Tonight is my last night of parental leave (although, is it ever?) before I head back into the office tomorrow. I wasn’t sure how I’d be feeling right now, but I’m in a soup of emotion. Today’s prompt from the On Being Project comes at an interesting time. The prompt is what places you in a stream of timelessness?
But I think rather than take the project up on its prompt to offer the stream of timelessness, I’m thinking about what happens when those streams are stirred up. What you once found like a pocket of zen in your day is suddenly gone or looks different? Can we find something in those times to anchor us to that feeling of timelessness, or a pause (much like the eye of the storm?).
Ross Gay, a scholar and writer, spoke about his Joy Radar that he developed while undertaking a whole year of writing a small essay every day. Writing every day allowed him to build a muscle for experiencing joy or tenderness or pause every single day. He compared it to its opposite, the Despair Radar, which media outlets have, pouring on us, the unbearable in the world. Jane Hirshfield, in her story tells of something similar. A journalist was reporting from the ground when the Haiti earthquake happened a number of years ago. He was talking about the chaos and looting that was imminent after any big disaster. Behind him, people were sleeping in the streets as aftershocks were still shaking the buildings. But they were singing. There was a joyful communion outside in the midst of despair and what was reported. Where we choose to focus flexes that muscle strongly.
Like all humans, I have a strong despair radar because there are so many things in the world that need fixing. And it makes me sad.
I’m starting to believe that hope is retrospective. That we only see the good things when they’ve happened, and not in the present - in that stream that we can step into. But rather than seeing the joys of the bygone, perhaps we can live in the stream as it now. There are a million things for which we can hope. A million rivulets of grace that we can step into every day. And that we can find pause and reprieve on those days that feel the heaviest.
As I go into this next chapter that has a very distinctive start, I hope to keep developing that joy radar. And perhaps those million little joys will become their own stream of timelessness.