brought me to my knees leaving me with few other options, so I decided to give it a try.
And to my amazement, it worked. I began to feel glimmers of peace and contentment in ways that I never had previously. Instead of working hard to change the externals, I focused on changing my reactions and overall attitude. It made a huge difference. I shifted my viewpoint from seeing circumstances happening to me to simply happening.
It was as if I’d found a port in the storm, a place to be in the midst of the apparent chaos unfolding around me. A huge breakthrough, to be sure. However, there is also a trap here. There is a fine line between acceptance and complacency or acceptance and passivity, which goes back to what I wrote earlier: there is no arriving. Great, I can control my reactions and experience more peace and comfort in my life, but I cannot then get stuck in this neutral zone, hang out there avoiding and ups and downs.
To be truly awake and alive, we need to stretch; we need to break down the barriers of the familiar and the habitual on a regular basis. To do this requires coming out of our caves and putting ourselves deliberately in situations that keep us on our toes.
Think about it: where are you playing it safe? Hiding out? What are you avoiding? What limitations define your life and your being? To really look at this you need to take stock.� Make a list of things you believe you can’t do. See what that looks like. Beyond that you can make a list of things you ALWAYS think, feel or do and things you NEVER think, feel or do. You will� begin to discover how small your world is, how much of a box you live in.
Basically, if you’re not stretching on a regular basis, you’re not living. If you’re not trying new things, challenging yourself, scaring yourself and making yourself uncomfortable, you are living a limited life.
Muscles that aren’t stretched become toxic and stagnant. So do we when we don’t stretch. Acceptance and surrender and being in the present are all beautiful tools to create peace and equilibrium. But we also need movement and change and growth. For each of us this looks a little different. That’s what makes it so exciting.
Where are you willing to stretch?
