A Lust for Certainty

Uncertainty is uncomfortable stuff.  And certainty is really not as dependable as we might think.  

Yesterday I went to work and learned that the company owners would pay me to not come there anymore.  My job was gone.  They were generous - offering severance and insurance and a no-contest with unemployment.  

I could not focus as one of my ex-bosses spoke.  The room was a foggy light of yellow.  I felt very far away. 

The day before, I had no idea this was coming.  I was settled in a 5 year crevice of working there.  I thought I had certainty with this job.  But I didn't.  Yesterday, as my bosses "ended our relationship", I was shaken to my core, grasping for something to hold on to.  There was nothing there.  They didn't want me there anymore.

Humans love certainty.  I think the need comes with the experience of birth.  The sudden mammoth pull of gravity creates a lust for solid ground.  We want something to count on.  

As I tried to make sense of what was being said to me, I was falling.  There was nothing, in that moment, to count on.  The boss I had worked with for a couple years was silent.  The other boss was speaking so crisply, it hurt my ears.  I was very, very sad.

Uncertainty was my companion.  It had it's arms around my shoulder and was whispering nasty things to me.  

Truth is, uncertainty is actually the constant.  Nothing is  guaranteed.   The only real guarantee is the Present Moment.  And I had that in full!  I had it when I was working and I had that in the yellow room as I was being fired and I have it now.  I am here.  That is alot!!

They had boxes all ready for me and I was out of there before the other employees came in.  The one boss wanted me out so much, he suggested I come back for my things.  Why did I think they needed me?

It was not a good drive back home.  I had trouble focusing. I felt like I had been body slammed.  

Finally back home, the cats were surprised to see me.  Our work schedule becomes a certainty for our pets.  They knew it was Friday, but they were delighted to have me back so soon.  They crawled out of their morning naps to greet me and tell me I'm great!  

They spent the morning sitting on me as I tried to deal with this new uncertainty.  I meditated and did some Tarot.  The cards were celebratory.  The uncertainty looked like a grand beginning.  This ending, I felt in my gut, was long overdue.

Yet, I had held onto this job for security, for CERTAINTY!

This is a financially turbulent environment.  In the last week, for instance, the stock market has been radically up and down.  We hang on to jobs because we may not get another one soon.  I did stay at that job simply because I had one.  But, maybe I kept it because I was afraid.  

I stayed in the job for certainty, for dependability, to pay the bills, to know where I was going every Monday morning.  But, I had uncertainty right there at the job and didn't even see it.  

Now it is clear and bright and bouncing around my apartment like tinkerbell.  I need to laugh.  I am free from a job I no longer enjoyed.  I am free from a boss who was difficult to work with.

But the things that kept me in that job are screaming at me - "I'm not hirable because I'm old", "no one will want me no matter how much good work I can do", "I'll never find a job better than that one".

Fear helps us to create the illusion of certainty.  We get 'stuck' because we're afraid to take the risk of uncertainty to try something different.  But the truth is, we never have certainty anyway.  

I should know that - my brother died suddenly at 23, my husband died at 37 after a 4 year battle with cancer.  My adult life has not been certain at all.   

From my readings of Buddhist writers, such as Thich Nhat Hahn, Pema Chodron and various authors on Tricycle, I am aware that my fear of uncertainty is a cause of suffering.  I am experiencing it now.  I see how I created a web that looked like certainty only to see it collapse in a second.  

The most certain state is uncertainty.  I know that, but I don't practice that awareness.  I fight it.

I am trying to create certainty, here in this field of the unknown.  I want a solid floor in my life and right now it is just not there.

I love meditating and getting to that place where nothing exists other than the fuzz I see and the noises I here.  It is a very calm place to be, like hanging on a hook in the universe.  I can do it there in meditation, but I can't seem to practice it in my everyday moments.

This is one of my dragons that is trying to teach me a new delight!  Of that, I am certain....

The Shift

Work is a shift for me.  I go from a weekend alone (with 2 cats) to an office with a roadrunner, a back stabber, a mountain goat who likes to rule the roost and various other 'characters' who are all working to become better people.

I work at a small treatment center.  We employees are all addicts in Recovery.  We were all once insane with drugs and alcohol and now we are striving to live our amends to the world.  It makes for an interesting work week. 

On the weekends, I am essentially in retreat.  I meditate, I self-Reiki.  I move energy with Macrocosmic-Orbits and EFT.  I read Tarot. I do my chores and muse about this incredible Journey in which we find ourselves.  Like riding a Great Ship through a sea of miracles.  It is grand.

Monday's I get in the office at 7:30 in the morning.  I drive 30 mins from my home in the city to a watery land where bald eagles and golden eagles live.  I see deer and groundhogs and vultures on a regular basis.  It's like going to Heaven everyday!

In the office, I put meditative music on Pandora.  The place is quiet and lovely.  I am still wearing the weekend.

When the 'roadrunner' arrives, the energy in the office swirls.  Ready, set.

It would be fun to actually see how it moves as he starts buzzing back and forth, hither and yon, in and out of the door.  We are both in Recovery, but his idea of Serenity is far different than mine.  He likes to buzz.  I like to float.

I try not to judge. Buzzing is his choice; floating is mine.  As he splashes around the room, he talks to himself, clicks his pen and makes odd buzzy sounds with his tongue.  It is irritating as hell! 

I have thoughts sometimes of a giant fly swatter.  

I occasionally wonder if he relapsed and is snorting cocaine.  He does make  sniffy sounds at times.  But I think the problem is more sinister.  I think he is a wounded boy. Many of us in recovery are adult wounded children. The back stabber is definitely a wounded child.  The mountain goat seems less wounded, but still has issues.  The funny thing is, in the past, we were all active addicts and/or drunks and, today, we are all in various stages of Recovery. 

We may be addicts, but we were probably wounded children first.  I do think addiction is primarily genetic, but one can't help see how childhood pushes us to use.  Childhood trauma seems to be a common denominator in Recovering people.  Addiction, for us, was a way to actually stay alive.  For a while. 

Eventually, using kills us.  Working in a treatment center, I see that people die of this disease.  More often than we might think.  It is a wicked, insidious disease.

I believe we have to take care of the wounded child as part of our Recovery.  If we don't, the clarity of Recovery will just be too bright and we will withdraw.  We will seek the shelter of getting high.

Drugs give us addicts a cocoon in which to crawl.  People might think using is about partying, but the truth is, using is about hiding.  Every time we get high, we're in a bubble by ourselves.  We may be with people, but we are in a bubble.  The people with whom we socialize are all in bubbles, if they are high.  It's the safest way to be with people - together but alone.

Some addicts don't like to use with others.  They are just alone and in a bubble.  Like hiding.

Adult wounded children feel quite vulnerable.  And why wouldn't they?  As children, they were deceived by someone or some occurrence.  They were traumatized or hurt or betrayed in some way that left them so freaked that they had trouble being here anymore.  Being scared half to death is a lousy way to start life. 

So at 10 or 12 or 15, we find a way out. We sneak drinks from our family or a friend has a joint or we discover how to sniff glue.  We learn how to be here and hide at the same time.  It seems like a solution. A terrific, marvelous, happy solution.

The body and spirit were made for air and water and sustenance.  Beer, marijuana and glue are none of those.  They are toxins that get into the system and start to destroy.   We users learn that eventually.  We either die or get help or try to do both.  The wounded child in us has a hard time letting go of its cocoon.  The wounded child in us no longer trusts people or us.

What we need is Care, huge dollops of it.   I learned from other recovering people how to also seek recovery from my childhood wounding.  I learned, in a rather rude awakening, that I had to deal with more than just recovery from addiction to drugs.  I also learned that the Care I needed could come to me through learning how to self-parent in a loving manner.

If we don't address our deeper issues, we will eventually relapse.  I've seen it time and time again.  It's not easy work, it can be painful and troubling; but it is always liberating.  We heal and stop longing to hide.

My trek in healing has been a long one.  The Hobbit comes to mind.  Traveling into territory I do not know, discovering dark secrets buried deep beneath my surface, finding strengths I only wished for. 

Workdays are tough sometimes.  The wounded child in me still wants to hide at times.... or lash out. 

I have learned Boundaries in Recovery.  I have also learned compassion and acceptance.  I continue to learn, with Practice, the Art of Being Here; mindfulness has a way of releasing the toxicity of a moment and finding the beauty and the humor of working with wounded people who have the Courage to be their Better Selves.

I am Grateful today.

Relief

It's finally overcast.

Most of the East Coast has been like living in an oven.  The only redemption has been water, air conditioners and hibernating. I grew up in Michigan; 108 is just odd.

I can't imagine living here without the salvation of AC.  I don't know how people lived in the South pre-cooling.  But I understand Southern literature now. Intense heat seems to produce intense literature.  

So, I've been living in a short story without all the great writing, just wandering, page to page, over the hot, paling landscapes.  I just checked out the stats and 23 of the 31 days in July were over 90, including a two week stint that soared as high as 108.  Now I understand why I have been so uncomfortable.  And hibernating.

The stats say that last summer was hotter, but it wasn't. No way!  I'm wondering, as I look out my window at the pale grey clouds, if there is a difference in cloud cover in the two summers.  Or maybe it was wind, or maybe it rained and didn't feel as hot for as long.

This summer has seemed cruel.  As if the sky itself became a desert.  Waterless, cloudless, dull, angry. Everyday, someone forgot to order moisture.  The heat kept building.  Heat upon heat, day upon day.

Baltimore is a city of brick and concrete.  By 3:00 on the afternoon of July 22, the temperature at the Inner Harbor's Science Center was 108!!  And that is by the water....

In the last couple days, we have had thunderclouds.  I've missed them, those grand buildings of moisture.  Last night, at 3 in the morning,  a violent storm beat the begeebeeze out of our neighborhood.  It was a welcome sound - all the tumult, the lightening exposing everything, the thunder clapping so loud one's bones rattle.

Today, with the massive cover of clouds protecting us from the sun's glare, I am grateful for such simple things as clouds and rain and relief.

Sailing

I saw ships in the sky last night.  Massive architecture sailing by overhead. I thought I saw someone peeking over the edge, saying Hi from the other side.  It was a sky of possibilities and hope.


A storm was brewing and the skies gathered and grumbled.  Lightening troubled the hot, difficult air.  We have had so many hot, waterless days, that this seemed foreign, this amassing of clouds.   It sounded like rain.  It growled like rain coming to slam the dry paling landscape.


I went outside to watch.  The sunset was painting the ships pink and coral and purple.  They paraded by like a fleet of Heavenly Travelers, as if we barely existed, here on the floor of their sea.  I was ant-like and awestruck.  I was looking for angels, hoping they would suddenly fly by like seagulls or dolphins.  Instead, there were starlings and grackles and robins soaring, en masse, to the Bradford pears and Maples in our yard. 


Nightly, they gather here.   Why they have chosen this yard is a question I cannot answer.  They are not particularly grand trees, but they are well kept - 3 in the back, one in the front. Why did the word get out that these were the trees to sleep in?  I've wondered about me and my landlord being healers.  I've wondered if the energy is softer here, kinder.  


I have seen them come from far away, like little specks of pepper; they fly with determination and are all wings fully out as they 'come in for their landing' in the trees.  It is 'old hat' to many of them, night after night, coming to this yard in the worn neighborhoods of Baltimore.  They load up the trees like there is enough room for all of them.


They jostle and flutter and fly out and then fly back in.  They squabble for the best branch, the safest roost, the best spot to spend the night.   They must bring all the babies and their cousins and aunts and uncles.  The noise is so loud it sounds like a bird convention.


Last night as I watched the ship clouds passing by and the birds sailing in, I listened to one of the many birds, a starling, twitter through his repertoire, like he was singing himself to sleep.  He was imitating a seagull.  It was lovely.  I thought of a starling I heard for years when I lived in Catonsville.  I called him Livingston, short for Johnathon Livingston Starling.  He would come to the boysenberry tree outside my back window and tumble through his repertoire. His seagull imitation was like a wand igniting the mundane with fairy dust!  I was transported every time he sang!  As this was my meditation window, Livingston had become part of my meditation practice. 


Listening to to this other Starling, brought more magic to my soul.   I was grateful for odd little blessings like Livingston and the mass of birds that swoop to our trees every night.  I was grateful for the 'ships' sailing by and the bent light of sunsets that temporarily transforms them. 


I still looked for the angels, then realized I was surrounded by them!