“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu
“Because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to...[Some] give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we “give” it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.) But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.”
― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world
So we’re here. Right in this place of ‘everything I thought is being challenged’ ‘everything I was looking forward to has been halted.’ Because of this, we find ourselves in an endless search for new distractions to help numb the pain of disappointment, fear, and anxiety. Or maybe even for some of us, the pain of trying to still act unbothered or unscathed by the changing world around us, which happens to take a toll on our inner world and the way we externally react and respond. In other words, it has been hard. And it’s ok to admit that.
In the Fall, we welcomed one of our favorite visionaries, Pico Iyer, to interview other prominent artists and thinkers on stage. Iyer’s newest autobiography delves into the topics of mortality, uncertainty, and the beautiful balance between the transparent and mysterious that encourages us to never take the good things in life for granted. In his memoir he writes, “I think we are always living with uncertainty and mortality. This moment dramatizes it, especially for people who are young and healthy, but at any moment, whether it was a year ago or one day ago, I cannot tell you what will happen. So I have always felt we should always think about how to make peace with our uncertainty.” He emphasizes in an interview with the Santa Barbara News-Press that this memoir is relevant to our newly changed lives because of the pandemic.
What I’ve seen through my own experience during this pandemic as well as my close friends around me is we are inevitably facing ourselves; our pain, our insecurities, our doubts, our felt rejection, our fear, and our thoughts. We’re seemingly forced to look these wounds dead in the eye. Again, it is hard.
“I have a wise friend who says change is not the problem, resistance to change is,” Mr. Iyer said in the interview. He continues, “...my book was about the seasons and saying that autumn will come along, then it will end and winter will come and it will end, and there is nothing we can do about that except make our peace with it.”
After sitting in a quiet place contemplating these things, I came to find that this is a season of rest. Rest is what your spirit, mind, and body need to thrive. It can be more sleep, long rich conversations with friends over a delicious warm dinner, making chocolate cake with your mom asking her intentional questions, a facetime call with a dear friend, crafting the perfect cup of coffee on your Chemex… rest is any good thing bringing deep fulfillment and delight to you. With life slowed down, it is our opportunity to grasp these moments as an invitation and not squander them. Seriously, when else in our lives will we have such ready access to truly rest?
That’s not to say we still aren’t free from those wounds, of course they are there, but now we have the time to actually shift into a perspective of pressing in to discover the gold within these wounds. Iyer in the interview, “The fact of impermanence, which says that nothing lasts, isn’t a call only for grief but it is also a reminder of how we can find joy right now.” That we do not have to avoid ourselves and our needs, but we can begin a journey of self-discovery while being locked down. You can ask yourself questions like:
Am I where I want to be?
Am I becoming the person I know I can be?
What am I believing about myself? What are lies and what is truth?
Am I pursuing what I love?
Am I going deeper in relationships with my family and friends? What about that is hard for me?
What does rest look like for me?
We have the elbow room to decompress from our ever-consuming lifestyles (social media, shopping, the news, etc.) and see ourselves for the beautiful things that we are. We have the freedom to detox from those very systems that affect us deeper than we know and grow in true identity. That is truly a gift and an art. Press into the beautiful things around you, the things that make you laugh, the art that makes you awe in wonder and brim with inspiration. Embracing the difficult alongside the wonderful is really the only way we can live. Without the bad, the good disappears… but it’s a very good thing that we can do hard things.
“It’s an example of how we have the chance, if we come out of it intact and healthy, an opportunity to rethink our priorities and actually live closer to what we’ve always wanted.”
- Pico Iyer
Original Artwork by Krysta Bass