Making Peace With Progress
It's the same whenever I return home from a vacation, finish a retreat, or conclude a social media or phone break. The impending knowing that I will be once again bombarded with a stream of endless stimuli.
My system has relaxed deeply in my time away from email, texting, social media, and more. It's as though I've gotten to travel back in time to a form of existence where my only job is to meet each moment with presence. There's no pull to check in on anything that isn't right in front of me.
There's no need to tend to endless ongoing conversations that span family, friends, employees, colleagues, clients, virtual community, and more. There's no desire to share anything. It's all for me. The internet will never see or know it, which only makes it more special.
My fiancé and I often talk about how this level of connection, communication, and pace is still so new to the human species.
Not long ago in our evolution, conversations happened by mail, perusing photos meant waiting weeks for them to be developed, and boredom—periods of distraction-free nothingness—were as natural as the sun rising and setting.
It is new to rapidly reach anyone, anytime, anywhere. Being privy to what everyone is doing or sharing daily. Information on anything is available as quickly as thoughts arrive and depart. All strung together by a speed that incessantly jars and numbs our nervous systems.
Our bodies and psyches are not wholly used to this.
And maybe they're not supposed to be.
Maybe as much as we're progressing with and into this new world, like the flow of a river—rushing rapids are designed to be counterbalanced by gentle whirring pools. Areas of respite from rapidness where ducks bathe, and humans float. A place where all paces not only coexist but are symbiotic.
Healing is nothing more than the restoration or creation of harmony. An always-available balancing act as natural as the waxing and waning of the Moon and the arising, abiding, and falling away of the seasons.
Just as a Full Moon offers a wild moment of ripening, social media provides a wide open field of expression.
Just as Summertime is abuzz with choruses of birds, orchestras of pollinators, and an abundance of blooms—connecting with anyone at any time offers a chance for kismet intimacy and relationship that's never been so readily available.
But Full Moons don't last forever, and just as her glow wanes and wanders into the dark, we, too, require periods of fallowness. Days, weeks, seasons, even years (!) of no requirement to share, create, or attend to any technological should.
Summer recedes into Autumn. Trees begin pulling nutrients down to the trunk and roots, storing them for the Winter and choking off their leaves. This natural process produces an exhibit of color akin to God's paintbrush happening upon the forest as a canvas.
This seasonal magic we all love to behold is no different from the magic of our natural need to recede.
To take a break from fast-moving external communication and focus on the conversations happening within.
Many years in the healing world have shown me that no wound will be truly transformed through extremes. But instead—knows precisely how to bring itself into a new state of balance when given the space.
As much as I treasure my periods of virtual hermitage, I also equally treasure the immeasurable richness that has come from being willing to consciously engage with all that's technologically available at my fingertips.
So as I return from trips and breaks and feel the impending onslaught of virtual stimuli, I am reminded that this is not a matter of overriding my new-found peace in the name of calibrating. But instead, like a river—being disciplined in allowing myself to move at the pace by which the Earth is carrying me.
I give thanks for this ability to connect, share, and create in epic proportions and for the subtle knowing that, like the phases of the Moon, I am not required nor designed to be full all the time.
