And everyone you love will be safe
Poetry, musings, and feeling unsettled and restless anchored somewhere within
“There will be dishes to do,
The moon will rise,
And everyone you love will be safe.”
-Thursday, James Longenbach
I’ve been attempting to write this month’s post for a while. I’ll get waves of inspiration and sit down to write only to relegate the thoughts, messy and with lots of [research this and find link to cite] scattered around.
I tried to write about sending texts at 3 am and being a messy human, the preoccupation with our occupations [are we really that obsessed and interested in our experience as being workers that our newsfeeds and social media feeds seem to generate one trend over another and also what the hell, has work always been so central to how humans define worth and identity?], and I tried to write about not being able to write and finally decided this is not going to be a very succinct update because life hasn’t been a very succinct experience for me lately.
Poetry brings me a lot of peace. Especially when I’m feeling particularly unmoored and in that state of overwhelming overthinking that I start splashing about in search of an anchor, something to hold me for a while before I can make it to shore. As I write this, I’m smiling because I think I’m finally noticing that my life is punctuated by these moments of anarchy and chaos and unsettled restlessness and that maybe one day I’ll start to find my balance and ride the waves. This is very different from a few hours ago when I started this draft and then switched to journaling only to start sobbing.
I found this poem this morning titled Thursday, written by a University of Rochester professor who passed away last year. That last verse is everything I cherish dearly about the mundanity of human experience, some might even say they’re a few of my favorite things:
doing the dishes
looking at the moon, basking under its moonlight
praying for everyone I love to be safe
I like when life is easy and you can feel it deep in your bones. It’s effortless and it clings to you the way a soft breeze comes through when you’re sitting under the shade on a warm day: just barely, just enough, just suddenly. They say/write that life is in the small things, the little rituals that we build up and if we pay attention then maybe we can spot the magic.
When you’re an anxious person you can also be very hypervigilant because you want to give yourself some sense of control, so you’re watching everyone closely, observing when their facial expressions change in the minutest ways (it’s okay if you read that as minute like time and not min-oot like small). I used to painstakingly watch my mom or grandma or aunts in the kitchen. They moved like dancing wizards: the choreography something internalized but their personality would come out and the whole experience was a once in a lifetime never again to be seen show. Daily routines holding pockets of magic in plain sight.
I’ve been finding my footing in the last three weeks. A lot of reflection and a strong urge to pull myself away from everything and isolate so I can let in just the right amount of energy without being overwhelmed. I need a sensory deprivation tank so I can truly rest - it feels like that some times. Some things just clicked and what surprised me was the inherent routine of it. I’ve been here for about 6 months not working, and recently having taken up some short-term consulting and there hasn’t been much of a routine. I always wanted to slow down. That was one of the goals I had for the sabbatical. I know how to rush and compel and urge and push and get things to the finish line. I know that pressure that is built up inside of me and how to alleviate it was to always act on it, or make others act on it until there was a resolution - whether it was the one I desired or didn’t at least I could close the chapter, wrap up the matter and shove it away and forget about it. I never realized when that morphed into complete manifestation of my anxiety - the need to control everything I could around me.
What I recently realized (thank you, thriving journaling practice and silence!) is that when I felt anxious, uncertain, worried, I’d rationalize that there is likely some logic tied up to this, so if I could figure it out and figure out the flowcharts, I could play this game and reclaim some control until I got to one of the scoped out likely results. What would happen is I’d get to the result and feel really dissatisfied but spend hours convincing myself that I had to be satisfied because I gamed this and this was the result. I had to play this game to feel in control to keep at bay that anxious feeling. But like Newt Scamander says, “worrying means you suffer twice” and I did/would.
And so when I realized that I’ve spent most of this time in a healing experience, with a few moments of fun scattered through, I had to go back to the drawing board and draw some very intentional ways for me to have fun. Everyone who knows my story thinks/believes I’m having a great time. I mean I’m not working and I am in another country and I’m spending it dancing!! Who wouldn’t be having the best time ever? They ask me what I plan to do when I come back to real life. They don’t ask me how flamenco dancing is coming along. They don’t ask me what I’ve learned about flamenco. They don’t ask me if I’ve made friends. They don’t ask me about where I’m traveling to next. They don’t ask me when the next newsletter is coming out (that’s actually okay lol). I didn’t realize it bugged me. Because to me, I’m living my life right now. I’ve been living my real life for the past few months. It looks different but whether I’m back stateside or continue living here, it’ll be my real life. With real sweat, blood, and tears infused into every moment (I mean so many tears - but we all knew this; and surprisingly a lot of sweat it’s March and it’s 80* F and it’s insane). And maybe that’s also the reality of your 30s, people are also deeply immersed in their lives and moving in the direction they’re getting called. Like my very wise sister says often to me, “Priya - no one cares what you’re up to because they’re busy caring about what they’re up to. Also, it’s not always about you!” And this is where anxiety firmly argues back that, actually it is all about you/me/Priyanka.
Mostly every day during this sabbatical, I’ve done the dishes, I’ve thrown out the trash, I’ve even had to fix the pump in my toilet tank. I’ve done laundry, shopped around for where to buy eggs, worked on administrative things. I’ve hosted friends who visited me, I’ve applied to jobs (plot twist amiright?!), I’ve had my eyebrows threaded. And scattered in those moments, I’ve been going to dance class and having great days and not so great days; I’ve finally removed a little creative block and started choreographing to bollywood songs; I’ve gone ahead and recorded and edited my first podcast episode (it’s coming soon!); and I’ve been gathering the courage to live my life on my own terms regardless of whether it’s validated by society and family. And it’s sad because I don’t think it’s being acknowledged and it’s sad that I have this desire that I hope it is acknowledged. Perhaps, that’s what living is then for me - I acknowledge my own life and its small problems and its huge problems and its momentous moments and its serendipities and its unending never-knowingness, day after day. Even if it feels really icky and uncomfortable. Especially when no one is paying attention, I’ve got to. And when I witness my life, I stumble across the pockets of magic and I get more patient with myself and I see how much good slowing down has been for me. That hunch that I had, where slowing down whatever it ended up looking like was going to be a big risk, turned out to be worth it and I’m only just at the beginning.
To close this out, I am putting out a call to action dear readers: take time to witness your life. pay close attention to your rituals and habits. keep your eyes peeled for a pocket of magic when you possibly can’t seem to think it could ever happen. acknowledge your own life in all its seasons and maybe write about it. all of this is part of the practice of slowing down. even the feelings of being unmoored, unsettled and restless.
And if you feel like sharing with me, I’d love to be witness to your slow life.
Because the most difficult part about making something, also the best,
Is existing in the middle,
Sustaining an act of radical imagination