The pain of pushing against the pandemic

A number of years ago, I was on an overnight work trip with a colleague.

I adored this coworker.

She and I would make each other laugh, shared similar values, and always enjoyed an easy time in each other’s company.

But I’d never shared a room with her.

She’d warned me that she snored, but I didn’t truly understand the full extent (or the full volume and intensity) of her snoring until the first night we shared a space.

Many of you, I know, are highly sensitive people, like me.

Some people may say that we are too sensitive or high maintenance.

I would argue that we are finely tuned to our surroundings, that we are energetically engaged in the world around us, and that we are quite gifted in a sensory way.

I would also say that to be a highly sensitive person in this world can be a challenge.

*cue snoring*

So there we are, it’s 11:30pm.

I’m trying to sleep and my colleague passed out in the next bed over is snoring so loudly I can hear the paintings rattling on the hotel walls.

I don’t have earplugs (they don’t really work for me anyway).

I don’t have anywhere else to go.

I couldn’t get away from the snoring.

The loud, jarring, incessant snoring.

Wouldn’t you know we had to be up excruciatingly early the next day and I knew that if I didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t be able to function on the level I knew I needed to?

Tired, frustrated, and trapped in a sonic hell, I wanted to crawl out of my skin, or out of the hotel window. (Those suckers are nearly impossible to open. I tried.)

At that moment I’m sure that my guides gave me a reprieve.

I remembered something I had learned about mindfulness.

I knew that the harder I resisted the sound and the more annoyed I let myself become and the more I wished it were silent, the less likely I would be able to sleep.

One of the tenets of mindfulness is to be curious about your experience.

Instead of resisting, you engage.

I thought.... "Uggggggh. ALRIGHT! What else am I going to do?!"

Definitely my most enlightened self talking there.

Begrudgingly, I began to listen to my coworker snore.

I truly listened.

I let the sound fill my ears, and I didn’t push it away.

I felt uncomfortable.

I winced at the pain of it hitting my ears.

"This is never going to work... " I muttered to myself.

But then calmer, gentler part of me said, "Just listen to it."

I sighed and tried again.

I listened to it.

I stopped thinking of it as snoring and started listening to it as a sound I couldn't name.

Every few minutes I could feel the tension rise up in me and I would feel myself pushing against reality.

"UGH! Why isn't it quiet in here?! How am I supposed to get any sleep!?"

And then I'd take a minute to regroup.

I slowed my breathing and relaxed my shoulders.

I relaxed my jaw and let myself sink into the bed.

I started telling myself that this sound would lull me to sleep.

[I need to pause here and state that I am not some kind of Jedi master. I am not Yoda’s next recruit. I get pissed off and irritated and I'm incredibly sensitive to sound. In short, I'm a flawed and impatient human who—at this moment—desperately needed some solid sleep.]

Yet somehow despite all of my human-ness, this process worked.

Wouldn’t you know it... within fifteen to twenty minutes I fell asleep.

Somehow (miraculously, I might add) I changed my experience by engaging with the sound of snoring instead of resisting it.

I woke up the next morning completely shocked that it had worked so well.

I didn’t surrender to the fact that the snoring was going to be a part of my environment.

I engaged with what was happening.

I engaged with the thing I couldn’t stand.

It changed everything.

Why am I talking about snoring?

Well, this pandemic is a year-long night of endless snoring.

Does it not?

It's just THERE. Incessant, out of our control, and keeping all of us from a good night's sleep and a beautiful next day.

I see people pushing against the pandemic every day.

This shouldn't be happening!

I know I go through waves of pushing against the pandemic as well as MANY other things in my life.

I'm sure you're experiencing this as much as I am:

Pushing is exhausting.
It’s like trying to move a wall.
No matter how hard you push, the wall doesn't move.

Engaging with life takes a different kind of stamina.

Engagement requires vulnerability.

When you first start being vulnerable after periods of pushing and resisting, you will need to rest and rest deeply.

If you’re like me, when you start engaging fully in life, you’ll feel your heart start to open or light up or blossom like a dahlia.

You will feel the center of your chest glow.

It feels wonderful and frightening and exposed… but in a good way.

It feels like being alive.

How can you engage with what is this week, my sweet?

Where can you allow room for curiosity where it's so easy to be in resistance or a state of judgment?

Our life is now, pandemic or not.

How can we engage with life the way it is now and actually enjoy it?

What would that look like?

If you want to share your ideas with me, I’d love to hear what you’ve been pushing against and how you’d like to start engaging instead.

Sending you that glowing chest feeling,
Rebecca*