Sometimes the Moment Just Sucks
Sometimes too much stimulation demands our attention, and dries us out.
Sometimes shitty things just happen. Because they happen.
Sometimes our capacities, our flexibilities are drained, compromised.
Sometimes the moment just sucks.
Sometimes, right?
This past week wrung out my kishkes.
You know the Yiddish word, kishkes?
If you don’t, here is a really, REALLY good word:
(Yiddish—KISH-Kuhs), deep feelings, a person’s core.
My beyond-beloved little Niki-the-Dog had her yearly gastro-intestinal attack from hell, this one reaching new heights. Or new lows? Stomach led to other things.
Which led to other things. Which, of course, led to other things.
Sounds like life to me.
She was really sick, up all night, having to go outside on the hour. Which, of course meant I had to go outside on the hour. Throughout that long, long night. But she would do it for me. She would take me out, stand by me, in my gastro-intestinal hell-zone, if our roles were reversed. It’s the least I could do. I mean, I don’t have to send her to college, put braces on her teeth, or help her improve her SAT scores.
We both are recovering slowly, the Patient and Me, the Invalid and the Attendant, the Canine and the Humanoid. It was a hard week, because she wasn’t responding to treatment. The usual medications didn’t take; she got worse, I got frightened, and on and on, the days unraveled.
It was hard on the Kishkes. My innards were rattled, unsettled. TIRED. I am/was deeply, deeply tired. And now it’s improving and shifting. Eight days later, long one.
I used to believe that being an adult meant literally keeping the hard things away. Literally. Keeping them from happening. Having a life of roses and sunshine.
I now believe there are “no bad parts”*, all of what we receive is carefully curated for each of us, for our own personal growth and healing.
Damn it. I do believe that.
~~~
So how do we do it? How do we be with the hard stuff?
What do we do?
How do we ride the waves of the hard moments, the heartbreaks, the challenges that hunker down inside of us? How do we live with and move through the inevitability of loss, of transition? Of people breaking our hearts? Of world circumstances getting wilder and wackier?
Life on life’s terms, as we say in Twelve Step.
We intervene.
We intervene with kindness. With ourselves.
We intervene with a prayer. A blessing. A tapping of our tender hearts.
We intervene with a phone call to a member of our choir, the people who sing our tune with us.
We intervene with a walk, a bath, hugging a kitty, playing with a dog.
We intervene with nature. With music.
With intervene with lovingkindness.
Lovingkindness.
To ourselves.
And practice leaning in the opposite direction.
~~~
Here is a fabulous intervention, seven minutes of The Great Bell Chant: A Prayer for the End of Suffering– with chanting by Brother Phap Niem, the spoken word by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Thích Nhất Hạnh, beloved Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet, and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, is generally recognized as the main inspiration for Engaged Buddhism, the movement that applies ethics and compassion to social, political, economic and environmental suffering. Known as the “father of mindfulness”, Nhất Hạnh continues to be a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.
Give yourself this seven-minute intervention
~~~
Friends,
Give us the courage
And the strength
To keep practicing presence.
Give us the willingness
And the flexibility
To keep coming back.
Give us the kindness
To be tender
With our humanness.
Give us the rigor
To keep going.
May all beings benefit from our time together.
Blessings,
Aruni
~~~
*No Bad Parts, book title by Richard Schwartz, Internal Family Systems creator