It’s dark outside, yet the back-to-school bell has rung, and there are Easter eggs in the supermarket. Must be the first week of January!
Do you ever zoom out a little and see, just for a moment, how laughably ridiculous we are as a species? This week, it is making me a little rebellious (a lot actually, but sleepily so) and I wanted to share my thoughts on this with you, because it’s not just about honouring our winter cycle.
Forget all about NEW YEAR, NEW YOU mindset. 2024 is the year of knowing you - are you ready for a miniature rebellion?
I awoke in the dark this morning to the obnoxious sound of darling hobby’s alarm (and then mine joining it). And, knowing it was a mutual getting-up day, my instinct was to snuggle right up into him for a good spoon. What a delicious way to start the day, however snoozy I also felt.
Yesterday was not a mutual getting-up day; but it was my 13yo daughter’s first day back at school. I was vaguely aware of DH getting out of bed, and after that unconsciousness consumed me until several hours later (and daylight). I woke myself and my whole being up naturally with a full yoga session, including meditation - something I haven’t managed (or even wanted to) for the last 2 weeks!
Incidentally, I always know when I’m letting myself be (not do) the yoga because without fail, the sun shines right on me. Totally true!
On Tuesday, DH was up for an early shift at around 5.30am. The entire household slept on until (at least) the sun was up. It’s hard not to feel terrible about this; kind of like survivor’s guilt. But it also makes me equal parts enraged.
Because, none of this is in any way in line with our species’ needs. Our basic needs. If David Attenborough was documenting us, he’d be lamenting in apologetic tones to the viewer how our natural habitat’s erosion had given way to aberrant dominant behaviour in a select group, sadly leading to mass stress, disease and death amongst the greater population.
Whenever I see these kind of documentaries, I notice a sort of finality to these statements. As the viewer, we feel sad yet ultimately powerless as the prey is gobbled up, or vast swathes of rainforest are felled as the indigenous wildlife flee for their lives.
But, as humans we do have the ability to reflect. To process the mathematics of inconsistency and incoherence. And to course-correct.
The reason we don’t is because we live in a world where the week after Christmas - the whole festive onslaught of the previous 2 months - there are Easter eggs in the supermarket.
We are conditioned to be in a frenzy, perpetually looking forwards whilst trying to “keep up” with somehow getting there (physically, financially, emotionally). There is never an allowable moment to just let ourselves catch up naturally, and properly be with what our bodies and beings need actually right now thank you very much.
And that, my friends is the Fight/Flight/Freeze response right there. The expected rules of our society are literally designed to keep us in our reptilian-reactivity mode, at all times.
Can you even begin to truly imagine the enormity of our potential as individuals and as a species, were we to reverse this conditioning? To decondition ourselves, bit by bit? To ungroove the neural pathways which keep us doing and being the exact same things and ways year after year?
There are many fascinating things to know about the FFF/survival response. My favourite (being the least acknowledged/understood) is that FFF shuts down our ability to process bigger-picture information (which btw, is extremely effectively used during any political campaigning, not least election time). This reaches right from basic bodily functioning right out to our nervous system and ability to:
communicate (effectively!) with others
problem-solve
engage discernment over judgement
grasp abstract concepts
use our imagination
create.
And there it is in a nutshell: from sovereign, possibility-expanding problem-solving and imaginative creators, we have been squashed into mere reactive consumers squabbling over chocolate eggs/ political candidates / the moral judgement of certain medicinal measures.
That is our implicit purpose, according to societal norms.
Do you feel it yet?
Do you feel your body’s innate rejection of this as “normal”?
I have been feeling it rise this week, despite all my best efforts to soothe and reset my ownexpectations. There is this somatic objection within me that won’t be quieted.
Perhaps because once rudely awoken, the embodied remembrance within us yawns loudly, stretches widely, and begins to feel the shackles on each and every part of us.
Isn’t it time we broke those shackles? For you, for us, for our basic humanity?
The foundation of knowing you is the antithesis of living by rote, just because we always have done. We are forever lured into “New You” promises (at any time of year) precisely because we don’t have (or take) the time to know ourselves and what actually makes us thrive. Quick-fix consumerism depends upon this.
This week I’ve struggled with the necessity/ urge/ expectation to jump straight back into work. Being a creative, that means ALL THE THINGS AT ONCE. As a cyclical, sensitive being however, I have found myself having to deliberately and very, very consciously apply the brakes in multiple ways.
It is the difference between being frightened out of bed in the dark by an obnoxious synthetic alarm, and choosing to spoon my way into it, one delicious mouthful at a time.
This is the year of my somatic rebellion: a big FU to societally abusive “norms”.
I choose me: my body, my mind, my spirit. But even more than that, I choose us: humanity. I choose to see and feel just how fricking delicious we can be, together.
I am resetting the expectations of “normal”.
Who’s with me?
Get started:
💖 Read my Pleasure-embodiment diary:
Is pleasure the ultimate state of acceptance?
💖 Join in my Lunacy Circle (starting 21st Feb 2024)
💖 Order my book, It’s Written in the Stars: Poems, reflections & transmutations on becoming