I have always felt allergic to the Ordinary. “Live an extraordinary life” was my mantra, those very words plastered right across the first vision board I ever created. In my 20s and 30s, I sought out jobs which afforded me the opportunity to travel, and the next vacation or adventure was always booked before I’d even returned from the present one. I was always seeking the next big thing to save me from the tedium of the everyday.
Even if it wasn’t trips to far off destinations, it was the next party, the next event, or the next training to further my growth and education. I have lived most of my life thus far in a constant mode of expansion – always forward looking, always wanting bigger and better experiences, but also wanting to learn, grow and expand, rather than rest and integrate.
Granted there were a few bumps in the road – periods of forced rest either by injury or illness, giving birth, or a global pandemic – that required me to slow down my usual pace. Now, with the world 5 years out from the onset of Covid 19 and a 7 year old daughter, I should be right back on track to living my “extraordinary” life, no? Far from the decades of non-stop adventure and growth, I find myself living a life probably very similar to most middle-aged parents of a school-aged child.
Days are filled with the challenges and stress of getting kids to school on time, getting lunches packed, filling out forms, reading school emails, checking agendas for homework, driving all over the city to extra-curricular activities, playdates, children’s birthday parties, grocery shopping, family dinners, dishes, and laundry. While that might not sound very ordinary to some, if you are the parent of a kid in school and any other activities, you know, this is as ordinary as it gets. And it seems that the more my daughter’s world expands, mine gets smaller and smaller. Every day starts to feel a little bit like Groundhog Day with Bill Murray.
For me, this is where the discomfort starts to set in. With no deviation from the school and activities schedule until at least June, and no vacation on the horizon, I start to get antsy, when I feel like I’ve personally hit a plateau. Over a decade into my mediation practice, I’ve at least developed an awareness of this: my extreme distaste for when it feels like nothing is happening in my life. When there’s momentum, forward movement, growth – I’m good. But the second that starts to slow, I get that itchy allergic reaction.
My usual response? To resist – to book or plan something exciting immediately – rather than just be in that space of acknowledgement and acceptance. But hey, at least I’m doing this in full awareness, right? However, with a child, with school commitments and activities, it’s not possible to take off with a moment’s notice. And so I sit, with myself, in my practice, and my familial commitments, steeping in the ordinary. This is the hardest place for me to be. Just sitting. Just being. Not moving. Not planning. Just breathing. Resting. And being ok with that, and things, exactly as they are. Not trying to change anything.
A funny thing happened while I was busy resisting the Ordinary in my life – my life got extraordinary. But not in a great, exciting adventure fun-filled way. Seemingly overnight I started to experience extreme pain, digestive upset, fatigue, rapid weight loss, and a host of other issues. All of a sudden my body forced me into an immediate period of slow down and rest, in the way only a health problem can. Six months later, I wish I could say these were resolved as I write this, but sadly they are not yet.
No conclusive answers have come from the western (or eastern) medical community despite undergoing several diagnostics, and there has been no significant improvements from my own efforts, time off and self-care. I’m currently in another holding pattern – one that is physically painful, but also mentally and emotionally challenging – and one that is schooling me in sitting with discomfort. Suddenly my world no longer felt ordinary, but I felt that contraction. It got smaller, and so much slower, as most days I struggle to do my ordinary tasks, in my ordinary life.
On my high pain days, I would love for the Ordinary. I quite literally beg, cry, plead and wail for it. I would love nothing more than to get back to the ordinary – back to making lunches, walking to school, taking my daughter to dance, doing laundry all without pain. I see now, what an extraordinary (and lucky!) life I was living: to be able to have the mobility, energy and drive to do all these ordinary things. I never realized just how extraordinary the ordinary can be.
With no official diagnosis yet, I’ve had to become my own healer, and meditation has become my medication. Between that and my other self care practices, I’m learning how to hold space for my own pain – not to fix it, just to be with it. The pain is there for a reason. My practices allow me to feel what needs to be felt, to cry the tears I held in too long, and to listen to the wisdom of my body that always knows the way. My time spent on the cushion (or more accurately these days, the couch), also teaches me. “It won’t always be this way” it says. This too – this extraordinary time I find myself living in – shall pass. And when it does, my remembrance of this time will hopefully encourage me to cherish the ordinary days to come.
The challenge of sitting still, and trying to quiet the mind, all the while meeting it, and your emotions and your body with curiosity and compassion, is not an easy one on the best of days – let alone when you are in a rough patch, or feeling stuck in the everyday. Even though it feels like nothing is shifting right now in my life – from my bodily pain to my very structured schedule as a parent – through my meditation practice I’ve come to realize these moments are exactly where change begins. Spring cannot emerge without Winter.
We cannot live in a constant state of growth. Periods of rest, integration, normalcy and nothingness are required for us to continue. Just as the seasons cycle through moments of contraction and expansion, so too, must our lives. In learning to “just be” with both the extraordinary and ordinary times, I am learning how to surrender to it all. Not seeking, not grasping or pushing away. Just learning how to live through all the seasons of my life, with and without the allergies.
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