Another week, another layer

on moments we cannot escape yet dare not look directly at.

As I meander through the obvious layers of my own wanting - that is, wanting things to be different than they are, wanting things to happen that aren’t, wanting to have something I don’t…to be someone I’m not…I’ve stumbled upon a layer that crawls through me, far below that which my personal growth library has equipped me to fix or heal. 

I have found the bedrock, it seems, of my own self-critical whispers…where the voices aren’t booming and the energy isn’t frenetic. Rather, the thoughts and sensations that are born here flow like lava - slow, patient…and thorough. Endlessly creeping into the crevices of my very being, coating each moment with a reminder that it is vulnerable to destruction at the flick of its white hot wrist.

But what makes these thoughts so malicious isn’t the intensity of them…they aren’t interested in participating in the emotional hijacking, nor the dramatic storylines, that our insatiable ego feasts on. Nor is the source of their fortitude our obvious pressure points, the ones that take no effort to locate…the internal oceans that harbor our deepest fears and insecurities. 

No, rather these thoughts are the raindrops that fill the streams that feed the rivers that flow into the oceans that become the tidal waves that crash down upon us, squeezing the air from our lungs, and humbling us to our knees. 

These thoughts flicker imperceptibly in the background of every waking moment, throttling our experience of peace through the unassuming gateway of a Chinese finger trap, revealing its grip only in a moment I wake up, see it, and try to pull away.

Their genius is that they make themselves feel ordinary, a sting as dismissible as a paper cut…a wound better healed when ignored and forgotten about.

But slowly wilting from a thousand unhealed paper cuts is not tragic in the romantic kind of way.

The tragedy is that we think these thoughts are dirty secrets we must hide away from the rest of the world, often including our own consciousness, though in truth we all share the same dull ache of shame around them.

Like the sun, we live our life immersed in these moments while doing our best not to look directly at them…after-all, we cannot choose whether or not the sun rises and sets, the sun doesn’t need our help navigating the skies and it definitely doesn’t care whether we want to feel it upon our skin or not. These moments will never cease to exist so long as we are human. They have entangled themselves so completely into the knots of our very being that they simply now exist within us, unchallenged and unscathed by our futile attempts to control them. 

For me, these moments are so quiet that if I’m not looking for them, they evade me entirely. Like when my hand casually lands on my tummy to check for the absence of pinchable excess…

…or I throw an unassuming dagger the size of a pin at my own reflection should my hair dare disobey or my skin betray me.

Like when I compulsively throw out the tub of ice cream to silence its catcalls and end the mental debate cycling through my untrusting mind…

…or I order the salad (dressing ots) instead of the brie and fig and bacon anything.

Like when I walk to the ocean and the shift of energy, the taste of salt on my lips, the grounding salve that is the remembering of how small I really am, doesn't even register because I’m too busy getting my steps in…

…or I’m half-listening to another audiobook that’s supposed to heal me or something. 

And when I automatically attempt to one-up myself every time I sit down to write before I am reminded that that’s not at all the point…or when the words won’t come as I hoped they would and I strain to squeeze something brilliant out, as feverishly as I’ve fought for the last dollop of toothpaste. 

To me, these thoughts are plain - they are ordinary and predictable and unobtrusive. They exist on the sidelines, arriving in quick sharp bursts, like a hot ember popping free from the steady stream of lava that flows through my veins, and just as instantly folding back into itself once more.

They are there and then they are not, and so they are easily ignored. Pretended away. Acceptable simply because I do not attribute my deepest pain to them. I do not hold them responsible for the kind of suffering that swallows me up…the human stuff that that poetry is written about.

But what if ignoring them tugging on our sleeve is what’s creating its power over us…

…and what if these moments are leaving tiny cuts only because we’re so afraid to open our eyes and face them that we keep tripping over their sharp edges?

I think that the way we disarm ourselves is simply through acknowledging these moments for what they really are…a subtle reminder of the humanity that exists in each of us…a current that binds us together…a slow burn of pain meant to serve as contrast to all of the beautiful moments that happen as well…a healing balm in its own right

When we stop seeking only the pleasant, we begin to see that all moments, regardless of preference, offer us something…even the tiniest ones that creep about robbing us of precious seconds spent in peace and equanimity. 

When we can hold these tenderly without willing them to change, disappear or never return…I imagine this is what fully being with our humanness could look like…I think that’s when we’ll heal without even trying. 

At least that’s how I’d like to relate to them as often as I’m able to wake up to them.

That’s how I’d like to be softer with myself this week.

x - laura