Playing control theater happens at all levels- clean the closets/ grout/car, perform all manner of rituals, read another book, put a little money away, get that little gold band, march in formation, make tradition- and isn’t a sense of order satisfying?! Yet, it’s theater. Everything is a momentary stage set. It is all utter chaos out there….from the subatomic to the galactic scale – the weather, the economy, the political winds, your lover’s change of heart, your business associate’s schizophrenic break, a shift in the tastes of the market. From any angle at the human scale, the patterns are not controllable. And a person dies every two seconds on earth, which is the ultimate “not controllable”….some microbe seeking to reproduce might find you to be a very good host, or someone else takes a too quick turn on a wet road…and finito, curtains for you. I really do like playing the “Rainy December Saturday in a Woodland Cabin” game sometimes.. it’s safe and warm with O Holy Night on the Sonos and a seance-worthy allotment of candles glowing, and all is right for a moment. Stability has a high ROI, and can make life really really really easy. A kind of patrician self-satisfaction. I try not to mis-take the appearance of control for real control, because we all need to get comfortable with the chaos. Discomfort with chaos turns into increasing efforts at environmental mastery- and then that place where you miss the mark turns into anxiety, or panic, or overwhelm. Then we get angry and attack or we go numb and retract- that happens at the individual scale and the body politic. If we grasp too tightly at what seems safe, or get too identified with the feeling or order, we might make our world smaller and smaller, just to make sure we only do what is within our span of control. We take fewer risks, just to eliminate the feeling of riding on the whipping wind. In my lived experience, husbands get sick or fall in love with someone else, the house floods or burns down, the company you are attached to can be taken over, the people you once leaned into to build a dream can turn out to be (probably malignant) narcissists. My family moved houses 17 times, touching 3 continents, when I was growing up. And my family, like so many, was transformed by violent crime and war. My people, like many of yours, knew how to migrate. We know this, we are resilient. But there are different ways to hold it. One way is to brace for the destabilizing moment (how I learned when I was little) which comes with a tight holding of the breath and a lot of self-protection. Another way is to teach your spirit to surf. To live easily and sweetly in the earthquaking world, we can cultivate an equanimous and soft response to chaos, instability or change. We can learn to see and trust life, which contains both birth and death. We can practice imagining amazing alternative futures (with no obligation to act on them), we can practice going to new places, meeting new people not like us, getting out of our safe zone, we can practice being wrong, being afraid and doing it anyway, being messy (okay, here and there, don’t get carried away). Yes I will take furry blankets, ceremonial cacao, manicured hands and watching that mortgage balance go down, and I will know that it’s purely for enjoyment, I will savor all that and be grateful, and not to be attached. Nothing to be lost, nothing to be gained. Another destabilizing moment is likely, after all, not only did I built my dream on a volcano and affiance myself to a brilliant handsome addict, and choose to do yet another startup, I also breathe in the context of climate upheaval in a world in which nuclear bombs also still exist. So I still my heartmind with quiet and nature, attune, practice kindness. Remove the barriers to love I have erected, per Rumi. I learn to surf. Because it’s utter chaos out there, and no matter how lovely this moment, it is subject to change.
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