The Wisdom in Our Reactions
Things have been calm lately.
The days move slower. The moments feel longer. My senses, and sometimes the withdrawal of them, elongate each minute. Closing the eyes and hearing the movement of air in between birdsong. The wavering sugariness of lilac in between cut grass. The tiny explosions of grey-black set off in the white of Loona’s fur, no less soft. The bottom of my foot crashing against the earth again and again, with the mini crash-pad coffin of my shoe softening its landing. The gravity of my back against the mat. The comforting familiarity of the spot behind Lady’s ear. Sun on skin. The sound of my heartbeat when I’m still.
Years ago, maybe even months ago, stress was the norm. Stress has such an insidious way of becoming the norm. This feeling like we need to keep up was modeled to me as the norm. What are we chasing? What’s chasing us? Why are we keeping up?
The more I question how I do things, how I used to do things, the less heavy I feel. And the less heavy I feel, the more I want to question lol. Lately I’ve been looking at my reactions to things. Because I’ve been reacting less. And so when I do react, it feels weird, foreign.
I was having a conversation with someone about a month ago and that something weird happened. I started getting activated, I was squirming in my seat, I was looking around, as if looking for an escape. My breath became shorter, my shoulders started caving in as if to protect my heart, I had an arm across my body as if shutting a gate so it wouldn’t have to absorb these words, this opinion, that I found so offensive. And then, I realized what was happening. I slowed. I looked at something outside the window and stilled both my gaze and my body. I unfurled a bit, moved my shoulders back, moved my arm away from my belly and chest, and I looked into this person’s eyes. And I realized, what we wanted was essentially the same. A safe space for others to live. And that ultimately what was behind both of our words and opinions was love. And it didn’t matter that we disagreed, because I learned something new, and often times, that can only be done in a state of disagreement, when the limits of our knowledge are tested and expanded.
This reaction shook me. I thought about it for the next few days and really questioned what happened there. Why had I reacted so strongly? I realized after a few days of sitting with it that it was an old response. An old protective behaviour. And an old attachment. To jump on something that threatened my belief(s) and tear it to shreds.
And then that caused me to question my beliefs entirely.
Or rather, my mind’s beliefs lol. Because who is this person with all these opinions anyway? It’s just a mind that’s been conditioned, through all of my social interactions, the environment I grew up in, media I’ve consumed, etc. To believe something is simply a mind trick. Something I’ve convinced myself of, something that I think is “right.” And this is where it gets laughable. What the hell is “right,” anyway? Is it not just another attachment? Don Miguel Ruiz says we as human beings have this addiction to being right, and I think he’s right lol. How many arguments, fights, miserable days, sleepless nights, incessant imaginary conversations playing on an exhausting loop in our heads could have been avoided, had we not had the need to be “right”? How many more good days, minutes, seconds, and moments could we have spent laughing, seeing, hearing, touching, experiencing, and really appreciating the fact that we’re a constant regeneration and amalgamation of a mass of communicating cells? And that within this physical intelligence lies an even more mysterious, ineffable thing called a consciousness, the observer behind the mover, the thinker, the feeler?
And even when I get this part down, when I can give up the need to be right when the stakes are low, I’m still struggling when I feel the stakes are high, such as when it’s to do with the well-being of those I love. It’s the expectation I’ve set up in my mind of how they should act, rather than accepting them for how they are in this moment. And other times there’s the pain of seeing someone I love self-abandon, stuck in their own cycle of suffering that I can’t help end. This has taken a lot of internal questioning. Maybe it’s because of the length of time I’ve known them, and our brain likes to go down familiar neural pathways, our old patterns of thoughts and reactions, until the new ones become the norm. Ram Dass famously said, “If you think you’re enlightened, spend a week with your family.” Lol. There’s always more work to be done. And that’s okay.
I think it’s always enticing to think we’d be able to control our external environments. That if we tried hard enough, we could manipulate and coerce and will things to be comfortable for our specific set of needs and wants. But real change, change that can lead an entire nation or even generation to grow, requires introspection, a desire to look at our own desires and emotions, where they come from, and how we can take better care of them so that we don’t cause harm to others.
What if we could listen to ourselves the way we crave for others to listen to us - without reaction or judgment, but actual patience and intent to understand? What if that led us to feeling so heard, so seen, so present that we could do the same for others?
The body holds every emotion we have never expressed, every frustration, every suppressed word. What that suppression amounts to, eventually, is reaction, something not necessary calculated or with forethought. Usually reactions come from a self-protective instinct, a vow to never allow the same offense to hurt us. But they’re usually not very wise, either. They can show up as eye-rolling, exasperated sighs, talking over the other person, even coming out as violent words and actions. The wisdom lies in the body, the one thing we cannot escape. When we have a reaction the body is telling us where we still need to investigate in order to resolve whatever’s been knotted up. It’s asking us not to keep seeking validation for how we acted outwardly, but to go inwards, to self-reflect why we reacted that way in the first place. Only then do we stop the cycle of repeating this violence that we do to ourselves, this suffering that we keep spreading to others.
And the only way to not react is to hear beyond the words - the words of others and the words in our heads. Underneath everything that is being spoken is something being felt. When we feel we’re not enough, we are so vulnerable to other people’s perceptions of us, to our own lies and judgment about ourselves. If we can truly listen to someone (including ourselves) and identify what they’re feeling - usually some type of fear and anxiety that’s asking to be protected - we can get to the root of it and actually come up with an appropriate response. This takes so much patience and self-control, but isn’t that what the point is? What else in life is more worthy in working towards than the understanding and respect of ourselves, and others? Self-control is ultimately the most honest form of self-respect, it asks us to look beyond the attachments that we’ve come to know as “our beliefs” that we have to protect, and to truly look at the situation before us and how we can help. The point is not to be right. The point is simply to understand, to see through someone else’s eyes what their reality might be like, and to recognize that both our realities exist, because at every moment billions of realities are existing at the same time. To want to see things only from our point of view and to only surround ourselves with people who agree with us is incredibly tempting, but limiting. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." To even begin to live a peaceful life we must first find the parts of us that are still hurting, are still wanting revenge, and help them see that all that will bring is more hurt, anxiety and pain.
When we sit in silence we can feel the vibrations of everyone going through the same thing. Reminders that we are not alone is everywhere. The infinite amount of wisdom that has been recorded in books for the last thousands of years is just one example of that. The human experience hasn’t changed. We still struggle in the same ways in our minds, in our hearts. Suffering is universal. It is the one language we can all understand. We don’t need to believe this, we simply know it.
The point isn’t to never have a reaction again - in fact, perhaps to welcome them when they do, inevitably, show up. Allow what we can’t control, such as our reactions, to guide us towards what we can - our responses, our thoughts, and our minds. Our mind is just another organ in the body providing a bodily function, another fine network of electrical impulses. What we do with it is our choice, just like what we do with our hands, our feet, our hearts. We can take care of it, we can abuse it. Its output will directly reflect our input. Its health will directly reflect the environment we choose to place it in, and the care we choose to provide it. The mind has never been separate from the body, in fact, it doesn’t really make sense to me that mental health and physical health are two separate categories. It’s all one body. It’s all just health. And the root of health is to heal. To heal ourselves, so that we become the very environment that others can heal in. To respond with intention so honest that it’s not only heard, but felt, so that others may feel comfortable enough to do the same. To feel safe enough to do so, because of the fucking rock-solid foundation of love we’ve built within ourselves. To become immune to opinions - those of others and those of our own - and to see them for what they are, just facets of a reality we can never fully comprehend.
Standing in the truth of this moment, a soul amongst souls.
