Duality & Rest
In this fast paced world, there is a common assumption that if you are not busy you are not worthy or you’re lazy. We wear ‘busyness’ like a badge of honour. Truth is, a lot of what preoccupies us and takes up our time is just a pile of mundane daily shit that we have to do, because well everything that needs doing takes time. I often veer off into quiet reveries in the midst of boring car journeys from point A to B on the commute or to drop/pick up children or groceries or animal food and think to myself, if I wasn’t doing all this stuff that seems to fill my days, what would I be doing?
If you had all the time in the world without being a mortgage debt slave, with no-one to answer to, with no particular thing to do or nowhere to actually be, what would you do? What would you be doing? In the manic hamster wheel of life that we somehow end up getting caught up in, many of us might say I’d be on a beach with a cocktail. But even that after time, would become boring and kind of soul destroying because there is no contrast, no yang to the yin and ultimately, little purpose. It is by experiencing both polarities that we come to know the ‘happy medium,’ the space in-between that we kind of coast along in, the majority of the time. A kind of comfortable gear where nothing out of the ordinary happens. Dare I say it, the mundane is the every day. And the every day is mundane.
Surely this ‘mundane’ base line exists as the steady line that allows the peaks of stellar life moments to rise and shine brighter. But then, what are they? Do they seep in? Do they take us by surprise and crash land? Sometimes yes. But are they also when we look a little bit closer, actually there more than we think - tiny nuggets of wonderment that make pocket sized peaks in amongst the linear hum drum? Like a swathe of traffic lights that turn green as you approach, a quiet coffee in the sunshine alone? Or the first slurp of wine when you begin dinner - onions and garlic simmering in butter as the smell captivates you as you prepare to feed the people you love. Or better still, the noise and cadence of dinner wafting up the stairs making you smile because someone is cooking for you. Seeing the seeds you planted shoot a little green out of the dark soil. Or getting ready for a night out and putting on some clothes that you feel good in and adding a swathe of bright lipstick? Laughing until your belly aches with your besties. So many possibilities.
And truly some of these peaks seem so magnified at times depending on the starting point. I can still remember being in sixth form on a Geography field tip having hiked up the most inhospitable of hills in the freezing cold. At the summit our teacher offered us a cup of warm milky coffee and a biscuit. It was like a life giving elixir that I could not stop gulping down. I could literally feel this simplest of things nourishing me from the top down, giving me energy to get back to base camp. I didn’t even drink coffee at the time, I didn’t particularly like it! But being so cold and empty, it tasted phenomenal and all these years later I can almost still taste it. I remember my Dad recalling a story about being stranded for hours in a tiny airport in impossible heat near Thailand. And then someone brilliant came along with the coldest can of Guinness. As a proud Irishman far from home, thirsty and extremely hot, he said even many years later that it was the best pint he ever had in his life - and he had sunk thousands of those. So depending on where you are along the line means the experience will resonate in a different way.
More recently, my little wonderment nugget is lying flat on my yoga mat after a really intense hot yoga session and feeling a tiny waft of cool breeze as the teacher teases the door open to let just a chink of cool air in. It’s like the gift of a full breath as she does. The feeling of having been so, so manic on the mat in the intense heat compared to the final act of stillness that allows you to sink and fall into the earth, knowing the hard work is done, is one of my happy places. The intense action compared to the intense rest yanks you clean out of mundanity and into something extra-ordinary. Another recent one is catching myself in the mirror and forgetting I had put make up on, filled my eyebrows in and brushed my hair (all quite rare now that country living is in full swing). I say to myself, oh! I don’t look like a total dogs dinner who hasn’t slept in a week! And I feel good because when you don’t wear it often, eyeliner really, really helps.
At the end of the yoga classes I teach, when the hard work is done and the room is in that space where you are given permission to pause, do nothing and soak up your practice, I sometimes read a poem. It can be a poem that I have come across in the week or one that I have saved in my yoga folder from ages ago that I just love or that really resonated when I first stumbled across it. There is no logic or reason to the timing or the content - it stems from something I feel is rising or needs saying after the class journey we have just gone on together.
These words in the quiet are intended (to my restful captive audience), as an invitation to tip deeper into the moment that they are in or instead as a take away for them to perhaps draw on or inspire them in the short or possibly longer term. I am always looking for inspo for these little short creative bursts and have even started writing some of my own (although not yet used in public). This was prompted by the severe lack of inspired books out on the market. I’ve found some good stuff (rare) some very average stuff and also some just really bad. Of course, I realise that this is completely personal and what I might find off putting is really poignant for others. But this week I came across a book thatI found wholly distracting for the wrong reasons. The author has placed the words on the page in a staggered way e.g
Fine tuning your listening,
not to the words
but to. the spaces. in bet w e e e n
or elsewhere,
like_little_gaps
So contrived, no? The poetry itself is quite good in places but this placement thing…?As my kids would say about something annoying, ‘Mum, it’s so jarring.’ Is all this fussing with stanza supposed to speak to me deeper because it is set out in this way? I personally find it has the opposite effect. It is utterly off-putting. Because the words really are enough on their own. You know that really uneasy feeling of someone just trying too hard. It’s that.
At the other end of the spectrum is a book of poetry I really do like - in fact the entire book is quite inspired. Here is one I really like…by Zach Beach from his book ‘Blissful Words'.’
The Unknown
The truth is,
We don’t know.
We don’t know the future,
the answer,
the real reason why we’re here,
or why some people do what they do.
But the world was never meant to be explained.
For once,
Give up the endless seeking
that only ties knots into your shoulders
Let go
of any desire to figure it all out
that keeps the world at an observable distance.
Stop trying to solve
the unsolvable puzzle,
and for once,
rest.
Completely,
naively,
beautifully,
rest
Let the muddy waters of questioning
come to stillness
watch the silt settle down
and rest in peaceful clarity.
Forgive yourself,
Forget yourself.
Forget everything else, and
completely,
naively,
beautifully,
marvellously,
rest.
Like that beautiful doggy up there in the picture. He knows how to do it. Us humans, we need to learn it.