Corkscrewing

This piece is from the series “A Loving Lens,” a collection of essays written to help us consider what else is possible…

Skimming through my old journals there it was - a stream-of-consciousness thread I could’ve written this morning. 
“Going to bed too late. Last of the visitors left.  Overwhelmed with managing minutiae. Too much stimuli, self-sabotaging. Need to make the day feel better...”

The sentences came from 2003.  Suddenly it felt as if the needle had never moved. Was it possible that after decades of efforting and editing I was still in the same place, dealing with the same issues? 

Though I was swimming with the same challenge -  self-sabotaging by staying up too late - the surrounding body of water had changed. The focus remained  buoyancy and balance, but I was currently floating in a lot more depth. Treading, and still learning.

It was a hard sell for my brain, whose linear coordinates deduced that if I was still here I wasn’t there yet. 

Fearing going in circles, I didn’t see that I was actually corkscrewing;  rotating around the same axis but meeting the challenge at a different level. Corkscrewing is growing by gradually opening, tracing an upward spiral and going beyond where you’ve been before, without any ‘right’ angles.  Like walking a vertical labyrinth, it beckons contemplation over castigation.

Finding yourself back in a familiar place after years of trying to move beyond it can feel like failure, but many times the feeling of failure is a call to redefine success. 

If we gently investigate, there’s often an intelligent strategy at work.

My bedtime ban was slow to die in part because it was useful, off-gassing pressure built up during the day and returning a sense of liberating sovereignty by night.  Only now the day-after aftermath was becoming increasingly destructive.

So here it was again, coming up for re-view.  Did I really need to wait until night to feel free? Was there something keeping me from enjoying the day more? Would I let the change that wanted to happen happen?

In the space before an answer lands I started to sense snippets of a new shore. 

With it, readiness and realization: this bedtime procrastination was a holdout habit that gripped tighter whenever I tried breaking up with it.  A definitive break-up required fortifying my resolve.

It wasn’t exactly an a-ha! moment - those ecstatic seconds when cumulative confusion breaks apart with a clarifying flash - it was more a truce from rote how-comes, why-nots, and when-will-it-evers… a gradual gear shift into what else was possible.

You’ll know when it’s time to change. And you’ll know when you’re ready. Often there’s a significant gap between them.

Living new learning is not a one-off. Humans being tend to take a few rounds before things sink in. ‘Getting over it’ usually requires several rounds of going over and over it. Growth spouts and spurts in fits and starts.  Naturally.

And soul growth… isn’t forward or backward, it’s inward. 

Deepward. 

Deepening, like ripening, happens in stages and phases.

It’s easy to feel like you’re spinning your wheels with a success-is-a-singular-outcome blueprint. When we ignore texture, we’re stuck at the surface, berating the behavior instead of touching  its underlayer.

Progress is often an invisible movement - a new belief you adopt, an action you no longer take, a value you abide.

So how can you trust that Life is moving you even when you can’t measure it? 

1. Gauging internal change takes a softer lens, and patience to see it outwardly reflected back to you. You may have (finally!) strengthened your boundaries and rescinded your willingness to be with a narcissistic partner, but not currently be in a relationship. When a new one comes, it might have vestiges of the old template but also include healthier aspects, making progression not black or white but a melange of grays.  

Between all or nothing are a lot of somethings.

2. Rather than only commemorating beginnings (weddings) or endings (graduations), celebrate the inner-between wins. Ritualize enrichment, not just enactment. 

That date that you refused to see a third time rather than ignore the early warning signs of incompatibility? That talk that you finally had with your boss about a raise (outcome irrelevant!) Toast both!

Life is a learning curve, but our tightrope models of progress are ill-suited for fluid navigation. 

“Achieving doneness” makes it tricky to allow for an ad infinitum continuum, yet evolution is eternal.

3. No matter how many ‘mistakes’ we make, a mistake is just a missed take. Like filmmaking, life comes with a built-in cosmic clapperboard for multiple tries.

You get as many takes as it takes to grow, and you grow with or without taking them. The more takes only deepen the lesson.  

4. Honor thy pace. Growth eggs take time to hatch.

Deadlines deaden the rhythm of your lifelines, flesh’s signature promise coiled around palms. Give yourself permission to ebb and flow. 

—

Corkscrewing is… 

a crabwalk catwalk without stopwatch one step forward two steps back three to the side temporarily off the ride

laid bare back on the horse occasional remorse taken in stride  alongside the course of things to come

Life is a series of starting overs

Like a pinball, side to side knocking about through tunnels and funnels on the way out to a goal Unexpectedly rolling down the middle  past levers ready to shoot you back to the top until once more getting dropped in front of the plunger, about to be sprung into action to again  ready or not, play

And just when you think you’re past the past it returns full force serving up one more layer for seasonal shedding cumulative despair coming up for air sloughing itself off birthing fresh skin

Onward! Inward!

A corkscrew is how we open up, let loose the bubbles, air out the contents and appreciate being marinated by time

revolving is evolving.