The view from here isn't the only view

The story you tell about this time in your life isn't the only story. And the vantage point from which you're looking is not the only vantage point.Looking forwards, it might seem clear that you're on the way to a great success, or an inevitable defeat. Maybe it looks like life is all sorted: you've arrived and there is not much more for you to do. Or perhaps, from the depths of your confusion, it appears that you're lost and can never find your way back.Life is so much bigger than each of us, and so much more mysterious, that any story you have is at best partial. Looking back, what feels now like inevitable defeat may turn out to be a time of building strength: the strength you'll need to break out of the constraints that have been holding you back. What feels like being crushed by life could be the birth pangs of a new beginning. Maybe the solidity of your success so far turns out to be everything that will be taken from you.As Cheryl Strayed writes to her despairing younger self in Tiny Beautiful Things, it can turn out that "the useless days will add up to something", that "these things are your becoming."Everything changes. Nothing is ever just what it seems. And though you may feel sure you've understood your life, remember that it's very difficult to see which are the important parts, and quite why they're important, while you're still in them.

Photograph by Justin Wise

Dramas

Dramas - the stories you spin into being, which although perhaps painful and frustrating and fearful, place you right in the centre of the action.Dramas - all your stories of how people are not paying you due attention, seeing you in the way you want to be seen; all the ways you are left out, overlooked, your needs and wishes unnoticed and unmet; all the ways in which others are conspiring against you or, at least, taking care only of themselves; how the world seems organised to particularly frustrate your personal hopes, your longings.Dramas - perhaps unsurprisingly - are a powerful way of generating some sense of self-esteem in the midst of a world that's confusing, contradictory, and chaotic; a world far beyond our understanding which does not obviously attend to our particular needs and wishes as quickly or as completely as we would wish.Once we start to see that our dramas are not the way the world 'is' but a purposeful activity on our part to make ourselves feel better, or to get seen, or to manipulate others to get our needs met, perhaps we can begin to loosen our grip on them a little.Because by placing ourselves in the centre of the world, our dramas seriously reduce our capacity to respond to the needs and longings of others. And in this way our collective commitment to keeping our dramas going brings about exactly the self-centred world we fear is excluding us in the first place.

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Midrash

In the Jewish tradition, any story is an invitation to interpretation, to imagination, to invention. You read a story not so much for what's true in it, as for what can be imagined into the spaces. So a straightforward story can become the launching point for wildly differing interpretations, all of which are held alongside one another even if they're paradoxical, mysterious or downright contradictory.It's a tradition known as midrash and it embodies a commitment to see things from many angles, to have many different kinds of explanations for what might initially look obvious and simple. In midrash there's no such thing as a story with a monopoly on the truth.Often, it's helpful to do midrash with your own life, with your work, with your relationships.You probably already have habitual ways of explaining who you are, who others are, what's happening, and what's possible. Perhaps you currently have only one telling available to you, one that's so familiar, so trusted, you can't even tell that it's there.Making midrash from your own life involves starting to tell a different story from the one you're currently telling. Maybe you're not the righteous, wounded hero after all. Perhaps they're not out to get you, but are trying to help. Maybe you're not as in control of your life as you think - or perhaps you're much more in control already than you knew. Maybe it is possible for you to be someone who asks for what you want. Perhaps there's a contribution you're making that you can't see because of your self-critical stories. Maybe life has an invitation for you that's not going to come from trying harder and harder until you work yourself into the ground.These are just a few of the stories you might have about yourself and life, and a few of the alternatives you could start to imagine. You could also ask others how they'd tell the story of your situation - great midrash can begin simply from here.Even if you have only one way of explaining your life, it's already midrash, already just one interpretation of many that are possible.So much opens, and so much suffering can be avoided, when you stop believing your own stories as the only truth.

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Three myths to give up on if we want to grow up

At the times when the world has shrunk to its smallest horizons, when I have been most despairing, desperate, or alone, or when I have found myself working and pushing much too hard, it usually turns out that I have been living in thrall to one or more protective myths about life that I have carried from childhood.Myth 1 - I’m not like other peopleIn this account I’m not really a person, while other people are. Others' lives are complete in ways that mine is not. Other people know where they’re going, while I am lost. Other people made the right choices, while I stumbled. Other people aren’t as confused as I am. Other people don’t suffer as I do.Underpinning this myth is a great deal of negative self-judgement, which fuels a sense of deflation, self-diminishment or self-pity. But it can equally be worn as a mask of grandiosity, in which I puff myself up with certainty and arrogance. Sometimes I bounce between the two poles, from deflation to grandiosity and back again.Myth 2 - Death has nothing to do with meSomehow I’m separate enough from the real world that death is not an issue for me in the way it is for others. It’s frightening but far-off, a rumour, something that happens to other people. Consequently, I need pay it little real attention. I can ignore what my body tells me, and what my heart tells me. I’m protected from seeing that my time is finite and that I have to decide in which relationship to life I wish to stand.Myth 3 - A saviour is comingIf I’m good enough, popular enough, loved enough, successful enough, recognised enough, powerful enough, rich enough, famous enough, caring enough… then I’ll be saved. Someone - one of the grown-ups in the world - will see me and, recognising my goodness, rescue me from my troublesAnd then I won’t have to face them any more.This myth keeps me working really hard. Sometimes it has me try to save others in the very same way that I am desperate to be saved.--I know these are not myths I carry alone.Growing up calls on us to see how these myths of childhood keep us as children, and to find that the that the protection they offer is little protection at all:Myth 1 is the myth of specialness. It boosts our self esteem by giving us a reason for all the difficulty we’re experiencing. And protects us from feeling the suffering of others by keeping us out of reciprocal relationship with them.Myth 2 is the myth of no consequence. It saves us from the burden of having to choose, or face the outcomes of our choices.Myth 3 is the myth of dependency. By rendering us helpless it keeps us from taking on the full responsibility (and possibility) of our own adulthood.I think we cling onto these myths because, as well as the explanations they give us, we’re afraid that if we face the true situation of our lives (we’re not so special, we’ll die, there’s nobody to save us) then our troubles will be magnified. But, as with any turning away from the truth, they come at an enormous cost. In particular they keep both our dependency and our hopelessness going.And when we can learn to see through them, we can also start to learn how to grow up. We can find that the world has much less to stand on than we thought, and that we nevertheless have enormous ability to stand. We can discover deep sources of hope, courage and compassion which which we had been out of touch. And as we allow ourselves to step out of hiding and into relationship, we can discover that our capacity to help others - and to be helped by them in return - is far greater than we could possibly have imagined.

Because Even the Word 'Obstacle' is an Obstacle

[embed]https://youtu.be/TKJduBIhhtc[/embed]In this episode of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and I talk about how our stories about what's happening can get in the way of our bringing ourselves fully into life. We consider how the very way in which we make sense of ourselves as 'having to get somewhere' with obstacles in our path that need to be overcome can throw us into an interpretation of life that's riddled with fear, resentment, and comparison. We wonder together what it would be to 'swim past obstacles without grudges or memory' and to understand life as an unfolding story that changes itself in each moment and with each action - and what new possibilities for freedom and contribution that can bring.Our source is the poem 'Because Even the World Obstacle is and Obstacle' by Alison Luterman, reproduced with permission from the author. You can find out more about Alison at www.alisonluterman.net

“Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle” by Alison Luterman

Try to love everything that gets in your way:The Chinese women in flowered bathing capsmurmuring together in Mandarin doing leg exercises in your lanewhile you execute thirty-six furious laps,one for every item on your to-do list.The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the waterlike a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side andwhose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.Teachers all. Learn to be smalland swim past obstacles like a minnow,without grudges or memory. Darttoward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girllounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, andkeep going. Swim by an unclein the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephewhow to hold his breath underwater,even though kids aren’t supposedto be in the pool at this hour. Someday,years from now, this boywho is kicking and flailing in the exact placeyou want to touch and turnmay be a young man at a wedding on a boat,raising his champagne glass in a toastwhen a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,but he’ll come up like a cork,alive. So your momentof impatience must bow in service to the larger story,because if something is in your way, it isgoing your way, the wayof all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

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Declaring Meaning

When we find out how much of the world is made up - by us - it's tempting to pull everything apart. We pull apart institutions - because we see how groundless their authority is. We pull apart politics - because as we see more into the ordinary lives of our politicians we discover that they are ordinary and flawed like us, and we no longer have reason to simplistically trust either their intentions or their abilities. We pull apart relationships - because we don't feel any reason to commit, beyond our moment-to-moment likes and dislikes. And we pull apart beliefs and practices that can bind us together.This step - using reason to see through what we'd taken to be unquestionably true is in so many ways a necessary developmental step for each of us and for our society. Indeed, it's the step that allowed us to discover science and its methods of rigorous, grounded inquiry. And it made it possible to undo the divine right of kings to rule over us, and to bring about democracy.But it's also so easily the route to nihilism: the move to render everything meaningless, everything pointless, everything disposable as we discover that the structures and stories and roles we used to trust were made up by other people. And, as the philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche warned us, this ends up with us tearing meaning apart too, as we find out that what meaning we encountered in the world was only there because other people declared it anyway.And so the next step important after undoing it all is to find out that it's also within our power to put things back together, to declare meaning for ourselves. To find out that there are many kinds of truth, including those that take into account goodness and beauty as well as just reason. That out of the fragments of what we have taken apart, we can still choose practices, people, relationships, stories, commitments and vows to live by that invest life with purposefulness, care, and dignity.  And that this is possible, and necessary, in every sphere of life - in work, home, community and politics - specifically because we've found out that without it there is so little for us to stand on.

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Taking responsibility for our stories

Given that we are the only creatures (that we know of) that can tell stories about ourselves;and given that we live totally, inescapably in the stories we tell;and given that stories of any kind can be more or less truthful, more or less kind, more or less generous, more or less creative, more or less freeing of our enormous potential...... given all of this, don't we have a profound responsibility to question the stories we were handed? To not just take things 'as they are'?And to actively find - and consciously live by - the most truthful, kind, generous, creative, possibility-freeing stories about ourselves, about others, and about life that we can?

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Words

To be a human being is to live in a house of words.Words that can move others into action, or sow seeds of doubt and confusion.Words that can coordinate our efforts, or scatter us apart.Words that can reveal hidden depths in the world, or cover them up.Words that can build relationships, or undo them.Words that can heal, or hurt.Words that can bring our intentions into being, or our hide them away.Words that are congruent with what matters, or words that twist or distort it.Words that bring out the best in people, or words that stifle it.Words that illuminate, or words that cast into shadow.Words that bring life, or words that deaden.In all of this, it helps us to remember that the human world is founded on words.That words matter.And that this brings huge responsibility and huge opportunity, in every moment, to address our human difficulties and possibilities through how we listen and how we talk.

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The ask and the answer

We can learn a lot by making distinctions between things. When we're able to name differences - for example, between enlivening and deadening, generous and fickle, ethical and manipulative, truthful and untruthful - we make it possible to observe what would otherwise have been invisible to us, and take action on the basis of our observations.Being able to distinguish between necessary and sufficient, for example, opens many avenues for moving beyond technical solutions to our problems and into what's meaningful, principled and life-giving. The distinction between feedback and requests allows us to decide when we're trying to help another person learn, and when we're secretly trying to get something we want from them. And the distinction between when it's time to exert ourselves and when it's time to rest makes it possible for us to pay attention to the ongoing energy and flourishing of our lives in a way that's not possible if every moment is just another moment taken, on not taken, for work.But while distinctions are necessary, we can run into big trouble when we let them harden into dualisms - an either/or, is-or-is-not understanding of the world. Because dualisms introduce separation between things that are rarely actually separate. When I say 'I'm right and you're wrong' I create a dualism that leaves no space for my wrongness, and for your rightness. When we harden into 'I'm scared of speaking in public, but I love being by myself' we leave no room for the parts of us that long to be heard by others. And whenever we make sweeping and certain judgements about others based on their gender, sexuality, politics, business practices, skin colour, preferences and commitments the dualism we create blunts our capacity to see anything else about them, and very little about our own complexities and contradictions.Very often, if we're not careful, our dualisms imprison us and our capacity to respond to the world. And, when we start to look at the deeper dualisms that seem self-evident, it's not so clear that they are as solid as they seem, either.Is it really the case that what I call 'me' is over here and that 'you' are fully, and only, over there? If we allow the dualism to soften we can ask deeper questions: What about the ways we're always in the lives of the people we love, even when we're not with them physically? Even when we're no longer alive. And what about the trail of words, objects, influences, impacts we leave behind and around us? Can we really say, absolutely, that they're not 'me'? What compassion might arise when we start to see that 'they' are 'me' and that 'I' am 'them' in very many ways? And when we see that what we are sure is only in others - all that we despise, fear, reject - is also in ourselves?Can we say for sure that there's a thing called 'work' that's separate from 'life' such that the two need to be balanced against one another? Is life really the absence of death? Is death, really, the absence of life? And can we say, with any absolute certainty, that we're separate from what's around us?When our distinctions harden into dualisms we easily close ourselves off to learning, to curiosity, and to a direct encounter with the world. It's a difficulty made harder for us because so much of our contemporary culture and education thrives on dualisms, on certainty, on knowing.And for this reason making distinctions but letting our dualisms soften enough that we can call them into question is necessary work for all of us. It's the work of not knowing. Or perhaps, better said, the work of letting our questions be more important than our answers.

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All that has come before is preparation

If you were parachuted into your life from outside - into your life and body as it is today - you might start to see what's there through new eyes.Perhaps you'd be more immediately grateful for the people around you, for the love, support and attention they bring you that you had to do nothing to earn. And perhaps you'd see the difficulties in your life for what they are - difficulties to be worked with, rather than confirmations of your inadequacy.Enormous possibilities and freedom to act might come from inhabiting this world in which you're both supported and have problems towards which you can bring the fulness of your mind, body and heart.Being parachuted into your life might put an end to self-pity, because you'd come to see how the body you inhabit has been training, practicing all these years building skills, strength and an understanding of the life it's been living and the difficulties it's been facing. Maybe you'd see that you are precisely the one best equipped to deal with the detail and intricacy of this particular life. And perhaps you'd discover a way to look honestly at your situation and the resolve to deal with it, step by patient step.Maybe if you were parachuted into your very own life, you'd understand that everything that has happened to you - so far - is not a shameful failure but the exact preparation you need for living today, tomorrow, and for the years to come.

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