In “before and after” moments we have a choice
We all have them. Those moments that forever demarcate “before” and “after.” These moments themselves vary widely – a death, a diagnosis, an unexpected move, the loss of a job. What is the same is that we are left suddenly bereft of the life we had. Harder, we are left without many of the plans and dreams that we’d been nurturing and that had been nurturing and inspiring us.
In the wake of these moments, we are left in what rabbis call the meitzar, or the Biblical narrow place. This is a place of compression. New York Times columnist and editor, Sarah Wildman, writes that the meitzar is an expression of all the things that can make life impossibly hard.
It is a natural human reaction, when we find ourselves in the narrow place of one of these defining moments, to cling as hard as we can to our old way of being, to our old dreams, to our old reality. We may not even be conscious of this clinging. We simply throw ourselves into the impossible work of getting things back to “the way they were.”
Clinging to what was is a narrow place of its own
Almost a decade ago, right after my 50th birthday, I was diagnosed with an upper extremity deep vein thrombosis (DVT). It was sudden, dangerous, and the doctors were mystified as to its cause. A quick Google search (not typically a recommended activity in a medical crisis), convinced me that I had Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. But I was unable to convince my physicians, who could not imagine that a physical yoga practice could cause in a suburban mother something most often seen in lumber jacks and Major League Baseball pitchers.
Suffice it to say that medical mistakes were made and my occluded vein was destroyed. But the biggest mistake was one I made myself. My body had issued me an invitation to reassess the beneficial nature of my yoga practice. I didn’t even open the “envelope,” let alone read the invitation. Instead, I dug deep and worked hard to get back to the way things were. I was determined to regain my full practice – even the postures that I knew from my research were the ones that had caused the compression (yes, the narrowing) of my vein – and I did. When I overheard my yoga teacher whisper to my husband, “That’s quite a comeback,” I almost burst with pride.
In a narrow place, what we need to seek is expansiveness
In Psalm 118, the psalmist writes, from the narrow place I called to God, and I was answered from expansiveness. The answer I clung to after my DVT was not expansive. It forced me backward rather than beckoning me forward. It led me to spend three more years holding myself, with relentless determination, to a rigorous practice that (though it had been exactly what I needed for twenty years) was no longer nurturing my body. In fact, it had become a punishing practice.
Neither did my response come from expansiveness. It came from “what was” – which is small and predictable – rather than “what could be” – which is brimming with mystery and possibility. I can see that now. But I could not see it in the dark, impossibly narrow place of my sudden, scary, upsetting, diagnosis. I had not allowed what could have been a defining moment to change me in the slightest.
Moments of expansiveness can be small and simple
With the wisdom of experience (glossed by the clarity of hindsight), in the throes of a subsequent defining moment I responded quite differently. When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer, without hesitation, our family accepted the invitation to change. Almost every Sunday for four years, Nana came to dinner with as many of the five of us as were available.
Honestly, when these dinners began they felt like something we should do. But in very little time, they became as much a highlight of the week for us as we hoped they would be for her. Meal after meal, we got to know one another in a way that is only possible when you are together frequently. By allowing the rhythm of our family to be changed by a devastating diagnosis, we received (created) weekly moments of expansiveness.
Moments of expansiveness are not escape hatches from your challenges, they restore your strength to navigate your challenges
These meals did not change reality. We were absolutely in the narrow place created by any terminal diagnosis, but (to borrow Sarah Wildman’s words) we were not dwelling there. For those hours around our table, we laughed and we cried. We shared stories, memories and even worries. These moments of expansiveness were like a deep breath that allowed us to return, with renewed energy and compassion, to the impossibly hard work of walking with someone toward the end of their life.
I pray that you and I are able to accept the invitation of the defining moments that lie ahead
When I recall the way I felt in the wake of my responses to both these defining moments, my prayer for myself becomes clear. I pray, when confronted with the inevitable “before and after” moments that lie ahead for me, to soften my grip on everything I think I know and to open my heart and my mind to what could be. I pray that curiosity will trump my natural determination and resistance to change. I pray that love, rather than my plans, will guide my choices. And I pray the same for you, too.
When we ignore life’s invitations to change by throwing ourselves into the grueling and impossible work of getting back to the way things were, we create a whole world of suffering for ourselves. We become entangled in all five of Patanjali’s kleshas (causes of human suffering). We misunderstand (avidya) what is happening as somehow optional. We replace reality with our own, preferred story of the way we’d like our lives to go (asmita). We cling desperately to what we want (raga) and, with panic and horror, push way that which we do not want (dvesa). All the while paralyzed and blinded by our fear of change (abhinivesa). Interestingly, what we need to slip out of this trap of self-induced suffering is not hard work at all. It is a soft, disciplined willingness to go with the flow of life.