Being in the Body Post-Election

Last week, I asked my students in my weekly contemplative writing classes to write about their feelings regarding the election from their bodies. The most potent pieces came Wednesday morning, as folks had either stayed up all night, most of the night, or gone to bed and woken to the news.

The fact is, the over-whelming majority of my students are liberal. But a lot of students were able to feel how human our reactions are. This anonymous piece in particular struck me with the universal human level of fear in the body. 

I offer this as a model for being present, for watching not only the body but the mind itself. Regardless of whether you are celebrating right now or in deep despair, tap into your body. Fear consumed most of us pre-election, and if the results had gone the other way, the "other side" would right now be feeling a similar way post-election.

Finally, one of my favorite parts is where this student opens up questions about neurotic smallness (childhood survival, which was useful but she now sees as disempowering) versus the kind of smallness that can open us to all of the present moment - simple actions like picking chard from the garden. These two smallnesses are often conflated with each other, but the second can offer serious liberation and deep relief in times like these.

I breathe into my body through my feet.  The sun is a vibration of continuance, the yellow leaves of a neighbor's tree shimmer and wave.  The sky lightens into a bright blue.  I find comfort in the fact that my garden is still growing, people are still walking their dogs down our street, I can still hear traffic from nearby streets; the world continues despite last night's outcome.  Or at least it seems to continue.  The world of people and politics and the world beyond people and politics.  I pick chard, red and green, my hands and cuffs soaked with morning dew.

Fear of Dying

Bandaged heart graffiti by Beni, Paris 2015

Travel takes me close to death, but not in the way you would think.

When I board a plane to Europe, when I find my seat on the Eurostar, when I climb down the steps of the Metro to ride the No 1 line to La Defense, I am not thinking about death. Not even remotely. When the metro car stops mid-tunnel when it is supposed to be moving, when the train slows down for a moment and the lights go out, when the plane jostles through some rough clouds, maybe I think of death just a bit. Never conscious, always under the surface, some sense of knowing the truth peeks out and makes itself known.

But when I really really think about death is when I am with the people I love. When I look at the face of a friend across the dinner or breakfast table, when I take my wife's hand on the sofa and share a smile, when I tightly bind myself to a heart another in a deep hug, at these moments, often something fleets across my awareness: this may be the last time. We never know.

This is the thing: we never know. If having lost my parents when I was young taught me anything, it taught me this. It did not teach me what to say to others when they have dramatic loss. It did not teach me how to feel or what to do to assuage grief. But it did show me that we really never know.

This is an odd kind of knowledge. Unfortunately, unlike memorizing the conjugations of the verb "to be" in a foreign language, it's not the kind of knowledge that comes back easily. When it arises in my consciousness, as it did this morning in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I want to bat it away. I want to know what happens next, even if I know that that knowing itself causes me more harm in the end.