Expectations and Resilience
I packed up my vehicle for a road trip. A chance to get away from the stresses in my life. Work feeling overwhelming, a body not quite 100%, the ongoing struggle with my weight and my aging.
As I meandered along the 95 south early in the morning after a not-so-delicious sleep, I was listening to a story about a woman in Montana who took her child to emergency because the child was not able to handle the heat in their government subsidized housing. Housing that does not have air conditioning. The premise was government should be upgrading all subsidized housing with air conditioning. The estimated cost ran upwards of 6 billion dollars. Whew… that’s a lot of money. That’s a huge project.
What struck me though was two things. One, I am curious what measures this woman took to try to cool the child down. I am also curious about some research that has demonstrated we humans are less able to regulate our body temperatures because we do not expose ourselves to temperature variations in the same way that previous generations have. In other words, the body is finding it less able to regain homeostasis — balance because we are so used to never making it get uncomfortable.
The second thing that struck me was the comment this woman made, “air conditioning in housing is a fundamental right.” Is it? Is housing a fundamental right? What is and is not a fundamental right? It seems to me that what we deem a fundamental right is becoming a very long list and that list is becoming less and less sustainable. The more we put on the list the more we are seeing the human body adapt to being comfortable and therefore the environment in which the human can survive is becoming more restrictive and less and less sustainable.
The first time I packed a car and went on an extensive road trip, back in my youth, we had maps that were made of paper and we had to figure out how to unfold and fold them properly so we could follow our route. Back in the 90’s on my road trip across the USA, there was no phone, just the big 11X14 map book. If you got lost, you had to use the paper maps and try to figure it out. Entertainment was limited to the radio, or the others in the car and playing games like the license plate game. We had books, but once it was read, there was only watching the landscape sail past. Lunch was what one packed for the journey and pit stops may mean peeing behind a tree.
And we survived.
As I navigated my way south on the 95, I was pondering how far it was to the exit and what exit I would need to take to take a particular route. I was tempted to reach for my phone. I stopped myself. What if I trusted that I could read the signs and would be able to figure out the exit and the time to the exit by just watching the road signs. Boy, did I feel the discomfort of that thought. The more I carried along the route and the longer it seemed to be before the next road sign, the more I felt compelled to pick up the phone.
Just like we reach to turn up the heat when we are cold, the AC when we are too hot, we eat as soon as we feel hungry, we use our phones for information and entertainment. All of these choices are creating that world that requires feeling comfortable, safe, in the known. It also creates less resilience.
Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand or recover from difficulty. Our ability to withstand the difficulty of not knowing is shrinking. Many of us want to know the gender of the baby, we want to know the cost of things next year, we want to know the path of the storm, and on and on. Our ability to sit still in the unknown is becoming more and more uncomfortable. Even more telling, we believe it is our fundamental right to know.
Challenge yourself. What if you didn’t listen to the news? What if you didn’t look up something online before you went to the store for the item? What if you didn’t get notifications about your email or who posted something in instagram or facebook? What if you didn’t change the room temperature to feel more comfortable? What if life wasn’t about being comfortable? Rather it was about being comfortable with what is?
Eighty days ago I started a practice that takes me between 20–30 min to complete every day. Some days have been harder to be navigate than other days. But the days of discomfort are sometimes the most revealing. Those days show me how my mind is so busy and grasping onto things. The purpose or intention behind this practice is to examine the experience of contentment — or lack of it — in my mind.
Let’s face it, for most of us living in North America who can afford to sign up for a meditation program and travel to a retreat centre, we really have few reasons to feel discontent. And yet, we do. We want what we want. We expect what we believe we deserve. We blame and feel anger or resentment when we don’t get what we want or expect. But we are living well above the level of survival. There is enough water, enough food, shelter and some leisure time. We have enough and yet, we are not content.
I landscaped my front yard this summer because of my discontent with the way it looked. Then felt resentment and anger as I needed to spend more than I budgeted for the project. Really… it wasn’t a problem, but I acted as if it was a problem. I ruminated about it with my neighbour who was voluntarily helping me. I grumbled. I was not fit for human consumption.
So I challenge you to challenge yourself. Notice your discontent and get curious. Ask if it is a real problem or one that is an inconvenience? As I age and see more wrinkles, more weight, more dry skin, I am sorely discontented. But has it preventing me from doing the things I enjoy, or need to do? Is aging making it hard for me? Or is my resistance to aging making it hard for me? Pay attention to choices you make when you feel dissatisfied with the current reality. I know storm chips and beer are a real thing in the Maritimes and a choice many will make to comfort discontent as Hurricane (tropical storm) Lee approaches.
Let me know how it goes. I will keep you posted on my own journey.
