Among my new year’s so-called resolutions is this one to meditate regularly. Not pray. Not talk to God in any discernible way.
But meditate. Be still. Listen. Breathe. Focus on listening and breathing. To sit with myself. To stop everything for ten minutes a day while some lady named Tamara guides me on the Calm app on my phone.
The first time I ever meditated (not prayed), I was working at a therapeutic boarding school for teen boys in drug and alcohol recovery. I suppose I only did so to show solidarity with the staff leading the meditations with our students.
Left to my own inclinations, would I ever willingly enter a seated circle for ten minutes without saying a word to anyone, God included?
And yet I’m oddly wired to want the things I do not want. Like jumping out of planes or running marathons in Antarctica.
So I asked myself, “Why do I not want meditation? Do I think it’s weird? Do I think it’s silly? Do I think it’s pointless? Isn’t praying the ‘Christian’ alternative to meditation? Why would I enthusiastically enter a prayer circle but find myself put off by a meditation circle?”
Beyond the stigma that meditation is for “hippies” and “spiritual-but-not-Christian” people, I’ve realized all the reasons why I once resisted the mere notion of meditation. I’ve realized it like a blaze across the sky.
I hate to stop. I loathe stopping. It’s my least favorite thing. Uncomfortable at best; painful at worst.
Ever since my cross-continent road trip of 2014-15, I’ve been hardwired to move and keep moving like a shark in the deep. To travel and change living situations, yes, but also to keep busy. To have a calendar. To have a to-do list. To check things off. To have somewhere to go, something to do
over and over
again and again
day after day
week after week
year after year
one thing to occupy me after the next after the never-ending next.
I don’t know how to stop. I feel like a toddler admitting this, but it’s true.
The last three years have blown in some of my greatest trials, relationally and spiritually and now physically with my autoimmune disease. All of these dark storms, together, have formed a tornado around my mental health, too. Funneling into my self-worth, my sense of peace.
Oh, right, and a pandemic is happening too. Can’t forget about ole Covey.
And so for the last month, I’ve been taking 10 minutes a day to stop. Whether I still have things to do for the day or not. I meditated just before sitting down to write this blog and fielded all the usual inner screams.
But this is pointless.
But I need to blog before it gets too late.
But I can’t afford to lose this precious time.
But I can’t just be sad all the time.
That last one slammed into me. Right before opening up this dashboard to write.
Tamara was talking to me today about the Icelandic concept of gluggavedur — “window-weather.” I swear, I’m loving these daily meditations, if not for her fun little anecdotes alone.
Gluggavedur is the notion of watching a storm from afar. Of being safely indoors, warm and secure, while the storm brews on the horizon. Lightning, swirling clouds, and rain — all seen through a pane of glass.
The concept can be taken metaphorically, too, to separate yourself from your swirling emotions within. Of creating a space between you and the storms: sadness, anger, stress, fear, etc.
Of not ignoring these hard feelings, but being aware of them, watching them from the other side of the glass . . . until they eventually pass.
In theory, I love what Tamara was getting at. I want what Tamara wants for me, even though I don’t want it. Tamara’s become my girl in 2021.
But Tamara. Lady. I don’t want to watch the storm of my sadness. I’ll watch the deluge of the century brewing outside my Asheville bay window, all day every day.
But the storm of these last three years? I don’t want to see that anymore. Haven’t I seen enough??
I often pride myself as a feeler, an Enneagram Four, the feelingest of feelers. But how much have I allowed myself to feel, really?
How much of this storm have I actually seen with my two eyes, or how much have I allowed those tumultuous feelings to rock my gut, my heart, my soul? How much have I numbed the pain with over-Internetting and oversleeping?
How much do I gluggavedur? Or whatever the verb form of gluggavedur is?
In counseling I’m processing my feelings like never before, how I cope with them. On the one hand, my counselor recently affirmed that I’m living my life 95% really well. I have a fulfilling purpose with writing and podcasting and video-making and community-building, I have amazing friends and family, and I take my self-care seriously, whether it’s my diet, my exercise, my spiritual health, and now my mental health.
But it’s that last 5%, usually the waning hours of each day, where I self-sabotage. Where I don’t allow myself to watch my feelings. Where the day’s tasks are done, and I’m only left with the storm. Where I numb the feelings with poor choices while they rumble in my gut with clenched hands and eyelids.
Where I close the blinds instead of watching each slash of the storm.
It’s been a devilish few years. Nothing could have ever prepared me. Nothing has been quite like it.
Maybe it’s been a god-awful year for you, too.
May I suggest gluggavedur-ing with me? Observing the storm? Not willing it away, not letting it rock us. But of grabbing a warm beverage and a blanket or cloak to drape around your shoulders. Of watching each jagged bolt flash before our eyes. Of hearing the wind whistle. Of watching the gray turn black.
Of breathing. Deep, hearty breaths.
And of watching the black skies turn back to gray. Maybe not all the way blue again. But even a shade lighter than a moment ago.
As a Four I must remind myself, over and over, again and again, maddeningly, that I am not my emotions. I have them, yes; I have many of them.
But I am not my emotions. Creating this distance is vital.
I’m only a month into this new meditation practice, and I know I still have a long way to go. I might average 13 seconds of solid focusing on my breath per 10-minute session. The rest of the time I’m either thinking of all the blogs and podcasts and videos and stuff I have to do, or places I need to go, or my pain of three years, my deep sadness.
But 13 seconds used to be 10 seconds. Used to be 5 seconds. And I feel a budding confidence that soon 13 seconds will be in my rearview mirror as I learn to focus more and more on the present moment.
Of stilling myself.
Of watching my storm erupt instead of letting it swallow me whole.
Of sipping that warm beverage under a blanket with a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
