Field entry: The sometimes-cold river of experience

The off day was fine. The struggle against it wasn't.

Yesterday was an off day. Nothing dramatic, I just wasn’t in my usual groove and I spent a good chunk of the day trying to force my way back into it.

By afternoon, more out of exhaustion than wisdom, I finally admitted that it wasn’t happening. The uncomfortable feeling stayed, but I stopped struggling against it. That was most of the weight right there.

It’s one of those lessons I’ve relearned constantly throughout life, last drilled into me most poignantly a few years back while standing at the kitchen sink during a particularly challenging phase of my life.

Washing dishes, mentally wrestling with my situation for the hundredth time, I finally asked myself what I was fighting so hard to avoid. The answer was obvious: it was a heavy, burning feeling in the pit of my stomach. A sensation.

Weeks of dread, and it all came down to a physical sensation. So I stopped resisting it and just let it all in. It burned, but I could take it. Not only that, I was actually fine. It was just a feeling; intense, but survivable.

I finished the dishes and moved on, a new phase of my life initiated with a turn that took only a handful of seconds.

But no change is permanent. Yesterday I was back on the riverbank of experience, pointlessly trying to negotiate with the current. When I finally waded back in, chest-deep in the cold water with no intention to bail, I wasn't comfortable. But I was unmistakably alive.

I was present. And yet the feelings were still there. Acceptance hadn’t served as a magic trick to make them vanish. Good, that was never the deal. You don’t find your strength by staying on the bank.