The wisdom of thresholds
The built-in pauses are yours for the taking
May is mental health awareness month. I’ve tried to be open about my depression and anxiety here without creating a horror show or a cliche. But, since I have you here, I want to let you know that there is no problem so great that there isn’t a way out. Often our problems are multifaceted, so a multidimensional approach to healing is needed. Counseling is helpful, but access and affordability aren’t always within reach. So, I’m a big fan of self-healing, not to the exclusion of counseling but as a complement.
Small and frequent
Dr. Judson Brewer is in my stable of self-healing voices. His work has given me loads of help through a book, an app, and a weekly Zoom call I join with about two hundred others. But nearly as much as helping me, he’s annoyed me. He persistently shares some advice that I couldn’t seem to live out. His annoying little bumper sticker, tweetable tagline, is “Small moments, many times.” So, to heal yourself, have a few little things you do throughout the day. What a jerk. I mean, it all sounds easy; but it isn’t.
His advice is from his excellent research over many years of helping people. Rather than just theory and ah-ha moments, he’s created some nuts and bolts, and the line “small moments, many times” is part of them.
“Small moments, many times” is based on the idea that the habits that have formed us, that have got us to our present state, have been tenaciously and often unconsciously repeated. We may have begun them in survival mode or working with our best available resources and knowledge, but their solution has now become the problem. So, his practical one-line zinger is a way to say if we want to reengineer our way of being, it will take some of the same levels of repetition. And it won’t happen unconsciously.
Upon realizing the help on the other side of this advice, I said, “Ok, I can do this.” And so, I tried to create separate moments away from all of life’s distractions. Of course, this idealized execution is not what Brewer advised, but what does he know? As you might expect, trying my way set me up for disappointment and failure.
Learn from my failures.
What I’ve learned is the task of repetition needs to have very routine, organic, and repeatable conditions. In other words, if I have to repeat something, it’d be better if I could do it all the time. Brilliant huh? Will someone be mailing me a doctorate soon? No?
Instead of mountaintops, serene moments of blissed-out experiences, doing small moments often, must be fairly un-special. While a retreat, a sabbath, and more significant restorative moments of stillness are valuable, these “small moments, many times,” aren’t the same.
So how to get there? What if we’re already there? Like Dorothy having the power to go home the whole time she was in Oz, we have moments to go home to the healing we want.
The wisdom of thresholds
Behind our house, a mile-and-a-half trail begins in a canopy of tall hemlocks and then gives way to a large clearing and a tiny lake. Before stepping into that clearing, I like to pause. I watch what is already there, active and ongoing, before I enter it. Undisturbed by my presence, some Solitary sandpipers bob and race to peck for food at the muddy edge of the lake. A Kingfisher will be perched, awaiting its next strategic dive-bomb into the chilly water. The air over the lake is filled with acrobatic swallows doing natural pest control. Shy, careful birds like a Wood Thrush will sing their classic chorus in the safety it feels.
At the edge of that clearing, I’m at a threshold; once I cross over it, things will change. Birdsong that fills the air may change to alarm calls alerting fellow birds of my approach. Things will go quiet. Sensing the tremble of my footfalls, frogs might still their voices. Until I prove my presence isn’t a threat, the woods will collectively still and draw itself in. Like all others, this threshold at the clearing represents a climax, a moment where things change. If I let it be, it’s a built-in pause.
The every day, baked-in thresholds
We pass dozens of these thresholds in a day. Moments before we send a text that will light up a friend’s phone. Before we drive away from the store. Before we start eating. Before we greet someone. Before the dental assistant calls us from the suddenly opened door of the clean-smelling waiting room.
Are we actually in these moments? Or are we somewhere else? Can these be the placeholders for our new way of being? Our small moments, many times? They’re routine enough. All that’s missing is our intention and a little purpose added to the moment.
Ultimately this is just living in the moment, where we are, rather than being in the next moment or the past. And the routine practice of it will likely be a different way of living.
"We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive."
-Thich Nhat Hanh
So here, at thresholds, at the end or the beginning of something, I’ve been reorienting, inhabiting the pause. For all of us, a million tiny moments are available for what can become the lab for our reengineering. Our repeatable micro-moments.
I was in a Walmart when all the weight of the Covid era came home to my spirit. The loss, the reduction of life, and the fearful constraint all seemed to land on me at once. I got in my car to leave, and instead of turning it on and driving on to the next thing, I took a few deep breaths. I sat there, and it felt like a luxury. Until I slowly got self-conscious and restless, I was at peace. Our life can become a string of seamless activities. So, pause — at the thresholds.
Not another thing
Oh, great! One more thing to do. We’re already crossing these thresholds; we’re just changing how we do it. I’m not tasking you with anything but being alive to what you’re trying to know and experience. Leveraging what you already have for what you look to become.
These small pauses may feel like a luxury, but they’re common. Maybe it’s before you step into your classroom or start the clothes washer after making all the selections for properly washed sheets; these tiny thresholds are clearings to pause and notice, to see what’s already here. Notice your worth, your value, your loved status. Let the wisdom you started your day with settle a bit. Perhaps come back into your body and out of your head. Maybe end the story you’ve been telling yourself. Take three deep belly breaths with extended exhales. Come into your experience through one of your five senses.
Author Gretchen Rubin’s recently released book Life in Five Senses is a fun story about how she was able to “get out of my head and into my life'.” If Brewer’s more straightforward tactics aren’t your thing, you may like what Gretchen says. As she frequently says, “We can accept ourselves and also expect more from ourselves.” I would only add that we can accept our life and expect more from it. And I contend some of that “more” is waiting at our thresholds.
Be well, Feral Souls.