Inertia: Motivation to do Nothing

At our bi-annual dinner, a friend of mine and I were discussing how drawn we are to talk about change,  and the difficulty of making it happen.  It's so easy to just keep doing what we do:  even if we don't really like it.  Change usually has no guarantee of success or happiness - only of being different. It can seem risky and scary.

One of the CEOs of a company I previously worked for prohibited the company from having change initiatives.  We could propose  improvements, betterments, growth...but not change.  I get it.  Change is an investment, and he wanted a guarantee.

Me too!            


I attended a discussion group today and we talked about nihilism: the idea that the world has no purpose, that life is futile.  I know, it sounds bleak.  It's a common thought that occurs to those who seek.  Fortunately, most come around again to the realization that what they felt was probably a bit of detachment that happens as you get a glimpse of what you thought life was, but isn't, and before you get a hold of what it is.

That detachment, though, isn't as desolate as it sounds if it's paired with benevolence.  I think of it the same way that I can care very deeply when I learn of a starving child in some far off place.  I don't know the child, yet I can be pulled to act, to try to resolve the problem, or at least do something to improve it.  Yet, if I wasn't detached in some way, how could I sleep at night knowing a child is starving?  Benevolent detachment allows me to make plans, to strategize, to design the change that could impact that child and others.  However, detachment without the benevolence just lets me roll on my merry, self-centered way, tucking that picture or thought away never to be revisited.

What I've come to see is that when applied to life that is closer, this works, too.  Work, family, relationships, financial worries, grief and loss and disappointment infiltrate life, and our circumstances will still bring tears and sadness and worry.  But that bit of benevolent detachment lets me once again find the seed of joy that is still there between the falling tears, in the pause at the top of the next breath, or in the distracted thought that was not of the major event befalling me then.

I watched the moving Loving.  It's about an interracial couple, the Lovings, who in the 1950s were both arrested for going against the anti-interracial marriage laws of the state of Virginia.  And I thought about inertia.  How easy if the Lovings had decided to just hide in rural Virginia and try to stay out of notice.  I found relief in the ruling, in their favor, that allowed their children to be recognized as heirs, and allowed them the simple rights afforded to others who simply love and hurt no one in doing so.  I was reminded again why I don't want inertia to be the motivating force of  my life.  Status quo begs to be upended.

What isn't being noticed, what is going undone?

I've been on a purposeful (yeah, slow!) path to change for about a year.  I hired a coach, I started this blog. I started meditating and stuck to it.   I filed a patent.  I ended a relationship.  I am finishing up a class. I cut my hair.  And I proposed a change in my role at work.  I don't yet know how this will turn out.  Moving is probably in my path, too.



The external is never permanent, and yet I have spent so much of my life clinging to sand, thinking I could hold it still.  Another movie to watch sometime: Grand Canyon.  The characters contemplate the vastness of the earth and wonder: why don't we take more chances -- we are just a speck of nothing, what would it matter?!

My Self -- that same essence I have always been,  has never left me.  All the things that come and go are not the source of my joy.  Happiness can come, fleeting in and out, from the outside. If it comes, it  will also go. But joy - the knowing - the connection to that glue that joins all life - that is love and that is here with me and all I need do is be aware of it. Ah, there you are! Here I am.

I started this blog because I knew that writing was something I wanted to do, and my coach said, "then write!" I'm going to shift my writing and this is my last blog on the Mileposts heading. Thanks for keeping me company.  I hope that you are finding companions, too, on your journey towards your fullest experience of peace, love, and joy.

Thanks for Nothing (that turned out to be something)

You've seen those beautiful framed pictures with meaningful affirmations, meant to inspire?  We hang them on office walls, we put them in employee break rooms; some are of rowers with a "teamwork" caption, or "perseverance" with a lone runner on a hill. I was reminded of those posters when I saw an e-card circulating currently that reads, Thank you, Universe, for not giving me everything I thought I wanted.  How true is that!?  I know that I am very often so grateful for what were previously perceived as disappointments.

One of the most significant lessons etched on my soul is the growth, awareness, and appreciation I experience when things don't turn out as I'd hoped or planned.  It is almost always a time of significant learning, even if I don't know it at the time.  A few years ago, I began to put those moments in my gratitude jar, and I often do so before I know the outcome. It reinforces the idea that what may seem negative in my current view of it probably has something meaningful to offer. Of course, I put the things that already feel like gratitude-inducing events in there, too. I open my gratitude jar every New Year's Eve, and read the past year's moments, when I took a pause and jotted down an event, a feeling, a fleeting thought that surfaced as something I might want to reflect on again. I don't write lengthy notes - they're more like brief memory-joggers.  

John and I broke up. Mother's Day Angel's game.  My company was acquired.  Prototype 3-D printed, patent pending! Started Dorothy's life story project. Trip to Prescott with Patricia. My biopsy was basal cell skin cancer. Awesome Buck Gully run, feeling healthy. 


I am usually able to see the gift in the circumstance that showed up, versus the circumstance that I wished for: the unanticipated outcome that was better than what I'd had my heart set on in the first place. Occasionally I am aware of this in the present moment, though sometimes it takes stillness to notice.   

As life moves on, what I see is a shift from my outward search for happiness (money, men, stuff) to my awareness that I am already surrounded by a familiar essence that is enough: it's more than enough.  It feels like joy.  I never knew that I knew joy.  In my younger years, I was often seeking, yet I am aware that what I sought was already accessible to me.  (Feels like Dorothy just clicked her ruby slippers, doesn't it?)  It's like coming home.  Being known.  Being understood. Being loved.  That's my mantra:  I say it to myself (I am home, I am known, I am understood, I am loved).  And I hear it said to me from the Source of all life: You are home.  You are known. You are understood.  You are loved.  And the rest of what I was worried about, anxious for, regretful over...falls away from significance. This leaves room for: meaningful interactions, relationships of value, activities with purpose, blatant fun, passionate discourse, meaningful exploration of myself and my world, healthy habit-building, attempts at unwavering kindness, and openness to the unanticipated.

This acceptance and letting go is not giving up.  To paraphrase Ekhart Tolle, it merely makes me aware of using my mind when I need it, and not letting my mind use me to preoccupy my life with things I cannot control: the past and the future.  

The last nugget that sustains me in times of disappointment is the awareness that "it" is temporary.  While the circumstance may be unchangeable, my response to it does not have to remain my initial reaction to it:  and the goal is to shorten the gap from reaction to response. I'm told that the gap is called "the pause."  

I'll close with a loving kindness meditation that I say often for you and for me:  May you be safe.  May you be happy. May you be healthy.  May you live with ease.