Courtesy of Canva
Protection out of Fear
I know well the strong feelings of resistance that arise when things in my life begin to show signs of unraveling.
I remember going into fierce mother-bear mode, where my "cub" was my identity or sense of purpose in the world. I can still feel the fight that has risen in me in the past to claim that which was already melting and slipping out of my fingers; times when I've clung to gold that was losing its luster and reverting to the lead it always was beneath, or times I demanded my carriage not turn into a pumpkin long after midnight.
I've sacrificed sleep, well-being, quality time with family and friends, energy, and even some of my own dignity to salvage some expression or other of myself that, the universe had made clear, was coming to an end.
I can remember fighting like hell to "make things work", to "keep it going," to "hold on to what I'd built." I believed I had the strength, the perseverance, work ethic, and the never-say-never mental attitude from my upbringing and of a culture that believes that everything of value is gained through a "fight" and continual upward and forward movement. Never backward. Never down. Never letting go.
You know these mantras. They are probably also ingrained in you.
These mantras are not from a place of wisdom. They come from fear—the fear of the unknown, of the unexplained, of the misunderstood, of the strange, of the unconscious.
They come from a society that not only promotes toxic positivity, but toxic productivity: growth as the only valuable outcome, a world in which the yang energies (upward, outward, active, aggressive) are always more welcome and respected than the yin energies (downward, inward, resting, passive).
This is a world that sees its role as making "good citizens," not nurturing and supporting the evolution of human beings. These are very different things. Citizens behave, fit in, follow establishment, believe the stories they're told, live, stay awhile, and then die quietly like the world asks them to.
Human beings reflect, change, dissolve, reconstitute into something new. Human beings—true human beings—challenge, express, create, question, and live multiple lifetimes in just one span.
Citizens are to become like steel—unbendable, erect, weatherproof; human beings mimic the cycle of nature itself.
A world hell-bent on growth at all costs
The world we live in doesn't understand falling apart. Therefore, it doesn't respect it either. It doesn't make room for the people who do—a "gap" in a resume better have a good explanation. This is a world hell-bent on growth at all costs—even the cost of our mental and physical health, even at the cost of a healthy and happy society.
This world—including and maybe even especially the self-help and personal development worlds that profess to care about our "mindset", looks the other way when someone is having a crisis or a meltdown. Or, perhaps these people are good for a joke. We've become quite keen to watch people meltdown on camera, but how often do we ask what lead to that meltdown in the first place? We don't ask; we just know we don't want to be them, or even be around them. We see someone falling apart and immediately think "failure."
If we happen to find ourselves on the verge of a breakdown, we're told, overtly or subtly:
Get back up.
Fight.
Don't stay down.
Down is dangerous.
Once you're down, you'll never get back up.
Down is deadly.
We want to control our identity, our image, and our reputation so badly that we'll grab hold of a thin, fraying thread of something-we-know than fall into the abyss of the unknown, otherwise known as the Dark Night of the Soul.
The Dark of the Soul is a confusing time in human life. There is no sense of how long it will remain dark. If you're lucky, you might find someone who's been there, and can give you the faith you need to know that it will end, but you can't take anyone with you. You will not emerge on the other side the same person who went in.
And yet.
If you don't go in, if you keep trying to fight and push and strive and force—the price you pay will be so much higher than a willing entry into the Dark Night. If you don't go in, every time you return to the mouth of this place, the Night will get longer and darker. If you don't go in, someday, the universe will force it upon you—disease, illness, pain, even death.
The choice between going in and refusing to accept that we must is not a lesser-of-two-evils type decision. Because I voluntarily went in, here's what happened:
Some of my best understanding of who I am (and, just as importantly, who I am not) came in the times of darkness where I had no attachments to being anything anymore.
My courage to do and say hard things no longer comes from the hard places in me—such as resolve and endurance—but is born from the soft places in me that remain unattached to the outcomes and even playful about the journey.
My trust in my current path comes from having chosen it from a multitude of other choices—choices that I would've never known existed if I had instead gone down with the ship of the falling-apart choice I'd already made.
In this dark and quiet places, I resurrected dreams that I'd forgotten about on my quest. For example, I can remember, as a child, imagining a book with my name on the cover. I didn't remember this dream until the quest I was on to make a different kind of name for myself died.
Falling apart is not for the weak. It doesn't make you weak, either. It is for the wise, and it makes you wise. Falling apart is for the human beings that understand life is cyclical, and that in every death there is the promise of rebirth.
This is why I love dandelions so much.
The dandelion knows what it means to go through a life cycle. It teaches us that there is beauty in change and in death and that nothing is meant to stay the same. It is smart enough to not resist these changes, to not cling to what was.
I am always, and ever, not who I was, and not yet who I will be. I remain in a state of eternal transformation, letting go, trying on, deepening into the lessons of what it means to be human.
Don't try to label me; I don't even like to label myself. If you do, I will surely disappoint you, because just when you might think that's stable, I'll shape shift. It's my nature; in fact, it's human nature.