Living with Contradiction
Previously posted on Oct 4, 2020
It's early on a rainy Sunday morning and I'm watching the birds on my feeder while my puppy sleeps by my feet. It's so easy to appreciate my life in a moment like this. Speaking of birds on the feeder, have you heard this new song by Kathleen Edwards?
When we notice how good something feels, it's common to tighten up a little, knowing the moment can't last. It's inevitably going to get noisy, busy or even really difficult again at some point.
Nowhere does this contradiction show up more vividly than our relationships.
I'm talking about our connection with people, nature, animals and also more conceptually, things like place, art and spirit. These relationships can be full of sweetness, bringing us alive and filling us with joy. They can also be full of misunderstanding and conflict, even healthy and respectful relationships aren't immune.
My puppy Luca for example.
I've been waiting for my dog friend for 20 years. I love this guy so much it makes me cry. He's incredibly gentle and easygoing and he looks at me the way dogs do. He also ate something rotten, was sick for three days, pooped in the only room in our house with a rug and ate my favourite yoga mat. I know... This is is a light-hearted example. But I had to work my dog into this letter somehow.
The contradictions are real, they're often painful and they're not going away. In Kathleen's song, she sings about having total freedom because she's alone, with no one to need her. It's a gorgeous, sad song and you can feel the rawness under the simple lyrics. It's hard to be alone. It's hard to be needed. It's actually just really hard to be human sometimes.
I don't have a 5-step plan for solving the dilemmas that we face in our lives: Where to live, who to love, how to spend our time and energy. We're all working out the details of our own story. Learning to sit with the tension of opposites takes practice, but I know, from experience, that it really helps. Our life can feel like a more hospitable place when we learn how to transition between emotional states with less resistance, moving from conflict and pain to ease and pleasure more smoothly.
I feel strongly that our future, as uncertain as it feels sometimes, will be a better place if more people are familiar with the relational skills I'm talking about. Making this work accessible is something that matters to me.
Love and courage,
Annie
