Just Breathe...

You know how sometimes something mundane can jump up and shake you hard, and you didn’t see it coming?

Well that happened to me a few weeks ago.

I was watching a show that was set in 2020, but was clearly filmed before that year broke on us like a rotten egg. In the show, 2020 was a normal year. Students went to school. People went to work. Friends gathered for meals and celebrations. People hugged. No one was worried that breathing on each other could cause death.

(But we have to breathe.)

I was struck with the heaviness and grief of this past year and a half. I thought about the toll of collective trauma as we have lived under threat for the past 18 months. A threat we can’t see. A threat that could be anywhere. A threat that could just be allergies or the common cold. A threat that makes every choice more difficult. A threat that isolates us from the life sustaining energy of connection and celebration.

I would like to tell you that I sobbed…that I opened my heart center and let all of the sadness and anger pour out and then felt cleansed and re-centered and ready to carry on. But that’s not what happened.

Instead I became very distant. A part of me shut down. I felt cold and closed. Like I don’t want to wrestle with the fragility of life any more. Like I can’t hear about rainbows in the storm any more. Like I’m sick of hearing and reading so much blame about how we ended up here and who has to change in order for us to get back to normal.

I felt the heartbreak of us fracturing into even more camps of who is in and who is out.

If I had more energy I would have screamed from the top of my lungs that this is what it is like to live life on life’s terms right now. We aren’t in charge. Really. We don’t have the kind of control that we delude ourselves into thinking that we have. We just don’t. And we never will.

But I couldn’t muster the energy to do that. I just kept watching this little fantasy of a show. Drinking it in like water on a long hike.

Right now, it is really hard to be a human. The highs of joy and elation are few and far between. And the calm of peace and tranquility may be even more scarce. We are in a frenzy of fear and blame. And we are exhausted.

We could all use a reminder to drop back, take care of ourselves, and take care of each other the best we can. And we need to acknowledge that means different things for each of us. We need to make room for compassion. We need to make more room for the facets of truth that each of us holds. But that is really hard to do when we are scared.

Fear makes us small. It narrows our vision and makes us grip exclusively and oh so tightly to whatever we have in our reach.

It’s a tricky task before us right now, but it is not impossible. We can acknowledge our fear and still hold hope. We can look for the humanity in each other while we acknowledge our differences. We can see our individual and collective frailty while we also see our power.

But first … maybe I just need some rest. Maybe we all do. Maybe we just need to let ourselves do the things that rejuvenate us. Sleep, meditate, write, grow something, listen to music, make music, make love, make a good meal, watch your show, find another show, listen to a podcast, phone a friend, play cards, play a board game, run, lift weights, take a ride, take a nap, go to the water, go to the mountain, go to our sanctuary of choice. Lay ourselves bare. Soak up the goodness we find. And relish the moment.

And know that some days it is good enough just to breathe.