Friday, June 26, 2009

Are You Okay?

In one of my yoga classes last week, we went out for a walk in the middle of doing yoga. The whole class walked around the block. I noticed I was walking by myself, not talking to anyone. I heard other people talking behind me, including my teacher. I was suddenly aware that I felt really uncomfortable and that I was trying to pretend that I was not uncomfortable. I was trying to pretend that I was super self-sufficient, having my own experience, very comfortably. And I felt how familiar that pretense was and how, underneath it, I really felt lost and was longing, really aching, for some kind of attention from my teacher. I was able to drop the pretense and just feel that unmet longing, like a kid feels when she can't get her mom's attention for a really long time and she's starting to give up. Or when the teacher never says anything nice to you in class; never praises your work, or gives you special attention. 

Remember that?

In the end, feeling the ancient/current sadness was a hundred times better than the fakery I've put over, on myself, for who knows how long. There was a book on my parent's bookshelf when I was little called I'm Okay, You're Okay.  Elizabeth Kubler Ross once quipped that a better book would be I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay, And That's Okay. 

Half the value of psychotherapy is seeing someone once a week who will remind you that it's okay not to be okay in this crazy world. The other half is perhaps leading you to feel so okay about not feeling okay that you actually begin to feel okay without changing a thing. You become at ease with the suffering that is a natural part of being alive and human. And, because paradox is the rule of life, this ease with suffering leads to feeling joyful. 

And the next step is to feel at ease with the shifting from one to the other so that you stand your ground as joy comes and suffering goes and vice versa, and you begin to appreciate the dynamic quality of being alive without being so attached to a particular feeling state. There's some kind of freedom in that--so much less oppressive than the breathless, anxious struggle to be happy, happy, happy. It's bizarrely controlling, in a way, and narrow, this obsession we Americans have with being happy. 

2 comments:

  1. Okay Dokey, Congratulations Graduate! How does it feel?
    I'm working on feeling Okay with my inner strength rather than continually projecting my weak, wounded child. A mirror image from what you beautifully describe above.

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