“When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings” – Byron Katie
When I was a child, perhaps five or eight years old, I realized that some letters in the alphabet were ‘girls’ and some letters were ‘boys.’
I knew it was true.
I don’t think this is ‘true’ now – or even that such a categorization makes sense, but when a conversation today triggered this memory, I was easily able to remember who the ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ were.
Actually, more accurately, I was able to go through the alphabet and instantly feel the memory of each letter’s supposed gender. It was right there in my body.
While today I can easily feel into the ‘masculinity’ of R or the ‘femininity’ of H, that’s not how I saw it back then.
These ‘truths’ no longer hold for me, what is true is that this memory is real.
That really was the way reality tasted for me back then. Whatever that might mean is hard to say, but I was following something when I investigated the boy-or-girl-ness of the alphabet as a little boy.
I felt something. I recognized something.
It’s hard to pin down precisely, but it seems reasonable enough to make at least one very modest claim – that this odd connection I made revealed something about my peculiar way of relating to the world.
Let’s call that one of my idiosyncracies.
You have them too. We all do.
Sometimes it seems like the human race is going insane.
Other days, perhaps you imagine that you are the crazy one.
On a good day, surrounded by the right kind of souls, the faces you look into mirror back that your way of seeing things is entirely reasonable. You make sense.
On a bad day, each person you meet confirms a self-deprecating psychic narrative.
The difference between good and bad days might involve luck, but also a lot of inner work. One thing we can work with is the simple recognition of idiosyncracies.
That one’s idiosyncracies aren’t like mine.
Differences may lead to dissonance. It’s inevitable.
There are no shortage of flawed maps to guide us to utopia, but even before we give up the dream we might notice this one simple thing:
Discomfort and misunderstanding are guaranteed.
A few days ago I made a list.
Some things I’m looking forward to:
- Not having enough money to do all the cool things I want to do
- Feeling ignorant when conversation turns to things I know nothing about
- Feeling shame for past choices that can’t be reversed
- Working hard to prepare something wonderful that goes mostly unnoticed
- Feeling lonely
- Being misunderstood or even being maligned by people I love as if my intentions were exactly the opposite of what I feel is motivating my action
- Watching people suffer who I could potentially help (but they don’t want my help)
- Catching myself mindlessly spiraling down algorithmic rabbit holes
- Noticing that I have no idea how to fix the “problems of the world”
- Feeling guilty that I am not more aware of what is happening in the lives of people with whom I was once intimately connected
- Wondering if I’m doing anything of value or if I’m on the completely wrong track
- Comparing myself to people that appear more ‘successful’ or ‘wise’ than I
- Wishing I already had certain knowledge that would require years of study to attain and thinking that “it’s too late now”
- Fantasizing about what life could have been like if I had grown up in a healthy village
Why would I look forward to these things?
Because experience tells me that these things I’ve felt so many times, I am quite likely to feel again. Whether I think I “should” feel these things is irrelevant.
Or, I might say – yes, I should feel these things.
Why?
Because I do.
I’m giving up the idea that these feelings prove something is “wrong with me” or “wrong with the universe.”
It’s just that this universe wasn’t “made for me” and I wasn’t “made for this universe.”
The universe and I each have our idiosyncracies. So naturally, they aren’t always a “perfect fit.” Rather, things are naturally imperfect.
Perfectly imperfect.
In the same conversation that sparked memories about boy and girl letters, a man reported that in the past week his mother had died, he’d lost his job, and been diagnosed with a severe disease.
He added that he was filled with joy as he watched his life being completely remade.
A woman in the same conversation reported that all her life she had spoken her mind without worrying what anyone else thought. She said some people found her impolite, but that she had never second-guessed herself and most of the time she was happy.
I watched my mind try to make sense of the difference between this man, this woman and I, and felt all kinds of sensations and words in my body and mind.
I could have whipped them up into a recipe for a bad day.
Instead, I thought, I’m willing to feel this.
And it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
The inevitable difference between our idiosyncracies is only dissonant if we think it shouldn’t be – but how else could it possibly be?
So today I have been enjoying the discomfort, by embracing it.
In this conversation it also came up how when we learn a new language well we may one day notice that we have begun to think in that new language.
This happened to me in my late 20s, working in meat factories in Vernon, CA, just east of LA, where I was often the only gringo in the place.
I flirted with the Mexican women and they amused themselves by watching me eat whole jalapeños at lunchtime, tears running down my face. I listened to reggaeton driving to and from work.
One day I followed my buddy Victoriano home to his house to drink some beers. It took forever because he only drove through neighborhood streets. Later I realized it was because he had no papers and therefore no driver’s license.
My Spanish got pretty good and when I went into stores on the main strips in Vernon (which might as well have been Mexico – there were no signs in English anywhere), no one ever thought to speak to me in English, despite my appearance.
So . . . ?
So maybe our identities aren’t so fixed as we think.
If you’re still reading along with this non-linear song, here’s where I’m landing:
The universe doesn’t play wrong notes.
What sounds or feels ‘wrong’ might be just perfectly imperfect, given the precise nature of your whole previous life experience meeting this moment.
From that point of view (hard to see sometimes, it’s true), it all makes perfect sense.
When I’m willing to keep looking at what is ugly, keep feeling what hurts, keep inhaling foul odors, or even keep listening to my monkey mind chattering . . .
It’s quite likely I will see more of what is really there.
I will see more of what’s possible.
This is the practice of ‘turning towards.’
And if I find myself fighting with reality, I can even see that as perfect imperfection.
It takes no effort to feel these things I feel – they simply appear in my body as a result of the meeting of my whole history with this present moment.
My agony, my anxiety . . . it’s energy.
I can watch those currents wash through me like watching waves at the ocean.
If I keep watching, the practice of ‘turning towards’ turns into something else.
I can open to curiosity.
When I’m open, I can take in more dissonance, more difference, more idiosyncracy.
I can learn how to fall in love with the perfect imperfection of life.
And this infinite abundance of energy that arises idiosyncratically.