E is for Energy
Maybe the one thing I’ve noticed about my own approach to dealing with the massive number of transitions and losses in my life these past couple of years is the way I’ve sourced my energy. I’ve decided there are two pots of energetic source to draw from: Fear and Presence.
I’ll tell you right now as I write this that where to source my energy to get through the tasks in my day is my biggest struggle—in life. Always has been.
By the time I was a teenager, the landscape of my family was complicated. My mother’s remarriage involved a lot of conflict with her new husband. Then there was a new baby brother she wasn’t equipped to fully take care of, so I was surrogate mother much of the time (Hi Matt. Love you!). By the time I was 14, my stress levels were through the roof. Since my mother and stepfather broke up and got back together again many times the first several years they were married, I never knew when I got home from school if I would find an empty house or if my stepfather would be there waiting for me.
My stepfather and I didn’t have a good relationship. He was young (only about 14 years older than I), unprepared to raise four children, perhaps confused about the marriage he’d found himself in. I don’t know all that might have been going on for him; what I do know is that he was a loose cannon. Sometimes he was chatty and seemed to want to befriend me while other times he cruelly bullied me, even physically struck out in violence periodically.
During my high school years, the one time of each day that struck fear into me was walking down our street after school. The bus dropped me off at the top of the block and my house was second from the end of the cul-de-sac. I had to pass about ten sets of homes to get to my end of the street, but I couldn’t see our driveway until I was only two houses away. I didn’t know until I was nearly home whether or not his car was in the driveway.
A slow tension built in my body as I walked that 150 yards each weekday. My chest tightened, and my stomach grew sour. I could feel myself rounding my shoulders to protect my heart. If the car was there, I would prepare to put my head down and walk straight for my room. If the house was empty, I would spread out and relax before my brothers arrived from their middle and elementary school busses. During that walk, I was suspended between fear and relaxation—not knowing which energy I would need to present with.
Many years later, I’ve found myself in a similar suspension. I needed to transform my life, but so many things had to be put in place. And then the deaths set me into grief. I find that too often, I round my shoulders and draw from fear to keep me moving through. Fear generates my motivation to go to work. Fear urges me to pay my bills. Fear motivates me to go to the doctor. Fear is at work in zillions of decisions. I move through the day preventing bad things from happening. And then I find there is no energy for joy or play or relaxation.
Sometimes, though, I can still the voices of fear and bring a laser focus to this very moment of time—to the life that exists right NOW, before anything bad has happened. Right NOW where this breath, the computer on my lap, the dog on the bed next to me, the clothes strewn around the room, the sun coming in the window, the sound of distant traffic, and the bird chirping on the fence outside my window is all there is. I can notice the aftertaste of coffee and feel of my glasses perched on the bridge of my nose. And I can draw from this moment right NOW to move me to… this next moment right NOW. The motivation to move into the next moment is only that the next moment is what arrives.
And here, right NOW, my chest cavity opens. I notice I’m not afraid because I’m not looking for a metaphorical car in the driveway. Not waiting for a shoe to drop. Can’t stop those shoes from dropping anyway, can we?
Here in this moment, enough energy is only needed to BE, not to produce or generate or fix or heal or… anything.
I’m practicing this laser focus in the mornings before I get started on my massive “to do” list because this is a better pot to draw from.
