Three little words that are so hard to ask
The question not asked, the Wonder on the streets, and the poem to embrace contradiction
The question that’s so hard to ask, along with the Wonder of spring, and a David Whyte poem that reminds us to live the contradiction. If anything piques your curiosity or appreciation, please write a comment, hit like, and/or feel free to share with others. Your support really means a lot.
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Meander
It’s the most common way to greet someone, signalling we care about them regardless of space, time and depth of our connection, yet why is it so difficult to ask ourselves the same inquiry-filled question?
We ask ‘How are you?’ so often in a day, but how often do we ask ‘How am I?’ and with patience listen to our bodily reply?
Recently I realised I go through days or weeks not pausing to ask these three little words. I practice Yoga, meditate, journal, have therapy, but explicitly asking ‘How am I?’ in the middle of the day didn’t occur to me, which made me curious as to why I can ask someone so fluently how they are - even in another language! - but struggle to direct the question inward. Discomfort verging on irritation arises as I ask the question, I don’t want to slow down to ask because I’m scared that if I take my eyes of the road and hands off the wheel I’ll become distracted from ploughing through the day’s demands, demands that I actually may not want to meet - eek! Then I’m confronted by a feeling that I don’t know how to articulate, a concern of opening a Pandora’s box of carefully squished experiences, doubts, worries and hopes. It’s more predictable to stick with the definable what to do than the stickiness and misshapen inquiry ‘How am I?’
I asked a loved one why they find it so hard to ask ‘How am I?’ and here’s the dialogue, verbatim, which helped me to see my own struggle more clearly and why it’s so important to ask the damn question:
Charlene: Why do you not like to ask ‘How am I?
Loved one: Because I don’t like the answer, I don’t like to realise that I am not feeling good in the moment, and there’s not a way out.
Charlene: I can feel in myself just how uncomfortable this feels.
Loved one: It is, so it’s easier not to ask the question and just carry on doing!
Charlene: When you do ask ‘How am I?’ and you receive the answer, how do you respond?
Loved one: I try to find meaning in the temporary discomfort, which is initially harder than just not asking the question! Like how is the current situation contributing to the life I want, and how is it connected to my purpose.
So the question now is, what is lost if I don’t ask this question at least once in the day? I risk losing my ability to be in relationship with myself, others and the situation authentically. What do I mean by this oft-used word? I really like how Gestalt therapist Lars Andersson describes authenticity as: “The quest for authenticity, for being oneself as one truly is, [is] taking ownership of what is true about oneself, and openly sharing this truth in dialogue with another”. As one ‘truly is’ in Gestalt is connected to the dance of acceptance between our past mixing with our hopes for the future that influence the present moment of our being.
What or who we are is not only a cognitive construct, but an embodied sense and action, a holistic way of engaging with ourselves and others.
In reference to the above dialogue, the meaning we give to our difficulties and encounters arises from this very dance of past, future, and present. Meaning and authenticity are two sides of the same coin. For Jean Paul Sartre, one of the original existentialists (the philosophy concerned with how it is to exist and live), authentic living was about finding meaning in the projects we undertake and our encounters with others.
Whilst it doesn’t mean I’m being inauthentic if I don’t ask myself ‘How am I?’, it does increase the chance of living behind a veil as a way to avoid how the my current situation is causing me to pretend, be defensive, and/or reactive in order to carry on in default mode according to what is most familiar (familiarity is often the path of least resistance, what is most known, and isn’t always what is most helpful, it depends). And in so doing, I move away from engaging with fresh spontaneity as as I truly am in the here and now, and towards what I ‘think’ I should be with a potentially out of date script. I lose contact with my authenticity and a separation occurs as I’m not accepting how I am, but imposing how I ‘should’ be which is riddled with the likes and dislikes of a small egoic self.
As authenticity is always in relationship to self, other, world, it is less a fixed system of preferences in isolation, and more of an accepting of my true being in the moment as I relate in connection.
A recent example of this is during the lead-up to an important medical examination. I told myself not to worry, this is normal, what will be will be - the usual placations we can often be told to assuage discomfort, and over the days and weeks I felt increasingly on autopilot. On the morning of the examination, I had an outburst as the divide between what I really felt and what I told myself I should feel suddenly collapsed in on itself. Although I wasn’t proud of my reaction, it was a sign the separation from my authentic feelings could no longer be maintained, the struggle had to cease.
There’s nothing wrong with having preferences, we need these, but if I limit myself to my preferences then I am constraining my naturally expansive self into a straightjacket of ‘shoulds’, and not allowing myself to holistically engage in the messy perfectness of the unknown present moment.
Engagement is a path to authenticity. And I’m seeing that engagement need not only be an hour long Yoga practice, seated meditation or 70€ therapy session, but can start in any moment with the three little words ‘How am I?’.
In this three monosyllable humble inquiry, a door is opened into authenticity.
Wonder
The buds are formed, the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom, and the birds are announcing their burgeoning enthusiasm: Spring has arrived! The transitional seasons of autumn and spring offer an opportunity to touch the cycles that govern all earthlings, whether it’s that belonging to the seasons, day/night, or moon. The cycles reveal an indelible creativity that bubbles within and without, what the Jungian psychotherapist, storyteller, and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls ‘Life/Death/Life’, the rise, fall, rise of being a living organism on this earth.
For the next two weeks, can you notice something each day belonging to the natural world and see it beyond the label humans have ascribed. Can you pay close attention to its form, noticing if the colours are more detailed than at first glance, does its structure have any surprising elements? Holding the possibility for I/Thou meeting, can you open to the resonance between your living organism and what you’re focusing on, accepting that once you walk away it will continue without you, just as you will continue without it.
How is it to witness the liveliness of spring? How is it to be part of this? The answers need not words, but the invitation to open ourselves to the questions.
Reflect
In this poem I see the threads of authenticity, acceptance, and meaning, how the dropping into my experience right now awakens me to to what is true in the moment, and the opposites I endeavour to integrate as ‘I belong to that aloneness’ as ‘I belong to my life’.
Thank you for reading, and please feel free to leave comment, a like, or share if you wish! Look forward to connecting in a fortnight’s time.
Charlene. X
The House Of Belonging – David Whyte
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realise
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
As I was reading I was reminded of the discomfort I feel when someone asks me, 'How are you?'. It's such a loaded question and I often find myself asking myself, 'How am I?'. I didn't know that's what I do until I started writing this response to your piece and perhaps it is my asking it of me that creates the discomfort. Maybe both? Not that it matters. What does matter is the pause I take to ponder & the realization that I don't give myself the opportunity to respond. It feels loaded, more so if someone is close to me & waiting for a response....... Where to start? How long have you got? Do I actually know how I feel? I've never asked myself how I am & taken the time to respond until last night. Awake in the early hours with what I describe as hormonal anxiety was the ideal opportunity. I approached the question with kindness, gently probing to find a way in. I felt calm & in a strange way comforted as I knew that the person really wanted to know. More than that, she was patient & in no hurry for the answer.......