Watch. Do. Become. Share.

The love loop.

What am I doing here? What am I writing? Do I want to keep writing? Do you want me to keep writing? What do I really want to write about? What do you want me to write about? What are you all going through? What is hard right now? What helps you when things are hard? What is good right now? What helps you when things are good? Oh, how the answers will vary by details. Yet somehow, at the bottom of things, isn’t there always some kind of universal commonality? Am I willing to go there, to the bottom?

Do I have the audacity to say I understand what your bottom is? No. Do I understand your mountaintop? No.

Do I understand what hitting bottom feels like? Yes. So much so, that I learned there is no real bottom. It can actually keep going as far as I allow it to keep falling out from under me until I finally choose to find better, solid ground.

Do I understand what the bliss of the mountaintop feels like? Yes. So much so that I realize there is no final summit. There is always another, higher, more beautiful mountaintop, as long as I want to keep seeking.

So, back to the question.

Am I willing to go there? Am I willing to get to the bottom of things?

“TO BE, OR NOT TO BE”

Can I continue without knowing where I am going?

Well, that’s a silly question. I just turned the definition of human life into a silly question.

We do all sorts of things to help us think we know where we’re going, don’t we?

I’m serious. Thank goodness for linear time, measuring cups, calendars, and school.

So I sit here in the quiet hours of the morning with my measured cup of coffee, my calendar, my laptop, and my blog that I really don’t want to a call a blog because it doesn’t feel legit enough.

Well guess what, self? You have a blog, and it’s legit. Substack gave you permission to call it a publication, so take it and run with it; run like the wind!

And wow, do I feel like the wind. I can feel it. I know when it feels good. I know when it makes me anxious. I know when it throws me off.

I can’t see it. I can’t contain it. I can’t form it into what I want. I can’t form it into what you want. But I know it’s there. It is something very real. It moves things. It moves people.

Wind, I would like to be your friend. You tend to whip this way and that, so unpredictable and erratic sometimes. I have also experienced you steady and soothing. You remind me of the peace before the storm. You remind me where to ground my feet during the storm. You bring me peace after the storm. You are here, and I want to be your friend. I don’t want to pretend like I can control you. I don’t want to fight you. I want to sit with you when you’re a breeze. I want to run with you when you’re a gust. I want to lay down when you are (sometimes violently) releasing something. I want to be in tune with you.

It drives me crazy that I don’t have the map of it all. Why can’t I see where we’re going? When will you show me the next leg of the journey?

What is the truth?

The truth is: I love to write, and I will always love to write.

The truth is: I’m scared to take the next step.

I’m scared to even look at what the next step is.

I started a Google doc the other day and titled it: Chapter 1. I wrote six sentences. I closed the laptop and walked away.

As much as I want to make fun of that, I choose to acknowledge it as a valid step.

And what about Seeing Upside Down?

I have been thinking. I have been staring at it as if it’s both a collage and a blank canvas at the same time.

Seeing Upside Down is the SHARE part of a sequence I am coining:

Watch-Do-Become-Share.

Don’t we all go through this sequence? Think of it in any process. Let start simple with a baby. I immediately imagine those big eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, often making us adults laugh because of the baffled look on the baby’s face. Yet we can laugh because we know it’s not a bad thing, even if they start crying from the discomfort. It’s a beautiful thing. Everything is new to them, everything is a possibility becoming reality right before their eyes. They watch.

Inevitably, the baby grows and finds their own two hands and feet. They find their mouth and realize the noises they can make. They learn how far their arms can reach. After watching Mom dance for so many months, their body starts to bounce when that one song comes on, and it makes them smile. One day, they’re no longer just laying there with a bottle watching the adults. They do.

Here is where it gets interesting, especially during the teenage years. Some things that the baby learned growing up stick with them and serve them well. The other things could go one of two ways: 1) something the child never saw. They see it for the first time as a teenager or in young adulthood, or 2) the thing, the experience the child-now-young-adult is experiencing feels different than how they understood it to feel from the adults they watched in the past. Since it feels different, it calls for a different response than they watched happen in the adult earlier on in life. They take their best stab at handling the situation in their own way based on very limited knowledge and personal experience. Inevitably, there are mistakes, however many mistakes it takes to learn. It can get messy, especially if they are strong, resilient, and loving. I have a theory that the more love and light is trying to pulse through someone, the more of a mess they make. That’s why it’s easy to mistake them for the ones manifesting fear, chaos, and darkness on purpose. Most people are not doing it on purpose. Most people want to overcome the fear, the chaos, the darkness… the mess. They become.

If a baby, child, teenager, young adult, or full-grown adult has the chance to become their true self in this lifetime, they realize the only new landscape left to explore is to express who they are with others. What they may or may not realize when they start to dabble in this part of the sequence is that it helps others who are still in the WATCH phase. Notice, these phases can happen at different points in different people’s lives. Someone can enter the BECOME phase as early as infancy. I think of those toddlers who we see in viral videos, and then some even end up in interviews on a morning show. Adults are watching and learning and gleaning from this toddler who is living from their pure center. They share.

It still seems to be more common, at least in my circles, for the becoming and sharing to happen later in life. As I write that, I ponder the idea that maybe the sequence could be expedited if we listened to the younger generations more. We might listen to them as much as we guide and discipline them. Both are necessary.

I have other ways to comprehend the process of Watch-Do-Become-Share.

It’s helpful to know that what we watch may end up being different from what we do. What we do may end up being different than who we become. In the same way, who we become does not limit what we share. In fact, when we become, we are limitless. In a way, it doesn’t matter how we share ourselves. All that matters is that we share. Because even if someone watches us and it helps them do, their doing will be different, along with the becoming and sharing, and so on and so forth. That takes the pressure off right?

By writing, I am not teaching you how to write. I am not forcing you to understand my becoming. I am writing because it helps me express myself. The best possible outcome I could hope for in someone who is reading (watching) is that it sparks something in them to do-become-share in their own way.

This process is always happening. It can cycle through us over the course of a lifetime and also over the course of one hour.

Photo by Marc Schulte on Unsplash

It happens with other matter too. I think of one of my favorite things: coffee.

The coffee bean.

The bean is born from a plant. It’s safe and attached. It starts to watch other beans become unattached. It watches them go somewhere else.

One day the bean is plucked off the the plant. It’s going somewhere else too! It’s exciting! They get to do what the other beans were doing.

Oh but how could the bean know the becoming would involve spinning, washing, falling, roasting, burning, grinding, boiling, melting, leaving their bean shell behind, and becoming something else altogether- all the while, never losing its essence.

If I was a coffee been, I think I’ve been through the “washing, falling, roasting, burning, grinding, boiling…” I’m in the filter now. I’ve been letting the water begin to melt and disburse my essence, I guess. Take the writing and yoga teaching, for example. I’m willing to pass through the filter. I’m willing for all this to take a new shape if that’s where the wind blows me. I choose to be in tune with that wind.

I take a moment to be grateful for the new shapes that have already come to be. My coffee bean self has already become coffee liquid for others to (hopefully) enjoy when I lead yoga and share my writing.

A strength and weakness of mine is always wondering what’s next.

I hate to rush a cup of coffee.

So let’s sit for a while. Maybe we can watch something while we sip.

I’m so glad you’re here. If we all just kept everything to ourselves, there would be no loop. Duke, my mentor who recently passed away, used to call it the love loop. You sharing has helped me share, which I hope helps someone else share.

If you’re watching, take your time.

If you’re doing, take your time.

If you’re becoming, take your time.

If you’re sharing, take your time.

There is no rush in a loop because there is no end which doesn’t lead to a new beginning.

Sweet disposition
Never too soon

Oh, reckless abandon
Like no one's watching you

A moment, a love
A dream, aloud
A kiss, a cry
Our rights, our wrongs
A moment, a love
A dream, aloud
A moment, a love
A dream, aloud

Song: Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap