In April I got fitted for my second night guard in less than 10 years, having ground through the last one while I was sleeping. Sleeping! I’ve been thinking about my tendency to metaphorically grit my teeth through life. I can grit through stressful and delightful times alike (despairing the good times won’t last forever). One of the draws to spiritual life for me is that it feels like fresh air, sweet freedom after having been trapped in what filmmaker David Lynch aptly calls the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity (Lynch deals in archetypes so for me that description is both perfectly intuitive and completely inexplicable).
The end of school and summertime are always particularly full. We celebrate 4/5 of our family’s birthdays on top of all the other wonderful endings and beginnings the time of year brings. I feel these transitions deeply and try to use them as a reflection point. This year, as we move into a new stage of parenting and life I realize that I have to, as Anne Lamott says, figure out whether I’m going to spend my precious time trying to look good and creating the illusion that I have power over people and circumstances (Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit stuff), or whether I am going to taste life, enjoy it, and find out the truth about who I am (sweet delicious freedom). The draw to look good and pretend I am all-powerful is strong but it does not feel like freedom, so it crumbles quickly upon examination.
Brittle and Small vs. Supple, Capacious, and Free
On Being is my desert island podcast; I can’t recommend it highly enough. In her November 2023 conversation with artist Nick Cave, host Krista Tippett notes that our typical Western position is to try to control it all, to do everything we can to guard against (inevitable) loss. In practicing this stance over and over, we end up holding a defensive posture our whole lives, which causes us to be brittle and small. I don’t want to be brittle and small, I want to be supple, capacious, and free. What does that look like as a practical, day to day matter?
I don’t have answers here, just a model of the struggle. For example, we are in the middle of the renovation of two bathrooms at our house. The project will go into August and my impulse to muscle through is strong because I feel vulnerable and out of control. However, I don’t want to grit my way through this precious summer. So, I am practicing tolerating discomfort, acknowledging my feelings without being owned by them, and remembering that my biggest fear isn’t a little drywall dust or chaos but rather missing my life. When I grit, numb, or delay joy, I miss my life.
Hold on Loosely but Don’t Let Go
I taught prenatal yoga for many years and one of the things we practiced in preparation for labor is to notice all the parts of the body that are not experiencing strong sensations and to keep them soft. No clenched fists, toes, or shoulders – they are not helping the baby come out, and holding a lot of tension in the body might impede the opening process. This can be hard to do in labor, because it’s intense and it feels like there’s a lot going on. When there’s a lot going on I tend to get defensive, brittle, and small. The opposite of free.
Labor aside, life increasingly feels like there is always a lot going on. I’m partway through the wonderful 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman and am convinced that the “too busy” feeling is not going to change unless it’s an inside job. There are truly more demands for our attention than we have historically experienced. I am finding myself craving simplicity, and want to live inside my old Frog and Toad books. What does it look like to use simplicity as a path to freedom?
In the article “Set Free from Holding Tightly,” Father Richard Rohr quotes spiritual director and Episcopal priest Margaret Guenther, who said simplicity is, “…not to be confused with spiritual deadness, living without passion. Indeed, we live more passionately because we are set free from the burdensome work of holding on tightly to anything that comes within our grasp.”
The point of simplicity, according to Rohr and Benedictine monk Augustin Belisle, is to clear the space so there is room for Spirit. Belisle says, “Simplicity works against our proclivities toward obsession—with self, guilt, weakness, and things. If we are not obsessed, we can be possessed by the sacred. To live the present in the presence of God is our aim.”
There is a lot of noise about simplicity on social media, but it’s soulless and full of lies. The capitalist version of simplicity is infused with perfectionism, so simplicity often looks like only experiencing premium and ideal things. That simple life is one in which you have many invisible helpers and your existence is so perfectly curated that you never have to deal with anything annoying. No one’s life is actually like this, and if it is, it’s not free, it’s brittle and small. A simple life seems to be one you can buy, but spiritual life teaches us that if you can buy it, it’s not the biggest truth.
Instead I’m doing things that are difficult but free. I’m trying to keep my jaw soft, which helps me approach life in a less grimly determined way. I’m trying to let the chaos of home renovation make me more relaxed about schedules or what’s for dinner or whether things are all clean and buttoned up like I like them. Instead I am trying to go with the flow. I’m trying to notice what I’m doing and stop doing it if it’s cluttering my soul instead of helping clear it. I want my communication line with Spirit to be as open and strong as possible. I will fail and get distracted over and over but that is the Way.
