Live Now and Zen

Because even when it seems like a gag gift, the present is still a gift

Tag: the journey

Not Too Big or Too Small Or Too Hard Or Too Soft: A Tale Of Accepting I’m Just Right

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Practicing Self Love

“Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do — some…don’t ever want to.” ~Cheshire Cat

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s famous novel, reminds me of my experience in life. No. I’ve never met a grinning Cheshire Cat, although I would like to. I do, however, know how it feels to be disoriented, awkward, and entirely uncomfortable in my skin like Alice was. It’s how I’ve lived most of my life. Alice, as you may recall, drank some potion and shrunk her way into Wonderland and then ate some cake and grew so big she didn’t fit there anymore. In my case, someone I cared about would criticize my physical appearance, personal tastes or beliefs, or general demeanor, and I drank it in and got small. I began tiptoeing through my life, lest I be stepped on by larger creatures who appeared to have their lives together. What if I said or did something that proved how intolerable and unlovable I was? Other times, someone would acknowledge the good in me and I would greedily ingest it. Feeling bigger than usual, I would dare to be my true self with others, only to leave the interaction feeling I had occupied too much space. What if I’d bored them by talking too much while saying nothing interesting? Defeated, I would shrink again, caught in the same relentless pattern. One step forward, two steps back, slogging my way through my life, feeling forever out of place like Alice.

Somewhere deep inside, though, I knew the premise that I was the only scratch-and-dent model around was ridiculous. Maybe others were just better at displaying themselves in a way that minimized their flaws? Maybe they’d already worked on their parts so they were left with just a few scratches? I wanted to believe I was and I am fine as is. No adjustments necessary. Sure. Some people might wish I would speak out and stand up for myself more or just stop whining about feeling invisible. Other people might wish I would sit down and shut up so someone else could get a word in. But none of that was ever a me problem. Other’s opinions of me are none of my business, and shrinking myself to avoid judgment is not what I am here to do. I’m here to live my life and to be true to myself, no matter how many dings I’ve got. To achieve this, I going to have to leave my Alice analogy and walk myself into a different story, one I haven’t even considered occupying before.

After all, I’ve been Alice. I ate the cake and drank the potion. I became bigger and smaller to fit other’s narratives. What if, instead of being Alice, I take a shot at being Goldilocks? I can decide what to eat and in what type of chair to eat it. Maybe I will conclude I like my porridge cold because it’s basically overnight oats? Being Goldilocks and boldly choosing what I want in my life might move me quite a few steps toward Zero Fucks Given Road. It’s exhausting not being authentic, though, and I am tired of making slow progress toward self-acceptance. It’s time to practice wild and radical self-love. I can’t be Alice or Goldilocks. I can only be me. Yes. I am talkative. I can be defensive. I overthink everything. (Ask me how many times I pack and unpack and repack a suitcase before a trip only to end up with more than I need but nothing I want.) But, I am also curious, adventurous, determined, clever, and a little feisty, in the fun way. It’s what I am, the good and the bad, different and yet the same as every other human on the planet. So I will stop spending time with those who treat me as a tedious chore to be endured or a spouting fire hydrant to be capped. I will quit editing myself to fit into other people’s narratives. If I’m not Alice and I’m not Goldilocks, it’s about time I become my own protagonist.

“Damn. Somebody ate my porridge all up.” ~Baby Bear (probably)

Whatever Twitches, Twitches

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I found my own cable on a beach that led into the jungle and into the ocean.
I found my own cable on a beach…one end leading into the jungle and one end leading into the ocean. Scary how life imitates art.

A couple minutes ago I watched the credits roll on the final episode of LOST. I spent the past four weeks cruising through the series. It’s not that I missed the show during its original run. I watched it when it was on the air weekly. I was one of those LOST geeks, looking for “Easter eggs” and spending hours each week mentally dissecting the episodes. As an introvert who spends entirely too much time inside her own head working out mental details, that show was a perfect outlet for me at a time in my life when I was lost. It was easier to watch and find meaning in it than it was to make sense of the chaos, confusion, and struggles in my own life. LOST was an escape. During the years that show aired, there were plenty of times when I longed to be on a tropical island with Sawyer, although I might have envisioned one without smoke monsters and polar bears.

I remember as the show was in its final season, my friends and I discussed at great length how the writers were going to wrap it all up. There were so many details. They had tortured us mercilessly with unanswered questions each week. Would they be able to put all the puzzle pieces in place? After each episode in the final season, we would catalog explanations we’d received and bicker about whether they felt adequate and well placed. When the show ended and the final credits rolled, some LOST devotees were satisfied and others were, well….lost. I fell firmly into the first category. I was honestly happy that the writers left some pieces unexplained because that meant that I could watch the show over and over again and find my own meaning. There’s no fun if you’re given all the answers.

As I set out to view the series in its entirety this time, from the first episode of the first season all the way through the show’s finale, I suspected the show would make any more sense to me now than it did at the time. I would benefit from knowing the ending because that knowledge would change how I viewed the events leading up to it. I had my own theory about the characters and the story line, and I was going to test it out in my non-stop mind. I whipped my way through season after season desperately seeking whether the writers had hinted at the ending the whole time. Watching the show again was like having a conversation with a good friend you haven’t seen in years. It was as if no time had passed. And I discovered that the Season Three finale, Through the Looking Glass, was no less painful the second time around. I had a nice ugly cry over it again. I am not sure that wound will ever heal.

The closer I got to the end of the show this time around, though, the more I found myself letting go of the set up. I didn’t seem to care as much if my hypothesis was correct. By the point in Season 5 when Daniel Farraday says, “Whatever happened, happened,” I had let go of my obsessive need to figure the show out. Daniel was right. Truth is that it doesn’t really matter how it all happened. You can neatly fold back the layers like skin on a junior-high-biology-class frog, but it makes no difference. At the end of the day, all that matters is that it happened. Daniel’s insight reminded me of a quote from the Bunny Buddhism book:

One need not know why the nose twitches but simply know that it twitches.

You can spend your entire life looking for explanations as to why things have happened a certain way in your life. Why, perhaps, you ended up with the spouse you did or the career you have. How you ended up living somewhere you said you never would or how things have worked out nothing like you anticipated. Life is full of questions that are either unanswerable or answerable only with a huge degree of uncertainty about the validity of the answer. Mentally dissecting what is is merely a colossal waste of fleeting time. If we get bogged down with the details of our past, we can’t move forward in the present. It doesn’t matter how we get there but that we make the journey and make it worthwhile.

I don’t need to know all the answers to LOST to enjoy it. I don’t need to have it tied neatly in a bow. Likewise, I don’t need to have all the answers to be happy in my life. Whatever happened, happened. Whatever twitches, twitches. With each passing year it becomes more apparent to me that the why and how of life are not nearly as important as the that.