o, how i ran

O, how i ran. Running for my life and risking it in the process. At first i was running towards — a horse galloping with fervor — i had energy, aim and a path. As i felt certain ‘truths’ at odds with my existence, it shifted to running away from. At the beginning, i was running toward knowledge, running toward understanding, interrelation (i thot), connection.. a sense of safety, enoughness, belonging. {I catch myself running still sometimes, in search of those things, momentarily forgetting from where they come.} But for awhile, when my sight was at its worst (willful illusionment), i was running away from. Running as fast as i could, until my body broke beneath me. I was unstuck from all sense of order and fell into a still chaos. At that point i was just running — a wilted wildebeast lost from the water and herd. Just running away, unaware of from what because i was so out of my body and my self. Only retrospectively did i learn i was running from disconnection, abandonment, destitution. (Projections folding in on me, as they do... the very thing i reactionarily want to run from is the thing i find myself within.) The healing process colors understanding. It is in finding my way back to myself, the re-membering of parts, that i come to know those parts in an embodied sense. Tho they have always been with me, i feel more whole and of myself when i give the myriad parts of me life and expression in the material realm. (embodiment means to hold something in the context of a body — to hold it in the body of a full earthly experience. an antithesis to dissociation, disconnection, disembodiment.)

I spent so long undermining my own understanding, intuition and sight trying to morph myself to fit the broken systems i was taught. O HOW I RAN. Not just marathons, but sprints and hurdles. I did backbends to map capitalist logic and hierarchical systems onto my understanding of love, interrelation and existence. I was exhausted. I broke my body into a bridge trying to hold the distance between expectation and reality. Trying to care for people the way they need to be cared for and deliver enough above people’s expectations to avoid being knocked down the ladders of hierarchy and obstacles to survival. I was running toward catching enough resources to relax a little bit..to feel like i deserved to pursue my pleasures (thems the capitalist rools). I felt the gap of givers and receivers (read extractors and extractees) grow impossibly large under my deteriorating body. In a general manager role to a multi-location midsized business i felt directly responsible to people on both ends to be the bridge over this gap.

A slow revelation came thru some huge life-altering events. I wonder still how much longer i would have run myself into the ground without being shaken awake. First my dad died. He had a pretty brutal stage 4 rare cancer diagnosis followed by a near 2 year battle (i don’t think cancer journeys have to be ‘battles’ but it’s how i would describe his experience.) Immediately following his death, i threw myself into work. and at first, it felt like it really helped. It felt calming to have an external sense of purpose when i couldn’t will myself to keep certain parts of my life together. I had a really intense grieving process and work was some of the only breaks from crying. I kept my head down, running this grind for awhile. The formula got harder and harder to meet. The math to make the insides match the map of ideals match the external realities broke my body. I remember describing my reality then (at the edge of burnout) as furiously treading water while starting to take some into my lungs. While my expectations of work and career and life were folding in on me, there was this eerie knowing creeping up.

i just couldn’t shake this feeling that my dad had worked himself to death.

My dad was a wonderful guide and beloved member of his community that maybe didn’t embody the value of rest. He certainly encouraged it for me and people around him but i think he thought if he could push his limits, he’d be all the better. Knowing how much he loved life, and how i often feel the same way, his main reason was perhaps just so he could do more. I feel that way all the time. {My journey in this life is a great balancing act of riding the flames of creative expression and resting/earthing enough to stay grounded and present thru the process.} At my father’s memorial celebration i reminded everyone who thot he had a short life that he did SO much “he lived many lives”.. maybe he just lived it really fast and all at once instead of spread out with plenty of rest intervals. Somewhere around then i learned how all mammals have about the same amount of heartbeats in a lifetime. The bowhead whale’s very slow beat (10 beats/min resting) lasts them 200+ years as opposed to the rat’s quick heart rate (330-480 bpm resting) which lasts 2.5-3.5 years. Now it wasn’t his heart that killed him.. it was a cancer. Cancer cells multiply continually, without the typical kill switch or autodestruct function that healthy cells have.. a disease of productivity. Production that knows no microdeaths, just the big one. Kinda like capitalism, huh?

As i watched different parts of my beliefs and understanding deteriorate around me, another strange truth seemed to cloud my existence. I could not see myself passed a certain age.. like 31. I felt distinctly aware that i was heading for a short life. That my body was telling me, that’s how much longer we had together within these circumstances. The cognitive dissonance grew so great, and the fuel to go on dwindled. I started looking for changes, a next step that i could live with (meaning it didn’t uproot everything i thot security was based in.) I had not hit rock bottom yet.. just a sort of bottom. I made a lateral step — a new job in the same field. It seemed to have much more to do with my desires and interests, but in the end it was the same models and beliefs dressed up differently. There was lots of self-bargaining and contorted expression thru this period. I felt lost and the familiar was unsustaining.

Then my body broke broke. i got seriously injured by overriding my body signs and intuition. My chronic illness had already been in flare up for a year or two and then i pushed myself to meet unrealistic expectations within very questionable work conditions. I wound up with severe tendonitis and general musculonerve pain that rendered me immobile. I needed assistance lifting drinks and forks to my mouth is how serious it was. I have never fully recovered and chronic tendonitis is now a part of my daily chronic symptoms. (Beloved body signs that help urge me to rest and recover in waves so i don’t burn all the way out before i’m ready.) This loving force-stop was what i needed to see, look, and feel myself oriented squarely in my life at that time. To look at the math i was conjuring. Even then, i tried to return to the job, make sense of what i was building towards. Leaving all structure of knowns behind still felt not yet possible. Then a very close beloved held up a mirror to my life and the justifications I was making for it. I felt dysphoric and lost. and THEN the last straw (the one that broke the camel’s back as they say): my employer made an offhand comment revealing their contradicting values, or at least how they contradicted where i wanted to be and thot i was. Only at the point of feeling without anything worth pursuing was i ready to face the void — to take the reigns and responsibility for my life, my beliefs, and how i acted on them. From there, change was easy. Well, not EZ easy.. but a hell of a lot easier than whatever the hell i was doing to myself before. O PEOPLE HOW I RAN ! till my body said we will run no more. Not until we are running for the sake of running, and dying for the sake of dying. There would be no more sacrificial living to feed the monsters of overproduction. I see my future now: long and glorious, full of love and adventure and building worlds within worlds of beauty and connection. I’m thankful for my body. It holds me to the earth. and i love it here. I just wanna do more, and there’s not much to do when we’re always running, running.

O how i ran, till my body said, let’s rest. Again and again, i overrode my body’s consent, till eventually it overrode mine. And if it weren’t for this blessing. I might still be running, and o so near to dying.

The thing is when i take a step back. I see that we’ve all been running running. and are having our collective tower-falling moments of having our systemic beliefs called into view and question. Bodies are rejecting this shared reality. Maybe what we need is to bottom-out, so we fear not collectively facing that void of newness - of something else - together. MAYBE WE ARE ALREADY THERE. We are building the foundations beneath us for the worlds we’ll inhabit tomorrow. It takes some humble shifting and mudwading to build where you stand. But the signs of things not working, will escalate, till change is embraced, till the void is faced. We are the ones who can paint our future differently.

my dad reflected in moving train window on his last earth trip (top photo: sun sets over an airfield after my dad’s end of life celebration; text photo: my dad’s text to me on my last bday while he was earthside)