Falling Forward: On Change, Choice, and Patience

Monday night we ordered chicken & vegetables from Ginger Garden to share and started watching "The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem" on Netflix; we're making do with a busted fridge at our new place until the new one gets delivered next week. After that, I went out to the sunroom (aka the Turkey Room on account of the wild turkeys who parade across the backyard in the mornings, terrifying Chupie).

I attended Zoom services to join the shiva for a community member, a visionary man about my age named Jacob Speaks who was one of the people to spearhead our synagogue's disability justice work since Covid began. A powerful "non-exclusion statement" is now part of every synagogue email. Zichrono l'vracha – זיכרונו לברכה – may his memory be a blessing.

Around 8:00pm, we washed up and commenced our new bedtime ritual. You may be thinking that was a typo and we couldn't possibly be in bed for the night so early, but it's true; our hours have gotten earlier and earlier these past couple of months, and now we are rarely up past 9:00pm, if that. For the past week or so, we’ve also been reading in bed and listening to a meditation instead of watching a show – even a low-key one about animals or nature – and it is proving helpful in terms of winding down and settling into rest.

On this particular night, though, Chalupa had other ideas about sleep. At 10:30pm, we woke to the wretched sounds of sickness, divided and conquered to clean things up, and went back to sleep (or tried). This happened twice more; by the third incident, around 4:15am, we were both cooked. I had been tossing and turning between these wakings, my system grabbing onto night as if the darkness and stillness were excuses to revert to every unrestful thought and sensation in the book. I think I drifted off at some point, and am pretty sure Mani finally got to sleep, and I know Chalupa did as she was finally snoring deeply as if nothing had happened. Around 6:00am, she tip-tap-toesied around our room and I put on clothes, made myself a piece of peanut butter toast, and poured some black coffee (no fridge, no half and half!).

Back in the sunroom, I wrote in my journal:

Reality

Early morning light
crickets like little bells
chance to choose how to begin.

Fear and worry – these habits of mind
falsely signal the body to prepare for battle.

I choose peace
I choose peace, ease, and faith
I choose courage, gratitude and presence
I choose to look to the future with curiosity and joy.

What wonders await me today and tomorrow?
What treasures lie within me, yet unknown?
What sweetness will greet me,
what kindness will touch me?

When I need help, help will arrive
and I can look no further than my own right hand
place it over my heart,
and breathe.

The body can get addicted to certain stress hormones, and it takes time, attention, and discipline to interrupt and block these circuits. I am in the midst of this process right now, with a daily commitment to a set of practices designed to not only calm things down internally but also to rewire the brain permanently away from these maladapted responses in favor of happier ones. It is, like all healing, a non-linear process, and it's important not to fixate on "progress." As with any creative practice, it helps to focus on showing up on a regular basis, if not daily, with intention, rather than on the outcome, which may or may not be apparent or measurable in the moment. Celebrating this choice can become its own new habit.

I am reminded of what Ted Kooser says in this lovely video a friend sent to me. He begins each day with his notebooks, mostly "failing as a writer," and perhaps a couple of times a month unearthing something that he deems worth his time. I rise each morning and choose to greet the new day with a smile and a word of gratitude, no matter what my mind or body might be telling me. Staying on track, once you choose what that track is, may not always feel easy, but in the long run is so very worthwhile.

I do want to say a word about Kooser’s use of the word "failure." None of my creative or spiritual or healing work functions on a pass/fail model. All of this is the stuff of life itself, and life cannot be reduced to something as binary as success and failure. It can be very tempting to constantly label what's happening – or what appears to be happening – as bad or wrong, but this is not to be trusted. If I give this much credence, I will stay locked in a narrow way of relating to life and its inevitable changes. Instead – and I am reminding myself of this even as I write – I recall that change is always iterative. Just as with the coming of fall, we don't see each and every moment of it; to pay that close attention would be painstaking, unless perhaps you are a monk (though even a monk must sweep the porch and wash her bowl and water the plants and recite her prayers).

So, back to Tuesday morning. After the long night of insomnia and dog sickness, I made a small cutting from a pothos plant that had become bleached by too much sun exposure in our old apartment. Aviva has developed quite the green thumb over the past couple of years, and she’d given me some helpful suggestions about how to save perhaps not the whole plant but instead to take the deepest green leaves and nodes and give them the chance to grow new roots.

I held the small mason jar with its single sprig of leaves and found myself doing a slow walking meditation across the backyard. As I walked, a few yellow leaves fluttered to the ground – two, three, five. I let my breath grow steady, as if swimming through the quiet morning air, and held the jar like an offering of some kind, though to what or whom I'm not sure. I made up a little rhyme in my head about walking and grace.

And at that very moment, I spotted a grasshopper. I thought about this small creature's lineage, 250 million years old. I thought about my own brain, with its ancient center designed to detect the slightest threat. And, of course, I hear the word "patience."

When I look back over the years, there have been so many moments of change, so much ebb and flow. There have been challenges and there have been victories, and of course a whole lot of in-betweens, where most of life happens. Change is often so subtle that when larger changes occur, they can feel abrupt and jolting, even when we initiate them ourselves. Maybe it's instinctive to cling to what we know. But what if what's to come will carry its own surprises and wonders – as it reliably has in the past?

When I step into this possibility, my lizard brain relaxes. My heart can shine a bit more brightly. And just then, the grasshopper leaps, showing me the only way to go.

Last night, I dreamed I saw the clock at 12:34, which I have in my waking hours several times this week. I am taking it as a sign, like the grasshopper, to keep moving forward.