Be Here Now: How? Follow the Pain

“Just be sure to notice the collateral beauty. It’s the profound connection to everything.”

— Madeleine, Collateral Beauty

Overwhelming Unconsciousness

My mother is a mortician. Once upon a time, she had the great misfortune of performing her rather unique skillset on a very young child. The child was not killed by an illness or a freak accident, but by her mother. When she shared the story with me, my reaction surprised me. The tale is anything but lovely. It exists outside the fringes of what is acceptable in our society and breaks our rules to the most extreme degree. I was just as likely as the next person to react with judgment and anger and to sanctimoniously discuss what a terrible person the mother must have been and how I – benevolent as I am, pillar of patience, model of compassion – could never have done something so heinous.

On this day, however, empathy prevailed. An idea materialized out of the ethers that being understanding toward this person did not imply being any less heartbroken about her actions. This mother was young and managing her new and challenging role alone. I scrolled through my own mental rolodex and remembered how real and debilitating post-partum depression and grief was for me, and that, but for the needs of my premature baby, I may not have been saved from myself. I recalled how I fought….against everything – NICU nurses, my family, even my daughter – because I just didn’t want any of it to be part of our story. I thought about my strong support system and the fact that I could cry and vent and, even now, go out and get a cup of tea when the child-rearing struggle gets too real. I couldn’t imagine having some of the feelings or difficulties I had without the tools to properly manage them. I was, of course, saddened at the thought of such a young life being snuffed out before she shared her gifts with the world but as I thought about it, that fact was true of both the child and the mother. I saw pain, I saw severe duress, I saw overwhelming unconsciousness. “I can’t judge her,” I said to my distressed mother. “How much pain must she have been in then…and now?”

Distressed by Milada Vigerova

Pain is prolific. Human beings are in a near constant state of disquietude. It may be obvious, full-on agony – the kind that never escapes recognition and to which, despite our best efforts, we are never oblivious. Or it may be covert – that mild irritation that manifests itself in nail biting or stress eating or insidious gossiping (a tactic that allows not only for ignorance but superiority…bonus). Regardless of the expression, we are usually clueless about what’s really going on. Rather than understand the feelings, most of our energies are used in trying to escape them and the painful present of which they are a part.  

Rooting Out Expectations

If the love of money is the root of all evil, the clinging to expectations has to be the root of all unhappiness. Our minds, resourceful as they are, have an uncanny ability to apply our understanding of the past and manufacture ideas of what the present should be. That’s great, if we’re trying to efficiently make sense of the world but being married to those ideas doesn’t allow for much vision, creativity, or necessary change to occur.

We want our often lofty and unrealistic should bes to be met with precision. If life complies, we are elated, but if it disobeys or even if it fails to acquiesce in the way we have outlined, we become disappointed and fail to see reality. Relationships should be in constant harmony so we lash out when they fall short. We don’t see that our soul mate is not the one that makes us perpetually blissful but the one that helps us to learn the most about ourselves. Time should be our own so we fret when our small children won’t play independently and we still don’t have clean hair. We don’t see that we could learn from those small children, who are generally contented (notwithstanding a tantrum or two) precisely because they have no enduring expectations of contentedness. We should be able to sleep in so we’re upset about the early meeting that was called at the last minute and we don’t see the gift of a quiet moment and a drive to work lit by a perfect sunrise. We don’t see… In our constant state of restlessness, carried by the tumultuous wind of expectations – sometimes high, but mostly low, and without the slightest bit of self-direction - we don’t see.

Blind by Nicole Mason

Finding Peace

So how do we exist in a reality that is painful? We consciously follow the pain, that is, with an intention to see it and not to get lost in it. Rather than run, follow the tears, the irritation, the anger, the aggression, the frustration, the stomach tightness, the clenched teeth, all of it. Those reactions are prompts to look just under the surface. There we find the assumptions, the harboring of which is causing the pain in the first place. We question them, make necessary adjustments, learn and go on to more consciously direct our lives with the wisdom that only comes with clear vision. We can respond properly, make proactive choices, and discover the valuable things we need right now.

That is the acceptance to which wise people refer as the solution to ending suffering – a moratorium on fighting against what’s there by trying to insert what should be there. Accepting discomfort doesn’t mean being happy about it. It means bringing awareness to it. It means feeling it without being consumed by it, recognizing our resistant thoughts and actions without clinging to them, and operating in a reality apart from the expectant ones we have created in our minds. It means finding the peace that rests on the decision to let go of our expectations and to see. Then we can accept that this hurt is part of our story, and the wound ceases to bleed. 

Reflection by Sunset Girl

A Final Word

In truth, there is very little difference between me and the young mother I described. I simply had the tools to restrain many of my reactions long enough to face what was actually there. She did not. Through that realization, I was gifted with a split second of understanding and I was able to see her, in spite of her heartbreaking offense – still fighting, still restless, still hurting, and still utterly exhausted. If I could have talked to her, I would have said, "there is beauty in pain, tenderness in that which is broken, an opportunity to connect and love in our shared human experience – an experience that includes the lessons of both joy and pain. You are here...right now, you are here. You need only look through the tears and see."

Fading flowers by Daria Shevtsova

Love in all things,

April Eileen

Be Here Now: How? With Offers You Can't Refuse

“Thy light alone like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream. ”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Lan Su by Aaron Clay

Lan Su Chinese Garden – a haven of peace and tranquility “designed to inspire, facilitate personal growth, and spark creativity,” according to its website – is located in the middle of the busy bustle and noisy mayhem of downtown Portland. Artisans from Suzhou in China’s Jiangsu province modeled Lan Su after their own historic Ming Dynasty gardens, which were intended to be spiritual utopias for their visitors and inhabitants. So why construct such a place downtown? It turns out the decision was very purposeful. The garden is meant to provide a bit of a break from the hustle of everyday city life, which is a concept I found interesting. While it is nice to wholly escape the perpetual grind (vacation, please?), finding calm in the midst of the storm is the order of the day for most of us.

Chinese guzheng by Aaron Clay

Lan Su turned out to be just as described – a bit of a respite. When I stepped inside the inner courtyard, the pandemonium of car horns and barking dogs and cabs zipping to and fro faded into the background and were replaced with the serene melody of a traditional Chinese guzheng. Flowers and plants of all kinds bloomed and shared their fragrant fortunes, and stones on the ground were perfectly arranged to create pretty little pictures. The gurgles of Lake Zither beckoned us to come and listen a bit more closely and to watch the koi fish play. I walked a little further and looked up to discover rows of beautifully decorated drip tiles. I was told that each tile allows a single droplet of rain at a time to fall to create a pearl-like curtain of showers (wow). A little more wandering and I found myself in a structure – The Reflections in Clear Ripples Pavilion – that was named for the reflections of light that are cast upon it as a result of the way the sunlight hits the water upon which it sits. A little further still and I stumbled upon detailed reliefs inspired by traditional stories, lines of poetry written on columns in calligraphy with Chinese characters, and blooming lotus flowers swaying contentedly in the water. Around every corner was the evidence of ardent dedication to beauty.

Lotus flowers by Aaron Clay

I’ve been thinking a lot about presence lately and my experience at Lan Su reminds me that beauty has a significant role to play. I was able to attend to, and rather easily, the minutest details in front of me despite the ever-present commotion just outside the garden walls. How could I account for such acute awareness? Certainly, I was on vacation and my mind was clearer than usual. I had walked barefoot across tilted stones and my Qi was flowing more freely. There was the green tea that I had had at the teahouse. It could have been any of those things but I suspect the extraordinary beauty of those minute details had a lot to do with it too. Lesson learned.

Filling life with more of the beautiful things from which one cannot possibly turn away is as brilliant a strategy as any for staying more awake. Plus it’s proactive and requires us to exercise our abilities and power to bring our desires to life. We must look for those lovely things in which to indulge and if we can’t find them, we must necessarily create them. As I’m sure the Chinese artisans I now hold in such high esteem would attest, cultivating beauty takes time and attention but it’s a worthwhile pursuit and important for its own sake. How much effort was required to build The Reflections in Clear Ripples Pavilion so wonderfully? How much awareness was required to perceive the details necessary to authentically name it as such? How many people have been enriched when they see those reflections tell their story?

Most of us are not able to maintain a constant state of Zen, finding bliss and harmony all around us. It’s there but our tantrum-throwing toddlers or attitudinal teenagers or difficult bosses or crazy schedules keep us from seeing it. We do have available moments, however, and so much can happen in a moment. We can take a moment to perfectly plate and add a little color to our dinner. We can take a moment to put a few sprigs of lavender under our pillows. We can take a moment to grab some wildflowers and stick them in that plastic bottle we were going to throw away (how’s that for up-cycling). We can also see beyond the tantrums, the attitudes, the difficulty and the craziness and find the beautiful truth. We can fill our lives with a little more beauty, every moment of every day and I believe that beauty will reward us with something precious in return – open eyes.

Love in all things, 

April Eileen

Be Here Now: How? Insights From That Time I Almost Missed Le Diner en Blanc

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Diner en Blanc tablescape by Aaron Clay (Tablescape by Jennifer Thompson)

We got in! I coveted an invitation to Le Diner en Blanc like I do food on my husband’s plate. Every story raced through my mind in glittering detail – secret locations, beautifully decorated tables, fierce attire, new friends and, of course, the ethereal white. What’s more, I was going across the country to attend Seattle’s inaugural event.

I certainly could not have pulled this off myself. The adventure was spearheaded by my cousin who, for the record, is much cooler than I am. (Little ones leave you less cool and more lukewarm. She has none to date). She called at one of those hours when I was prepping to go out and she was just coming in. “Seattle just opened registration” – because cool people keep tabs on stuff like that. “Go to their website and register…now!” It was a long shot. Tales of waitlists with thousands of people were not only true, but apparently common. I humbly took my orders and pulled out my laptop.

A few weeks later, over a Fourth of July vacation in Cape May, my phone rang. Cool cousin again. “I got in! See if you did too,” she screamed over club-thumping music. Groggy, I rubbed my eyes, looked at my phone and there it was – the emailed invitation. At that point, the real work began. We had 3 weeks to collect tables, chairs, décor, food…oh yeah and ourselves clad en blanc. Several Amazon packages later and some choice words mumbled here and there, we were ready. We made it, we were fabulous, and the experience was epic. I can say that with confidence but I was very much in danger of not being able to. Here’s why.

Diner en Blanc sailboat by Aaron Clay

When we arrived, I walked across the bridge and stood for the split second it took to gasp at the beautiful water and sailboats. Then I took a selfie. The first one wasn’t right so I took a few more. I paused in front of the 4-person musical ensemble long enough to Instagram it. No clue what the group was playing. Choosing proper filters takes time and attention. As my cousin put together a truly creative tablescape, we questioned whether we should leave it to the powers that be to post it on Pinterest or whether we should take it upon ourselves to ensure its debut. Better not leave things to chance. I was about to go AWOL for the napkin wave - a long-standing Le Diner en Blanc tradition – trying to get my photographer husband to take pictures of my own table, but I was fortunate. He stopped me, pulled in the reigns with his calming manner, and saved me from myself as usual so I could actually be there.

Diner en Blanc napkin wave by Aaron Clay

Of course, I took time to reflect on the experience. Why had I missed so much and more importantly, how could I avoid missing stuff in the future. I talked to my friend Sarah Eisenberg, a clinical psychologist, to see if she could shed some light. According to her, we don’t ever really multi-task – it just sort of looks like we do. Our brains, magnificent as they are, are really just switching between one or more things very quickly. Juggling our attention in this way can cause “cognitive load” – a state in which our brains need to work harder and can get tired <sad face>. The effect is poorer performance.

So if we’re meant to focus, just how are we to do that in our modern world, with all of its distractions? Mindfulness can certainly help. “Being present is simply bringing awareness to stimuli inside and outside. Once you are aware, you can make conscious choices rather than unconscious ones,” says Sarah. Just like waking up at Le Diner en Blanc and course-correcting, we can do the same thing day-to-day when we find ourselves not paying attention to our children or not totally listening to our partners or neglecting a sunset because our pocket computers yelled at us with urgency. We can practice being aware of those moments and make better choices - choices that reflect what’s important to us. And those important moments move from the periphery of our mental landscapes to the center stage where they belong. 

While I really wanted to write one of those “I ditched my cell phone for a week and went crazy” kinds of posts, I think that learning to manage our technology rather than trying to escape it will likely be a more effective approach in the long run. This way we can get good at caring for our minds by allowing them to really attend to the brief and beautiful moments that color the story of our lives. Plus, we can still find Uber drivers.

Love in all things,

April Eileen

P.S. I missed a few photo-ops at Le Diner en Blanc and I settled for blurry and imperfect pictures to mirror my blurry and imperfect life, but I did get one that’s worth mentioning. These are friends we made that evening because we took some time to #beherenow.

Diner en Blanc friends by Unknown