Tinderbox Times blog - Day 4

Here’s how I sit with uncertainty.

First I don’t sit with it. I ignore it because it’s too frickin’ uncomfortable. I do everything I can to avoid it. Watch Netflix, eat crisps and chocolate, drink wine, pick a fight with my partner.

At some point I realise what’s happening and come to. I’ve been far away, not present with myself or anyone or anything else. I’ve numbed out, gone vague and gooey. There is something I don’t want to be with. What is it?

Usually I need to do something physical to shake me up. Go for a long walk in the woods. Climb a wall (literally, at the climbing centre). Ride my bike. Mindful movement, yoga, swimming. Not running. Never running.

Then, once I’ve got the endorphins going and am feeling a bit more energised, I rest. I rest in lots of different ways. Taking a hot bath, always with bubbles. Rolling around on the comfy white shag rug on my living room floor, looking up at the sky outside my window watching the clouds roll by. Napping. Meditating. Taking photos. Writing. Dancing.

Whatever it is I know it’s good for me. Designed to support my parasympathetic nervous system to kick in. Then it’s time to connect. These days it’s usually with my partner who I seek out, interrupt whatever they’re doing and lean in for a big, long hug.

Sometimes it’s a friend, colleague or family member. People I can’t hug right now but I can still see and talk to on Zoom.

Once I’ve done all those things, I come back to myself. I feel into how I am now. What is left that I can’t be with?

This is where, at least for me, the breath becomes refuge, a teacher, a guide. The constant, natural movement of air in and out of the body always has a story to tell. Here, there’s tension. Here expansion.

Here there’s something that doesn’t want to be known, numb and mysterious. Here there’s something calling out for attention, arising out of the depths, tingling out on the edges, or dancing somewhere in between.

Now I’m deep and full and moving freely. Now I’m shallow and tight and sticking to everything.

Deeper and deeper into the felt sense, I follow the breath like a curious companion. Show me everything, I want to feel it all. Even the unwanted bits, the banished parts, even with them there’s relief in the finally “being with”.

And what is there to be with, once I get down to the bottom of it? What is this thing I call uncertainty? When I finally go and look for it, there is nothing to be found. Maybe sometimes a whiff of a self clinging to the idea that things should be or go a certain way. But even that has no solidity when I try and look it directly in the eye.

And always and over and over I learn the same lesson. It’s actually not that bad when I finally stop resisting. The problem was always the pushing away.

Today while working with mindfulness teachers on how to bring kindness and compassion to our experience and that of our students I held a piece of rose quartz in my hand. The feeling I get in my body, subtle and soft, while holding it somehow takes the edge off.

We explored the tender territory of resistance. What it does to us and what it does to our relationships. The truth is, we can’t be with anything in anyone else until we can be with it in ourselves.

This is what it all comes down to. And when I say all I mean ALL. All of it. All the pain, and sorrow and bitterness and hatred. It starts and proliferates when we abandon the rawness of what it is to be human.

So being with uncertainty, really, truly learning how to be with uncertainty, is kind of like a spell we can cast. First on ourselves and then on each other. A spell made of the hope for a better tomorrow. Knitted together from the threads of our own courageous turning towards.

Each and every one of us.