Lifeletter 106: Loving Your Edge

My friends David and Susan moved from Phoenix, Arizona a few years ago to San Miguel De Allende, in Mexico. They fell in love with the Mexican culture in a big way — this was not just a casual affair. I’ve been listening to them talk and write about the vitality, the respect, and the energy of the heart that Mexico blesses them with every single day. As I listen, memories of my twenty-three years in India wash over me.

When I first came back from India I was appalled by the seriousness of the North American culture, the incredibly narrow focus on work, tasks, goals, achievement and making money. I couldn’t believe how rarely celebrations happened — I had grown accustomed to seeing men, women and children who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from dancing and singing wildly in the streets, for hours. In India, everyone joins in the dance: tiny children, parents, old wrinkled ones, people who are missing a limb.

When I was young, we had a cleaning woman, Paula, who came from Santo Domingo. She used to clean our house and sing and dance while she did it. I told my mother one day that I thought we should pay her extra for the vibrant energy she filled our house with. She was beautiful, and a part of our family.

When I was fifteen, Paula’s niece was getting married. She invited our family to the wedding celebration, with great pride and joy. It happened in her small house — they cleared all the furniture out so there would be room for the party. We came in and walked through a whole room full of food that Paula and the family had taken three days to make. We were greeted with such love — they were all so excited that their favourite white folks had showed up for such an important and joyous occasion. After the food and the drinks and the toasting, came the most important part of the whole evening-the dancing.

Paula and her large family and all her friends from Santo Domingo got onto that dance floor; and they let it rip. They were sober, all of them, and they danced like there was no tomorrow. The energy, the jubilation, the freedom in their bodies rippled around the room in blissful waves. Meanwhile, I sat, with my wealthy, highly educated, influential family, in plastic chairs at the edge of the room, in a state of deep paralysis. I was boiling inside. The longing to get up and dance like that was on me like a fever, and I knew I couldn’t do it. Nobody in my family, nobody in my lineage, as far as I knew, could dance like that.

I turned to my father and said, “We don’t know shit about celebrating. Being a white person just sucks.” My father choked back a laugh, and then said to me, “Why do you think I drink?”

“Yeah, well, you couldn’t dance like this, no matter how much you drank,” I said. He clenched his jaw and nodded. I made a vow to myself that night that I would learn to dance like that. And I did. I’m still learning, but I’m a lot closer than I was then, sitting on that plastic chair like a wretched wallflower.

So how come most of us white people can’t really dance? Ever wonder about that? I think it’s time to take a deeper look at our culture. If we don’t take a long and deep look, if we turn away, nothing is going to change. And it needs to. This culture has outgrown itself — it’s ready for a major update. It’s not really serving anyone the way it is now. I’m talking about the North American culture, which is the one I know. But the dysfunction seems to be on a global scale at this point. It’s like a virus that is spreading.

What David and Susan remind me of, when they speak of Mexico, is a way of living where there is a radically different relationship to time. In our culture, time is money. So we don’t want to waste it. We only use our time in certain ways, which are very limited. Time and money — we’ve got those two things totally tangled up together. In India, time is like a prisoner who has been let out of jail. They have one word, ‘kal’ there, for yesterday and tomorrow. I realized one day, walking down the street in India, why that is, how they could have the same word for yesterday and tomorrow. It’s because ‘kal’ means ‘not now.’ Past and future don’t have the same weight in India. Both of them are kind of irrelevant, because they are not now. It’s remarkable — the way we relate to time permeates every aspect of our lives.

There are many profoundly dysfunctional things about the Indian culture, and I don’t want to glorify it in any way. I’m sure that’s true about the Mexican culture too. We can’t turn the clock back and return to ancient ways and traditions, no matter how much goodness we see in them. We are on an evolutionary fast track right now, and where we are going is into the unknown. We are up against enormous challenges, challenges that face us every time we turn on a computer, every time we pick up a newspaper.

For the last few weeks, I’ve had conversations with many different people, all over the world, about how to face what is happening on this planet. I am so grateful for each person who was willing to inquire into what we are facing. James Foley, ISIS, Robin Williams, the Ukraine, Israel and Gaza — it’s like an avalanche of disasters, of brutality, a non-stop display of some kind of fundamental insanity. And, strange as this may seem, I love that we are talking about this. It feels like a very good thing — that our incapacity to respond to what is happening on this planet is entering, in a very real and vulnerable way, our collective conversations.

A wonderful, highly intelligent woman in one of my coaching groups said the other night, “I don’t know how to face this.” She was talking about the photograph taken about six months ago of the three Indian women who were raped and then hung from a tree.

“I don’t know how to respond to this.” she said. “I can feel part of me just not wanting to be here, on a planet where these things happen. But I know now that I will not turn away from this. At first all I could feel was rage. I’m stronger now, so I will turn towards it, and keep asking, keep listening, until I find a deep and true response in my own being. And that’s taking a long time.”

What this woman is willing to do is a blessing in our time. And she is not the only one wrestling with such questions. Another woman I spoke to this week  said to me, “I want to let this in now- that these things are really happening. It’s not a movie. I’m trying to really feel it-if this was my life, how would I be feeling? ”  Here is where all the threads I am talking about come together: we need time to slow down, to sit and talk with each other about these things in a way that we never have before. We need time to face what is right in front of us and feel everything that comes bubbling up in our bodies. We need time to ask the big questions, to wrestle with them like Jacob did with the angel. We cannot turn our backs, just because we are so busy, on these burning questions that we don’t have answers for right now.

If we don’t slow down and do this, things will continue along the same track. If we stay locked right into our frantic, driven, hyperactive way of living, our let’s-get-the job-done-now-and-then-the-next-one frame of mind, how will we ever find the time to sit down and listen deeply, intimately, to each other’s hearts and spirits? How will we know when we are coming right up against our edges? How will we join our intelligence and our love together and listen for something beyond what we currently know?

We won’t. We’ll just go stumbling along on our own, trying to bear the shock and horror that happens each time we read or listen to the news. Or we’ll turn it off and seek refuge in numbness, in distraction.

The kind of numbness that makes it very difficult to dance. The kind of numbness that pushes you up out of your body into a world of thought. The kind of numbness that makes any kind of deep feeling into an enemy, a terrible threat.

I’ve been talking to you about things that are not easy to face into. If you have read this whole Lifeletter, I am very grateful for your courageous heart. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, “I have come to disturb you.” I think we need to get better at letting ourselves be disturbed, in a good way. If peace means turning away from our feelings, turning away from what is right in front of us — that’s not really peace. It’s a kind of trance, a sleep, a fog.

I’m inviting anyone who is ready into the aliveness of where our edges are, these places where we feel lost, vulnerable, uncertain, and shaky. This edgy place is very alive. It’s full of the zest we feel where the sea meets the shore. Edges have a lot of energy, a lot of vitality. Up until now, we haven’t really known what to do when we are pushed up against an edge. We either pull back to protect ourselves, or we push forward, using aggression to get through to the other side. Those strategies have not been very successful. I think it’s time to stop hiding in our safe places, and move together, courageously, into our edges.

“Start with the first step  — the one you don’t want to take..to be more fully human, to be more fully here, without any attempt to create heaven here.”

~David Whyte

 

with love and gratitude,

Shayla

 

You can read David and Susan’s blogs, which are excellent, at www.wisdomrx.com