I am indebted to Leonie Colman and to Tamara "Tammy" Saitowitz and to
JeanneLauree Olsen who inspired this conversation.
In these
extraordinarily
unthinkable days of worldwide stay-homes and lockdowns, there's a lot
of doing nothing going on. What's
interesting
about that (if you tell the truth about it) is how doing nothing
doesn't come easy to us human beings. By "... doing nothing doesn't
come easy ..." I mean doing nothing may at best seem like a regrettable
waste of time, and at worst we experience it as outright uncomfortable.
But wait! It's just doing nothing, yes? Shouldn't only doing
something be uncomfortable? Doing nothing should be
comfortable, easy. What is it then, about doing nothing that can be
uncomfortable for us? I assert it could be a simple matter of
identification
- indeed, of
mis-identification.
Allow me to expand.
I was visiting with a good friend of mine who was recently laid off
from a job she'd held for a many years. It was a brick and
mortarbusiness
environment for which working from home via Zoom wouldn't
work. The
business
had all but shut down. Mass layoffs were her company's only option. I
knew she was financially secure, so that wouldn't be a concern for her.
Yet her voice was limp, her energy barely detectable. She said while
she was at home doing nothing, she was sinking deeper and deeper into
depression in a way that she'd never sunk before. I asked her what that
was like for her (I could tell she was being authentic, telling the
truth). After a moment, she said (quote unquote) "I feel so
empty.". I didn't respond for a minute or more - largely for
effect. Then I said "That's right, you are empty.". Taken
aback, she asked "What do you mean 'I am empty'?". The
bewildered look on her face bespoke her unasked question "What good is
that supposed to do for me?".
We're convinced if we peel back the layers of our lives like an onion,
if we peel back one layer, then we peel back another layer, and then we
keep on peeling back layers and layers all the way down to the last
layer, we're convinced we'll get to a core, we're sure there's a
kernel in there, and we're convinced that core, that
kernel is who we really are ie it's what gives meaning to
our lives. We're totally convinced that core, that kernel is in fact
the substance of our lives we call our
"I" / "me".
But there isn't a core. There isn't a kernel. When you peel back the
last layer of the onion, there's nothing there. Nothing at all.
It's empty. It's nothing but space. And that's who we really
are: empty space, which is imbued with
powers
to create
contexts.
The emptiness / being empty then, is just what we are ...
and ... it has
super powers.
Now if you can stop making that mean something, it's an
opportunity for enormous freedom. It's this enormous
freedom which is
Werner's
enduring gift.
The problem however begins when, without the support of
an empowering conversation for
transformation,
we misconstrue emptiness / the possibility of who we really are as
being empty, and erroneously assume "I shouldn't feel
empty" and / or
"Something's
wrong
if I feel empty.". And
inexorably,
imminently, mistakenly we start to live at odds with who we really are.
It's this being at odds with who we really are, that we experience as
uncomfortable. So we embark on activities which allow us to
avoid experiencing that who we are for ourselves, is
uncomfortable. We're trapped in the false conclusion that who we are
for ourselves, is never enough. It's the old story of the
dog trying not to be a
dog:
the dog will always be a dog, and is doomed to fail at
not being a
dog,
so it slides deeper and deeper into depression.
She blinked - as if startled by a rolling freight train missing the
front of her car by mere inches as it rumbled unexpectedly out of
nowhere while she waited, parked, at an unlit railroad crossing on a
foggy, moonless night. I could tell she'd started to let in the
possibility of emptiness being who she really is - not as an
aberration, not as
something wrong,
but rather the getting of which would literally re-arrange everything.
And I'd prefer (against a
background
of
the conversation for transformation)
to say that it would literally
recontextualize
(I
love
that
word)
everything. But for now, to say it would "re-arrange" everything is
good enough for
jazz.
It works.
Look (I really want you to get this): the problem isn't the emptiness
... because we are empty. The problem is: not realizing
the emptiness is who we really are ie not recognizing the emptiness is
the
context
for our very lives. Said another way, the problem is: missing what the
emptiness really is. It's the erroneous assumption that the emptiness
we feel, is out of place / wrong, and is therefore something to be
avoided,
fixed,
or cured. But it's who we are! And if we avoid who we are, then there's
no
chance
that who we are for ourselves will ever be enough - ergo
the onset of depression which, as I alluded to earlier, may just be a
function of mistaken
identity.
Realized or not, you'll always be who you really are. You can never do
enough of anything to avoid being who you really are. And who you
really are is empty. Without
an empowering conversation for
transformation,
we mistake the emptiness, we make it wrong, and then we become
hell-bent on avoiding feeling empty (or trying to).
When you get that, the possibility arises that who you are for
yourself, could be enough. I continued "And now in this lockdown,
almost all the things you've been doing to avoid it, no longer work or
are no longer available to you. So
celebrate
this as the onset of a
new era
in which who you are for yourself, could be enough. The emptiness
you feel is not the problem. The emptiness is who you really are.
The real problem is: not recognizing emptiness as
Life itself,
rejecting it, misconstruing it as wrong / unwanted, avoiding it,
not taking responsibility for it, not
honoring
it, not owning it, not (in a
word)
being it.". She was listening with renewed intention.
"Yeah but ..." she said after a while ("Uh oh" I mused,
"here it comes: the 'Yeah but ...'", the first leg of the
trifecta "Yeah but ..." / "How 'bout ...?"
/ "What if ...?" - yet she didn't go in its direction) "if
that's true, and I've been living that way until now, then at worst
I've wasted a great deal of my life, and at best I've been living
completely
inauthentically.".
"That's right" I said, "So what is your life going to be about from now
on?" (I tried to make it sound as plain, as vanilla, as
common
or
garden
variety as possible, like "Meh, we've all done that at one
time or another, and
so what,
and it's no big deal, and you can choose to create it all anew now.").
At first she didn't say anything. Then she just leaned over toward me
and put her head on my shoulder and said "I like you" ... which feels
like a good place to end.
