I’ve voiced this blog post in case you’d like to listen.
I talk a good game about how to stay balanced:
Regularly be in nature and let its beauty land in you.
Pause when feeling rushed, or off balance. Breathe.
Meditate or sit for 10 minutes a day and clear your mind. Notice what is happening in you. When thoughts come, and they will, start again.
Find your flow space or flow activity and do it, daily.
Be with people you love and who love you.
Bask in a sunbeam.
Turn toward what is difficult and without judgement or agenda, be with it. Befriend it. Hold it loosely. And when it is ready, let it go and see how you feel then.
Despite all this, I regularly fall off my practices, and feel off-balance.
With all the stuff that is going on now, and as a Canadian, believe me when I say the threats feel “existential,” it’s no wonder. Lately, I’ve spent more time doom-scrolling than meditating.
Being off balance feels jagged inside me. I am short-tempered with people I love. I am tired. I am constantly trying to impress upon people how threatening the world is becoming for us all, how far away from kindness I feel we are falling. I am judgemental. I feel powerless and panicked. Like Chicken Little, no one is listening to me as I run around proclaiming that the sky is falling. It all feels pointless.
This morning, I finally answered the call to stillness.
I spent 10 minutes in stillness, supported by a guided meditation.
I spent time on my balcony, soaking up the winter sun on my face.
I walked with my son, who is visiting from Toronto, reconnecting our lives and our hearts.
I heard the spring birds twittering from their forest perches.
And I realized that while I can’t affect the outcome of “the situation,” I can affect how I move through my days.
And it has made all the difference to me, in me, today.
Being able to begin again is such a gift. Giving myself grace for falling off my practices, is also the same.
I’m not going to be perfect. I will still get caught up in all of it. I’m educated and thoughtful, the habit of “meaning making” is grooved so deeply in me. All the same, I can remember to shape my experience of it, and how I hold it in my heart. In this way, I can love myself, and love others, and move more smoothly through this time and this place.
This time and this place are not forever. Balance will come again, I know it will. Just as the world turns and the sun rises, the innate goodness of people will reassert itself and we’ll rebuild a world that is both compassionate and pragmatic.
This is what hope looks like for me: a belief that balance will return. That kindness will prevail.
All we can do is keep breathing… Ingrid Michaelson... this piece seems apt.
As I return to podcasting after my winter break, I’ll spend every episode in March exploring how to endure a topsy-turvy world. I hope you’ll tune in… Meanderings with Trudy where ever you listen to your podcasts.
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