this is the time to practice
i'm going back to my roots and you're coming with me
this week’s Thought (singular)
it gets dark by 5pm these days, it’s so ominous
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they stay warm. thank you for joining us. may you have all the jackets, beanies, socks, and other hardware to stay cozy in a cold winter.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
hi
it’s been a while since i saw you on a saturday evening. it feels good.
so much of the last year and a half has been characterised by waiting. waiting for things to get easier, waiting for time, waiting for a lighter schedule, and more recently, waiting to get out. and so much of what i’ve felt is an anticipation for these things, a bone-deep desire to bolt out of here, an i-can’t-wait-ness in everything i do. i say i can’t change my life if i don’t change my lifestyle, and i say i can’t change my lifestyle if i don’t leave. if something else doesn’t change. i say something’s gotta give, and i wait wait wait for that something to give, and while i’m waiting, time passes. the time passes anyway.
when things are difficult, and things have been difficult for some time, i decide that i cannot fix anything until things get easy. and i wait for that ease, and i keep waiting, but i don’t think i know what that ease i’m craving even looks like. i wait to get out, and in the waiting, i lose months of my life to this gnawing, clawing desire to leave. the time passes anyway.
the annoying part is that this is the time to practice. the difficulty is from the pushing, but to get out of the difficulty, i need to push more in a different direction, which still feels like pushing, but this is the time to practice. and isn’t that the most irritating realisation? that you could be tired on a cosmic level and the only way to be less tired and stop feeling like running away is to do things, and not wait wait wait for things to become easier. of course i can do things when things are easier. i can do anything when things are easier. when things are not easy, that flips on its head and makes me feel like i can’t do anything, and this is the time to practice.
two things i read recently that made me flesh this thought out clearer -
in an edition of
-The wince appears at different times for different reasons. Sometimes it happens when I’m supposed to go for a run but it’s cold and dark outside. Sometimes it happens when I let emails I should respond to pile up, or when I’m avoiding a particular conversation with a friend. I call it the wince because it appears as this visceral sense of wanting to duck away, lean out, swerve. I used to understand it as “I just don’t feel like doing this,” but as I get more in touch with my emotions, I understand that my wince is specifically about avoidance—and usually, I’m avoiding something I actually want to do. In fact, I wince specifically when I want something and I expect getting it to be unpleasant.
That’s where the wince comes in. I find that the things I’m avoiding, paradoxically enough, are often things that would move me towards a healthier pattern. Like I’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping too late and I know I need to force myself to get up because I like being awake early, but every morning when my alarm clock goes off I just want to slam the snooze button. Or I feel happiest and healthiest when I’m running every other day, but I’ve fallen out of my routine and every day feels too busy to be the day to start again. Or I know my sister is annoyed at me about something, but I’m avoiding the conversation and letting it fester because I’m anxious. The feeling of wanting to run away, paradoxically enough, is a signal that I care.
from an edition of
-This is the time to practice, I keep finding myself saying. Not when things are magically solved, better, more easeful, more spacious… not when I look out at the world and see everything I long for miraculously unfolding … not when all struggle has ceased, only light emanating from the horizon… but now, right in the very center of everything.
i’m trying to work through the tough times, rather than wait through them. it’s an intentional, private process, and i don’t know what it looks like yet, but waiting hasn’t helped. for all the inaction the word conveys, waiting feels like a mad scrabble to escape, like a panicked and permanently brewing internal storm, and working would be slower and more deliberate. i put my foot in my mouth last month when i said i wanted chaos, but i’m back to regularly scheduled programming - slowness, calmness, intention. when i came here, i had convinced myself that these things are not possible in a space and phase like where i am, but i’m telling myself that this is possible even now. that even when things are difficult, it is a choice to make them difficult for myself. that this is the time to practice.
last week i had shared this nur turkmani poem -
this is a realisation i’ve had before, and it’s a lesson i’m learning again. i’m trying to revise with grace.
i’ve also often referenced this part from rilke’s letters to a young poet before, many times and most affectionately in this thodi post from early last year -
i’m telling myself that to live is to live my problems, and living my way to an answer is easier and more enriching than waiting my way to one.
until next time.
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A Picture!
English Recitation Competition
Cutting Loose, William Stafford (read the full poem here)
Certain twisted monsters always bar the path – but that’s when you get going best, glad to be lost, learning how real it is here on the earth, again and again.
Untitled, James Baldwin
Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? Do not get carried away by the sound of falling water, the marvelous light on the falling water. I am beneath that water. It falls with great force and the light Blinds me to the light.
The Fountain, Charles Baudelaire (read the full poem here)
My dear, your eyes are weary; Rest them a little while. Assume the languid posture Of pleasure mixed with guile. Outside the talkative fountain Continues night and day Repeating my warm passion In whatever it has to say. The sheer luminous gown The fountain wears Where Phoebe’s very own Color appears Falls like a summer rain Or shawl of tears.
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this week’s Song
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thank you for reading, and see you next time <3