A Life Wasted on Trivialities
I am allergic to advice right now. I am also being extra mindful not to be giving it.
This is making opening social media, and posting on social media, Instagram mainly, nearly impossible. I am being shouted at to post about Gaza and the genocide, I am being shamed into ‘choosing a side’ and labeling myself a colonizing, ignorant, racist if I do not muster up some sort of message or rageful opinion to scream into the bottomless and unresponsive abyss.
I am being told to weight train, and that my husband is probably not good enough for me. I should probably to spend my life savings on ancestral lineage healing retreats, and I am never going to be a good enough parent for my children if I don’t xyz. Also, everything or every way I choose eat is poison, probably.
I have always felt like my ‘feed’ was curated, full of inspiring women and people sharing supportive messages and helpful tools. The income stream mixed with the messaging has become too confusing. In most of my life I am feeling squeezed. Creating desire, or feeling of lack, then offering something to fill that….this routine is getting boring, honestly, and just icky. The confusion that capitalism brings is loosening the glue that keeps us grounded in what is true, undoing the stable center of our values. Perhaps this subtle and powerful acid is the final act of disintegration of the old way, in order to make way for the rebirth of our society and culture, our humanity.
The complete dissolution of relationship, then the false rebuilding, or invitation to rebuild in some non-personal, non-intuitive, way.
The last two weeks were intense in my life, took me out of my normal routine, shaking up my physical and mental ways of being, leaving me musing in the liminal space of chaos. It started when I suddenly became super ill, I thought with a virus or Covid, for which I tested negative. Luckily my naturopath suggested a chest x-ray, and I was diagnosed with pneumonia, for which I was treated with antibiotics. Which seems to have been the correct medicine.
This event caused my husband and I to push back a big trip we had planned, which was a lot of work to change around. Luckily we could, and pushing it back a few days we made it. I mention this because it was another 8 days or so where I was able to be out of my usual environment and routine.
I have been musing on the lessons of this illness, of which there could be many. One of those is the beautiful, dreamy, shake up that being in a delicate body state brings. As I am sure anyone who has chronic illness, or whom has experienced a similar compromised body state knows well. It is reminding me a lot of my experiences in early postpartum.
Things fall away, and I only have energy for what is most important. Truths and values became quite clear when I am ill. The bullshit meter is very sensitive. Like in postpartum, there was no mistake in knowing of the true value of each human life, the effort it takes to bring each of us here. The fierce dedication and intensity of emotion of mothering. The clear understnding of the misdirected energy, distraction and confusion in the world, in no doubt created by men, honestly, who might never know that truth. Or if so, only through their remembrance of the connection with their own mother.
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
―Charles Bukowski
This. When I get really sick, or feel a brush with death, the essence and purpose of life becomes more clear to me. The resistance or resentment takes too much energy to muster. Surrender is kind of the only way. But it wasn’t a giving up…the life force/desire to live/fear of death is too strong. The ego gets too tired to maintain and it was helpful for me to see what was underneath again.
To remember that mothering and hearth keeping are number one, that once I became a mother there was nothing more important, more human, more earthly and natural for me to offer my prana to.
When I was in Hawaii, I received the message that ‘efforting is not necessary.’ I don’t need to try to make anything happen, karma will unfold. I don’t need to waste vital life force energy changing who I am , or doing something I am not meant to/flowing into already doing. That more joy and presence will come from sitting back. To be aware of how I utilize my precious prana, to discern trivialities from truth.
The morning before we left, I sank into the warm ocean, head right above the surface, and rested at sea level for a few precious moments. Seeing along that plane of existence, barely above the thick weightiness of the watery level below. For that moment I felt I could see farther, I felt into a congruency between my cells and those outside of mine. An expansion, maybe, a potential for deeper understanding or knowing, but did not touch on anything intellectually. Perhaps that moment or series of moments wasn’t long enough. And so it was perfect.
