Life is a good partner

Midterms, eclipses, Henri Matisse, and our pals chaos + order.

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Henri Matisse at work. Photo by Walter Carone

Life is a miracle but I didn’t always believe this.

I related to life as an antagonist. During the hardest times, life was a fight: I didn’t understand why I kept behaving in ways that went against my values and best interests but also, I couldn’t seem to stop. Mostly, life was something to be tolerated, a Sisyphean slog on my way to better things that were surely on their way if only I worked harder, pushed farther, got better, improved myself, eradicated the darkness that seemed to cling to me like a nightmare version of a Peter Pan shadow.

All the ways I anesthetized myself to cope with life were not the problem. They were a symptom of the problem. And it wasn’t until I learned to deal with the symptoms—it wasn’t until I stopped doing the things that were causing the most harm—that I could address the problem, which is to say, that I could finally change the way I engaged with life. And what interests me now, what I suspect will forever fascinate me, is not the stopping (which I don’t mean to minimize, for the stopping was the first of many miracles), but everything that’s come since.

Five years in, what this practice is requiring is a fundamental shift in my core beliefs and world view. Specifically, it requires trusting my life as a good partner and devoting myself to this new belief in the face of a culture that, should I continue to let it have it’s way with me, would have me swimming in perpetual lack at best, or at worst, utter malaise and resignation.

I couldn’t have done this immediately. The first thing I needed to do was to stabilize: To create habit and routine; to learn to keep my word; to take care of all parts of myself (instead of reacting to whatever was most chaotic in any given moment). And I did stabilize. The inner pendulum did come to rest in in a steadier center. But my self-worth was still in the shitter. I was still scraping away at the wound of neglect. And so began the deeper work, that internal excavation, without which I might have accumulated every last external measure of success while still continuing to experience life as something to manipulate, manage, and control, rather than receive.

The practice is continuing to adapt inside of a culture that would keep me numbed out and consuming. Adaptation requires flexibility, curiosity, and interacting with reality as it presents itself, rather than how I think it is supposed to be or how I wish it was or how it used to be or how it is for other people. It is a dynamic process of moving with life rather than trying to force life to fit into some shape I’ve been conditioned to believe I’m supposed to want. It is how I move with myself rather than against myself. It is how I relinquish the foolish pursuit of perfection and step into the gorgeous messiness of my full humanity.

Inside of this practice, I know who I am and what I’m doing. I am fortified from the inside because I know how to protect and care for myself, unapologetically and uncompromisingly. This is not only a selfish undertaking, because it doesn’t stop with me. Indeed, the care that I show to myself pours over, and it is in this outpouring, it is in this newfound ability to through the world from a place of fullness rather than lack or depletion, that I can stay engaged.

And this is one of the great questions of our times, isn’t it? How do we hold it all, and not get bowled the fuck over by it?

I’m writing this on Tuesday, which for those of us in the US is our midterm elections. Everything in chaotic and the stakes are so high. I’m exhausted by how hard it is for so many of us to just motherfucking EXIST.

It’s also true that this morning I woke up to the sound of rain.

Rain. I stared out the window, watching the rain fall with the same enchantment that I might watch a blockbuster on a big screen. Rain, for real, finally. I imagined the dry hills and valleys swelling, shoots of grass emerging, my beloved cypress and eucalyptus exhaling. All the urban flora and fauna cozying up in their holes and huddles; smell of piss in alleyways being washed away; snowpack shoring up in the Sierras. My god, what a relief to be washed clean, to be made well again.

Rain falls. Eclipses send moon into shadow. World spins.

We keep on.

In recovery, my job is to keep both feet planted in reality—to fend off the enthusiastic and omnipresent temptation of magical thinking—and to work with what is. As an artist, my work is to hold always a forward vision, and to devote myself to this vision as my north star.

Inside of this simultaneity is the tension we hold: Staying engaged in reality—in truth, feet in the mud, not succumbing to the forces which would beat us down permanently, tending to the day-to-day-slog of incremental change over time—while at the same time learning to live in a way that disrupts all the same bonkers patterns and systems that would keep us forever stuck on a hamster wheel of death.

We are in a time of chaos. Instead of fighting chaos we need a new relationship with it, and this is part of the work of changing our belief system. Now is not the time for rigidity. We must be flexible, and adaptable. We must look to nature, and artists, and young people, and all the endless possibilities that arise inside of ecosystems of community. We must shore ourselves up from the inside, not to hide away in our cute little apartments, but so that we can stay active in the world, so we can carry each other across the river when the time comes (and, um, the time has come).

The photo at the beginning of this essay is of Henri Matisse, a prolific artist who continued to make prolific work even after illness and deteriorating health rendered him with very limited mobility. I keep thinking about the way artists adapt, and innovate. I’ve been thinking about Matisse, and the way he adapted his art making his entire life. As he aged, and his health declined, he adapted: He fashioned different tools; he took over hotels and made them studios; he started cutting paper in a wheelchair; he fashioned a drawing stick to draw from bed. I know for myself that the second I find myself in less than idea circumstances, my tendency is to abandon myself and my practice. The question my practice asks of me now is to learn to move with my life so I can adapt to reality and continue to do my work forever.

The miracle—which isn’t a miracle at all, but a law of nature—is that chaos always leads to order. Chaos and order are not in opposition; they are in partnership.

So here’s what I suggest:

Let’s be still, just for a minute. Just till the end of the year. For the next six weeks, let’s slow down. Let’s stay in bed. Let’s read, let’s catch up on the eleventy billion shows everyone else is watching.

Let us be so very gentle. Let us nurture each others’ hearts as we would a fallen baby bird: make a makeshift nest for it, nourish it with round-the-clock attention, sing to it, urge its feathers to grow thick and full, rich in color, all our favorite colors. Feed it treats from our surrounding environment, all it’s favorite seeds and nuts and grubs and bugs. Sugar water, too.

Let’s track all the new space inside us. Let’s relate to it not as an emptiness, but as pure potential, full of possibility. Let’s traipse about our neighborhoods, feel the rain on our faces, no destination. Let’s make friends with not knowing. Let’s consider that joy and delight might walk alongside us, despite ourselves—elections results be damned. Let’s look up at the stars, and that ridiculous crescent moon, low slung on the horizon; let’s scritchy-scratch the tops of dogs’ stupid little heads, every chance we get; let’s listen for the high pitch of hummingbird, the hoot of owl, the sharp call of hawk; let’s make chit-chat at the deli, in the checkout line, with the nurse giving us our flu shots; let’s buy ourselves flowers, let’s light candles, incense, ideas, dreams. Let’s notice what is already on its way, that butterfly in our stomach, AKA, hope, right there, a flutter in the guts, not erasing the pain, but buzzing alongside.

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EVOLVE is an experiment of living into these questions. We’ll be learning, adapting, growing. We’ll be HAVING FUN. We’ll be accountable to each other. We’ll be making friends. We’ll be fucking up the status quo. We’ll be creating beauty and joy and delight.

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SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA. 

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