Day 11

(Eternal inspiration, Joan Didion. Image courtesy of Joan Didion Kickstarter Biopic)

Day 11 – I paced my apartment this morning, overwhelmed, frantic. Had I not spent all day yesterday thinking about hope? This morning, I woke up, and one little sign banished it. Not even a sign, an absence of one. I attempted to get back into that place of openness. I reminded myself of a song lyric I heard that two days ago, “Everything will be alright if you just let go,” how I had repeated that line over and over to myself through a panic attack, until my heartbeat returned to normal and the lyric was integrated into my being.

But as I  paced between my office to the kitchen this morning, searching for the inspiration or impetus to write, I noticed the blue spine of a book on my shelf. Knowing, if I should do anything at all, it is to follow signs, I came back and looked at what it is, Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem. I told myself I would read any essay I happened to flip open to. I landed on the essay titled, On Self-Respect.

Didion talks about what I’ve been thinking of as dynamic/ generative hope, but what she calls “self-respect:”

“Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things that one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.”

Maybe this is the combination of grit and hope.

It is a reminder of the idea that we work hard, believe in ourselves as natural functions of the universe, let go of reputation, and trust that we will blossom into not what we can imagine for ourselves, but into the possibilities we cannot fathom.

This trust is, as Didion puts it:

“To have the sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.”

So much of what defines us comes from doing what is hard. These challenges also are what leads to happiness. We are not trapped with in the whims of the day to day traumas, or what I talk about in one of my essays , “The Way Back to My Body,” when you feel cut off from life, “when you are alone in yourself, as if there is no universe to feel apart of, only stuck in a body abused by chaos or rapture.” We can transcend them.

In Grit, Duckworth talks about how feelings of hopelessness are tied to a perceived lack of control over your life. While you can’t control all circumstances, you can control your reaction to them and you can control what you choose to hold on to versus what you choose to let go of. Listening to yourself, trusting that wisdom, means when to say yes and when to say no.

It is easy to stress and fret and hard to let go. But you can practice at it and improve, then you see how much easier releasing hang-ups and worries is.

 One of my favorite practices, which I learned from Manifest Your Destiny by Wayne Dyer goes, “With every breath you take, feel yourself taking in unconditional love. With every exhalation, expel thoughts of fear.” Centering yourself and detaching from attempts to control is liberating.

Balance means accepting the good with the bad and taking it all in stride and without paralyzing fear. It is here now, it will also pass.