Why aren’t we all allowing ourselves to live in our natural state of joy? Why don’t we realize that it is our own resistance that makes us so unhappy in the long term? It is totally possible to not resist unhappiness and get right back to happy relatively quickly, almost every time.
Shit Happens: Joy Awaits
Something shitty happens. Then we get upset. We call this life. Shit literally and metaphorically happens all the time. We can be upset about the shit in the moment, evaluate the real damage, and release our upset.
When we go through this grieving process, for events both large and small, we can return that much more quickly to our natural state: joy. When we give in to joy and allow it to be our natural state, we remember how it feels, even when we’re struggling, even when we’re grieving, so we become that much more willing to return to it. So we do the work required to return to our natural state. We surrender to whatever is happening in the moment.
Pinball Machine: Random Joy
Two years ago, I began the process of surrendering. For almost 40 years I had moments of joy and moments of pain, and they always seemed random and chaotic, and I was always just hoping for the best. I felt like a pinball in the machine, bouncing around, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, always left to change.
Like many survivors, I learned to close myself off to too much pain caused by this random process by numbing. My chosen form of numbing was power tripping. I armored myself up so thoroughly, and created this superior devil may care attitude that I fined tuned over decades, that I never allowed myself to feel too much pain, which, of course, meant I also could never feel too much joy. The feeling spectrum works like that, unfortunately; you block the dark, and you block the light. Sorry.
Then, as I began to allow my armor to fall away, piece by perfectly secure piece, I also began to feel enormous pain. I had to look in the mirror with clear eyes, I had to see myself raw and exposed. I had to take responsibility for all my own bullshit. I had to acknowledge the pain I had caused others in my attempt to feel powerful, in my attempt not to get hurt myself.
It Is Not Easy to Open Up
It still isn’t easy.
I remember the day I broke down during my very first meeting with a medium, a woman I had never met. I didn’t actually know anyone at this medium/channeling circle. I had been invited by a social media acquaintance, and I went on a divinely guided whim.
This medium cracked me wide open, exposing just how much I was holding back in life. She showed me how much I held back specifically from the one person I was supposed to be truly open with, my life partner, my best friend. My husband.
Fuck.
I had been holding back an enormous amount of myself from my husband. It is simply who I had always been. Never give myself too much to anyone. What if I get hurt? Can’t have that.
When I realized that I would have to open up to my husband, and to the full spectrum of real feelings, I bucked at first. But I also recognized that I wanted more real control over my own life, not the face power trip control I had been on. I recognized through intense study and practice that the only way to gain that control was to surrender to love, surrender to joy, and yes, as an unhappy byproduct, surrender to pain.
Oh but I was so afraid!
It hurts to get hurt.
Fuck.
But.
It feels amazing to allow the hurt to wash over you, to feel it fully, and to release it and return to joy.
I never even imagined this pain to joy process was possible.
Now, I practice not holding on to anything. Studying Buddhism alongside the law of attraction and secular spirituality has helped me a ton with remaining lovingly detached.
When I realized that none of the stuff I was getting so caught up in was really all that serious, it became increasingly easier to just let go.
I just give in, give up, and let go.
After all this time, I still instantly tense up when negative feelings come to me, before I allow them to simply have their say and move on.
Covid: Joy in Crisis?
The Covid 19 pandemic has allowed me to explore my surrender process in depth.
Suddenly I will be seized with fear, not from the coronavirus itself. I am truly not afraid of this by all accounts mild virus taking hold of the globe right now.
But I will get afraid of the fallout from the virus, the lockdown, the shame and blame aimed at those of us not touting the party line, at the long term implications of our response to the virus. I will read about unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger in the wake of this virus and feel distraught.
It feels so big and so all encompassing. It feels devastating.
And as someone who has committed her life to helping others, especially those most vulnerable in our society, I find the American responses to Covid 19 to be yet another form of class and racial warfare.
Not With the Mainstream
Furthermore, while I do believe we should keep non-essential businesses closed and even encourage new ways of operating essential businesses that keep our essential workers more able to keep themselves healthy and strong, I do not believe we should be isolating or locking ourselves away in our homes.
I believe we should be out in the sunshine, moving our bodies, splashing in the ocean, running through fields, hiking on trails.
And, yes, I believe we should be socializing.
I think we should be exposing the strongest and healthiest among us, slowly, to the virus in small groups.
The bottom line, the point no one is considering, the issue no one is talking about, is that we are all going to get exposed to Covid 19, or some mutation of it, at some point or another. Locking ourselves away in our houses and eliminating all exposure only delays the inevitable.
We are looking at 18 months, or longer, before we see a vaccine, and even then, not everyone is going to want to line up for a brand new vaccine.
In the meantime, we should be building natural immunity on a small scale among those of us with the strongest immune systems.
We have to accept, as a society, that germs happen, that humans have been growing and evolving alongside viruses since the beginning of time. They are a part of life, and we cannot hide in our houses every time a new microbe springs into action. Indeed, hiding in our homes likely does more harm that good.
In the last week I have seen more and more doctors and medical researchers come forward with this considered opinion, and I can’t help but think the numbers of experts on this side will grow.
But for now, it is a very unpopular opinion.
Understandably.
Fear Breeds Panic
We’re all afraid for one reason or another, and fear makes us jumpy and panicky, and, quite often, mean.
I have been the object of some nasty comments, snide remarks, and just plain indifference. My opinions on this matter have been brushed aside as stupid, ignorant, and unworthy of attention.
Ouch.
That hurts.
I left many groups I was part of after I was treated like an idiot. I deleted the Facebook app from my phone. I briefly considered simply leaving social media and the outside world altogether. I live on the side of a freaking mountain in rural Southern Oregon. I’ll just remove myself from an angry and fearful society that wants to shout me down and out entirely. I’ll stay here within my little happy circle of friends and family.
All good.
And when I told my husband my plan, he said “right on.”
And my mother said, “good idea.”
And my best friend said, “hmmmmm….”
Shit.
Through a few days of back and forth via messaging, my best friend helped me see that removing myself from everything that hurts or pisses me off is the same as numbing and power tripping.
If I simply avoid all situations that might cause discomfort or pain, I am not growing, I am not learning, and I am blocking the darkness.
Which means I am also blocking the light.
Shit.
So I decided to stay.
I found a middle ground where I can engage, stay open to information from all sides, offer my opinion, allow others to agree or disagree, feel my feelings about the engagement, and let go and return to joy.
I can hold my opinions loosely, remaining open to changing my mind and reminding myself that my natural state is joy.
I left the Facebook app off my phone. Who needs that kind of constant nagging attention? Not me.
I allowed myself to return to the groups I am in where I know I am loved, even when I am not agreed with.
And I have returned to the work I was doing all along anyway; I am working on growing into a real writer, a real, fully present woman at peace, based in joy.
Rainbow After the Rain
Since this latest journey through pain and back to joy, I have felt another piece of my new self click in to place.
I have spent the last week feeling overwhelmed with a deeply present, in the moment, joy.
A joy so big and so personal and so intense that I also feel that nagging in the back of my mind: “when is the other shoe going to drop?”
“It can’t possibly be this good.”
I watch my toddler giggle, her top teeth bowed out from excessive pacifier use. I notice the fullness of my 9 year old’s cheeks, the curls coming back into her growing hair. I laugh with my husband more. I appreciate my mother and my grandmother just for who they are.
And I think to myself, “how can it be this good?”
And then I answer myself, “it just is. Let it be.”
It just is, when you let it be.
A Simple Life Full of Joy
We don’t have much. We have simple jobs. Simple lives. Simple loves.
And yet we have so much.
And when I’m able to look at what we have, and how damn fortunate we are, to have each other, to be healthy, to have a home, to have meaningful work that pays well, to have our eyes and minds and hearts open, I am so full of joy that I know deep down it is because I have let go of the need to hold it all in and hold it all back.
I can feel pissed, afraid, frustrated, irritated, mistreated, hurt, sad, and get curious about those feelings.
Then I can look around and ask myself, how serious is this particular negative experience? How serious is it, really?
99% of the time, the answer is, “not very.”
I have spent a lifetime making a mountain out of a molehill, and I’m done.
Now, I see the molehills for what they are.
I honor the molehills, and I walk around them, back to joy.
If Covid 19 is teaching us anything at all, it is teaching us that life is fleeting, that it is a gift, and that everything can change in an instant.
The best thing we can possibly do amid that kind of certain reality, is live in each instant with joy. And when the pain comes, as it inevitably does, we can feel it, go through it, and get back to joy.
Let us stop surviving, stop blocking, stop shutting down.
Let us start living, start feeling, and start opening up.
Let us make lives out of returning to joy.
And let us meet each other there, in our moments of joy.
Imagine the world we could create if we all did that.