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Almost four years ago, standing in my kitchen in Montpelier in my brand new business suit, ready to walk out the door, I felt a sharp pain in my right side and began navigating my way to the ground in hope of relief. By the time I made it to the linoleum tile my back had seized up and I could barely move. It took me ten minutes to crawl from the kitchen to my phone in the next room. As I inched my way along my life hinged between tears and laughter. The sight of me on the floor in my business suit seemed equally horrifying and hilarious. It was months before I saw it as an analogy for a much bigger story our society is living out today.
I was on my way to meet with some “important” guy in Burlington—a retired executive in the airline industry. I was in the midst of starting a business as a mediator and facilitator and was enrolled in a so called “leadership program.” I was trying to get out the door to and be on time for a meeting with this particular retired “leader.”
I’d been living a busy, exhausting, over-achieving life until this point, but although I didn’t know it at the time, this was all about to change. Within a week of being laid up with what I perceived as a bad back, all my energy bottomed out and all my senses became acutely tender. I could barely walk and exhaustion of a kind I’d never known before colored every move I made. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and noticing the life of the inanimate objects around me. Sometimes I’d just listen to the sounds of the street outside or watch the movement of light through the room. Most of my capacity for thought or analysis seemed to have slipped away.
Slowly and achingly over three weeks I realized I had to cancel everything, the classes I was teaching at Woodbury College, the mediations and facilitations and other work with clients, all my plans for the business I was starting. And I needed to start asking for help—with shopping, with getting to appointments, with food, with laundry. Asking for help and saying “no” weren’t my strengths, but I began to get fantastic practice. My life was falling apart. My plans for the future, my ideas and illusions about my life were disintegrating.
Two or three months into this collapse I still didn’t know what was wrong, but my energy and capacity were slightly improved. I could move more easily and wasn’t in bed the entire day—but still most of it. This continued for months—I went up and down, got some better, then got worse again, then better, etc. I saw scores of doctors and healers and was given advice from every corner of my community. None-the-less I came to know life would never return to the old way, and finally I stopped waiting for this.
I began to see, very intimately, the analogy between what was happening in my life and the direction we are headed in as humanity living at the end of the age of cheap oil. I’d been living on an unsustainable energy supply and I hadn’t realized it had peaked until it was in decline. Now in hindsight I could look back and see that it had been peaking for more than a year before my body collapsed—my life had been showing great signs of fracture, stress, and disintegration. Whatever energy had been keeping me going (a mix of adrenaline and misunderstanding) was now irrevocably in decline. Now every bit of energy I used came at such a high price—I’d have to rest for days—I had to pick my projects carefully and I had to discover and create and support new more sustainable ways to power my life. And to do this all my ideas about power and energy had to change.
This past fall, after fourteen years in Vermont, I returned to New Hampshire and my childhood home. I moved in with my mother to be able to get more family support and reduce my living expenses. This had been on my list of great fears: someday I won’t be able to take care of myself on my own and I’ll be forced to move in with family. It isn’t that I thought it would be impossible to live with family, but it would go against all I imagined for my life in my mid thirties, it would take me away from my community (which is no small thing when Vermont has been my home for so long), and it would require levels of letting go I wasn’t sure I had in me. But when the time came, when my options were move in with my mother, or move in with my mother, it turned out not to be such a difficult decision to make.
To my great relief and surprise living with my mother in the home where I grew up is wonderful in many ways. Being on the land of my childhood is infinitely nourishing, and having time with my mother that I rarely had growing up in a large family, is also nourishing. One sister lives near by and now one of my brothers has moved back to the area. My other two siblings are here for long visits this summer and so I’m getting to spend much more time with my whole family. This is not always easy, but it is very, very good. I feared that moving home would be embarrassing or that I’d somehow feel diminished, but in fact I’ve never felt more grown up in my life than I do now. Grown up because I am willing to live the life I have and work with what I’ve got without knowing what the future holds.
I’m discovering new energy within. I’m getting stronger. And now I’m exploring ways to make a living and support myself that are within my limitations (before my collapse I didn’t know I had limitations!). I am a much more relaxed, much less scared person than I used to be.
Although I wouldn’t wish anyone to suffer or experience their life falling apart from illness, grief, relationship changes, job loss, I’d also say, if your life is in personal collapse—embrace it. There is such a great deal to learn about reality from here, about how we don’t know how things will turn out, how we have capacities we didn’t know we had, how maybe moving back home isn’t so bad after all. You will learn who your friends are, you’ll have the opportunity to become better friends with yourself, you may find out what is really important to you, or ask yourself all sorts of hard questions. You may let go of all sorts of fears and become more sensitive and compassionate toward others. At least there is abundant opportunity for all this.
I encourage everyone to take advantage of personal collapse (big or small) to build these inner skills. I promise you will be better prepared (even if poorer or physically weaker) for experiencing broader collapse in your community and our society. You may not have learned all the new skills you need for growing your own food or bought the milk cow you want or moved to a Transition Town, but you will have had the chance to learn the deeper skills of letting go, asking for help, knowing what is important in the moment, and if you are really lucky, deepening your sense of humor about it all. There is a great need for people who are fully engaged in the business and joy of living to be present in our communities and neighborhoods, our cities and towns, our homes and gardens, offering sanity and support to those around them.
You also don’t have to wait for your life to collapse, or invite collapse into your life, to begin building the inner skills necessary to meet this challenging time in our collective history. You can begin right now. You don’t have to wait until your body breaks to lie on the floor and receive the unending support of earth as you quietly become present with your heart. You can do this now. You can begin to listen inwardly as much as you listen outwardly. And through this listening discover what is there within and around you, what is aching to be acknowledged inside of you—from your deep fears to your unexpressed hopes to your sore hip to your enduring love of cows (or whatever it is for you). We are always living all of this, but when it becomes part of our conscious life, when we are present with it as it arises, it becomes the creative force of the universe, and new possibilities unfold. And when it remains unacknowledged and unconsciously experienced it drives us outside of this moment and into a life of grasping for security and fearing for our futures.
Being afraid and grasping is fine, understandable in our current circumstances, but also not our only option. Along with growing food, connecting with our communities, supporting our neighbors, and everything else we might be doing in light of energy insecurity, an insane political system, and environmental catastrophe, we can also rediscover what it is to be human, to be engaged in this moment, to love what is all around us (and within us) asking to be loved.
Although building these skills is our own work we don’t have to do it alone. We can come together in our vulnerability, to share our humanity, to speak the unspeakable. We can listen to one another along with listening to ourselves.
------------------------
Jasmine Lamb teaches embodied communication and personal transformation. This fall she'll be teaching the workshop, The Art of Collapse: Building Strength and Acceptance in Difficult Times in Montpelier and Hardwick, Vermont. To learn more and read her blog go to www.allislistening.com.
I was on my way to meet with some “important” guy in Burlington—a retired executive in the airline industry. I was in the midst of starting a business as a mediator and facilitator and was enrolled in a so called “leadership program.” I was trying to get out the door to and be on time for a meeting with this particular retired “leader.”
I’d been living a busy, exhausting, over-achieving life until this point, but although I didn’t know it at the time, this was all about to change. Within a week of being laid up with what I perceived as a bad back, all my energy bottomed out and all my senses became acutely tender. I could barely walk and exhaustion of a kind I’d never known before colored every move I made. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and noticing the life of the inanimate objects around me. Sometimes I’d just listen to the sounds of the street outside or watch the movement of light through the room. Most of my capacity for thought or analysis seemed to have slipped away.
Slowly and achingly over three weeks I realized I had to cancel everything, the classes I was teaching at Woodbury College, the mediations and facilitations and other work with clients, all my plans for the business I was starting. And I needed to start asking for help—with shopping, with getting to appointments, with food, with laundry. Asking for help and saying “no” weren’t my strengths, but I began to get fantastic practice. My life was falling apart. My plans for the future, my ideas and illusions about my life were disintegrating.
Two or three months into this collapse I still didn’t know what was wrong, but my energy and capacity were slightly improved. I could move more easily and wasn’t in bed the entire day—but still most of it. This continued for months—I went up and down, got some better, then got worse again, then better, etc. I saw scores of doctors and healers and was given advice from every corner of my community. None-the-less I came to know life would never return to the old way, and finally I stopped waiting for this.
I began to see, very intimately, the analogy between what was happening in my life and the direction we are headed in as humanity living at the end of the age of cheap oil. I’d been living on an unsustainable energy supply and I hadn’t realized it had peaked until it was in decline. Now in hindsight I could look back and see that it had been peaking for more than a year before my body collapsed—my life had been showing great signs of fracture, stress, and disintegration. Whatever energy had been keeping me going (a mix of adrenaline and misunderstanding) was now irrevocably in decline. Now every bit of energy I used came at such a high price—I’d have to rest for days—I had to pick my projects carefully and I had to discover and create and support new more sustainable ways to power my life. And to do this all my ideas about power and energy had to change.
This past fall, after fourteen years in Vermont, I returned to New Hampshire and my childhood home. I moved in with my mother to be able to get more family support and reduce my living expenses. This had been on my list of great fears: someday I won’t be able to take care of myself on my own and I’ll be forced to move in with family. It isn’t that I thought it would be impossible to live with family, but it would go against all I imagined for my life in my mid thirties, it would take me away from my community (which is no small thing when Vermont has been my home for so long), and it would require levels of letting go I wasn’t sure I had in me. But when the time came, when my options were move in with my mother, or move in with my mother, it turned out not to be such a difficult decision to make.
To my great relief and surprise living with my mother in the home where I grew up is wonderful in many ways. Being on the land of my childhood is infinitely nourishing, and having time with my mother that I rarely had growing up in a large family, is also nourishing. One sister lives near by and now one of my brothers has moved back to the area. My other two siblings are here for long visits this summer and so I’m getting to spend much more time with my whole family. This is not always easy, but it is very, very good. I feared that moving home would be embarrassing or that I’d somehow feel diminished, but in fact I’ve never felt more grown up in my life than I do now. Grown up because I am willing to live the life I have and work with what I’ve got without knowing what the future holds.
I’m discovering new energy within. I’m getting stronger. And now I’m exploring ways to make a living and support myself that are within my limitations (before my collapse I didn’t know I had limitations!). I am a much more relaxed, much less scared person than I used to be.
Although I wouldn’t wish anyone to suffer or experience their life falling apart from illness, grief, relationship changes, job loss, I’d also say, if your life is in personal collapse—embrace it. There is such a great deal to learn about reality from here, about how we don’t know how things will turn out, how we have capacities we didn’t know we had, how maybe moving back home isn’t so bad after all. You will learn who your friends are, you’ll have the opportunity to become better friends with yourself, you may find out what is really important to you, or ask yourself all sorts of hard questions. You may let go of all sorts of fears and become more sensitive and compassionate toward others. At least there is abundant opportunity for all this.
I encourage everyone to take advantage of personal collapse (big or small) to build these inner skills. I promise you will be better prepared (even if poorer or physically weaker) for experiencing broader collapse in your community and our society. You may not have learned all the new skills you need for growing your own food or bought the milk cow you want or moved to a Transition Town, but you will have had the chance to learn the deeper skills of letting go, asking for help, knowing what is important in the moment, and if you are really lucky, deepening your sense of humor about it all. There is a great need for people who are fully engaged in the business and joy of living to be present in our communities and neighborhoods, our cities and towns, our homes and gardens, offering sanity and support to those around them.
You also don’t have to wait for your life to collapse, or invite collapse into your life, to begin building the inner skills necessary to meet this challenging time in our collective history. You can begin right now. You don’t have to wait until your body breaks to lie on the floor and receive the unending support of earth as you quietly become present with your heart. You can do this now. You can begin to listen inwardly as much as you listen outwardly. And through this listening discover what is there within and around you, what is aching to be acknowledged inside of you—from your deep fears to your unexpressed hopes to your sore hip to your enduring love of cows (or whatever it is for you). We are always living all of this, but when it becomes part of our conscious life, when we are present with it as it arises, it becomes the creative force of the universe, and new possibilities unfold. And when it remains unacknowledged and unconsciously experienced it drives us outside of this moment and into a life of grasping for security and fearing for our futures.
Being afraid and grasping is fine, understandable in our current circumstances, but also not our only option. Along with growing food, connecting with our communities, supporting our neighbors, and everything else we might be doing in light of energy insecurity, an insane political system, and environmental catastrophe, we can also rediscover what it is to be human, to be engaged in this moment, to love what is all around us (and within us) asking to be loved.
Although building these skills is our own work we don’t have to do it alone. We can come together in our vulnerability, to share our humanity, to speak the unspeakable. We can listen to one another along with listening to ourselves.
------------------------
Jasmine Lamb teaches embodied communication and personal transformation. This fall she'll be teaching the workshop, The Art of Collapse: Building Strength and Acceptance in Difficult Times in Montpelier and Hardwick, Vermont. To learn more and read her blog go to www.allislistening.com.