How I am changing – Part 2 (Let Go. Be.)

I have a whiteboard in my room. Its purpose was help me schedule and structure my day so that I could be maximally productive. If I followed everything on that schedule I would have a perfect day. I would grow and I would be prepared for the future and therefore be able to contribute to the world.

I have been editing this whiteboard every few days. But mostly it has said the same sort of thing. ‘Start the morning with water, yoga, meditation etc.’, ‘commit X hours to reading’, ‘eat this and that’ ‘exercise this way, at this time, for this long.’

For the most part I have been struggling to follow the highly scaffolded routine down to a T. What kind of freak of nature actually follows their own rules? I am a rebel at heart, and a rebel against myself most of all! Anyway, since quarantine began, I have been continuously trying to stick to this manufactured routine. Dedicated to the idea of improving myself so I could improve my life and eventually contribute the world. I told myself that this is a perfect time to commit to personal growth, what with all this free time on my hands. I could lock myself in my room all day and force myself to become stronger and smarter. If only I took advantage of the time.

How MISTAKEN I have been.
Even though I never really succeeded on the structured path I had plotted, I never questioned that it was the right thing. The worthwhile way to spend time.
I had it all wrong. No matter how many books I have read during this time, or hours of yoga I have practiced, I have ‘gotten’ nowhere.

That is because I have been here, already, all along.

It is all unfolding to me now. The truth of being. Literally, hour by hour. The whiteboard in my room is still here. Only now I realise how much more pleasurable it is to rub things off the whiteboard, than to marker new tasks on.

Yesterday I re-did the board once again. Wiped all that blue and black slippery ink clean off. I sat on my cosy bed where a ray of sun splashed my skin and birds twittered outside my window. I stared at that blank whiteboard. I picked up a green marker and began to pour out the new ideas that had taken over my mind.

Now I sit here. The whiteboard is there across the room. It has never looked this way before. The whiteboard isn’t instructing me how to conduct a morning routine nor is it telling me how many hours I have to spend doing each task.

I am sitting here on my laptop. It is a completely normal day. ‘Just another day in quarantine.’ Yet something inside of me has fundamentally shifted. Literally shifted. Gone. Cleared away. In it’s place; space. New and expanding space. Space for people to come in. Space for spontaneity, for creativity. Space for noticing the sun. Space for listening to the birds. Space to be. I am completely aware and it is absolutely easy. I feel amazing. I feel friendlier. Yet as I said, it is just a normal day.

You can feel better than ever, without a morsel of effort involved.

Now it is becoming clear to me: The point is not to ‘take advantage of time’. It’s letting time take advantage of you. It’s not about ‘cracking the whip’ on yourself, forcing yourself to complete certain tasks that you think will bring you closer to happiness.You don’t have to grind, to hustle or even to be disciplined, to become better.

Be a better person to the people around you, by letting go of your obsession with productivity and growth. Make the space and show up. 

I realise that even while I was doing activities like yoga, meditation and cycling, I wasn’t ‘making any progress.’ While the reason I was doing these activities in the first place was to become more peaceful, I was only breeding feelings of resistance and negativity by forcing myself to do them in such a structured way. Starting off my day with the mindset that I should block out my feelings and ‘just do it’, served only to take myself further away from mindfulness and happiness.

Let me stress, this is not because yoga and meditation are bad things to do. Quite the contrary! These activities are fantastic and I think everyone should ‘do’ them. The point is that the way I was going about it was all wrong. Precisely because I was ‘doing’ these activities rather than being in these activities. Doing, is about getting to the end for the sake of a benefit/result. You ‘do’ an exam, you ‘do’ the shopping. You don’t do these things for the inherent joy of them (although they can be enjoyed with the right mindset), you do them to reap the fruits. The exam results and the groceries. You don’t ‘do’ movie-watching, you don’t ‘do’ kissing, you don’t ‘do’ living.

In my quest to become more peaceful, happy, alive and aware – I was engaging in the most ironic contradiction. I was trying to ‘do’ something which was inherently about not doing. Equivalent to a person forcing themselves to listen to a song to get to the end. To listent to music for the sake of ‘reaping the emotive benefits’.

You cannot simply ‘make’ yourself peaceful. It is like when somebody says ‘You should relax’ or ‘Put a smile on your face’. When the essence of the activity is about letting go, you can’t succeed by trying to ‘let go harder’.

So here I was doing my scheduled yoga and meditation, thinking that I was doing great.
That I was fulfilling these tasks and therefore succeeding somehow. Yet I realised, that I wasn’t enjoying doing these things. These things were like chores, and all I thought about was getting to the end of them so I could be free.

If you go into something with the frame of mind that says ‘Ok let’s get this over with so I can get the reward at the end’ then it is going to be really hard to enjoy that activity. Furthermore, you are going to spend less time on the activity because it is something that is not fun and so we are not going to get obsessed with it, much less ‘lose ourselves in it’. (Unless you feel like your weekly trip to the supermarket is the best way to ‘lose yourself in ecstasy’, in which case: You do you.)

If something was designed for you to get into your body and senses and experience things, then it is a mistake to make yourself do those things.

So all this time I have been running on the spot. Like a treadmill junkie. Only to realise that everything amazing and miraculous about life, can be found only if I get out of my head and experience things as they are. To taste the tea, to smell the old book, to lock eyes, to hold hands. The only way to truly add light to this world, is to do some spring cleaning on yourself. To clear up some space! No, you don’t just go and throw out all your goals and aspirations, but it is vital to make space for the here and now. Space for the people around you. Space for the unplanned.

You don’t need a grand purpose or strong sense of meaning to be granted the right to exist in this world. Especially if being peaceful, happy and kind are on your agenda – then productivity should take a backseat. The being here is the miracle. The rest of it is just frosting on the cake.

You will tell me that there are problems out there in the world to solve. Of course. And we need to solve them as soon as possible. People are starving and fighting and fleeing, everywhere. Yet how did these conflicts begin? Trace it back to government corruption or labour exploitation or lack of empathy from capitalistic employers…etc. All of these things are human problems. Human problems were created by decisions that people made when they were not being peaceful or content or mindful or kind.

When it comes down to the crux of it, learning to let go, can be a powerful tool for societal change. The only this, it is not a tool. It cannot be monetized, or curriculumized or documented. Nobody can get excited about ‘a new breakthrough for humanity.’ It is too simple for any of that. It is just too simple. Letting GO. Letting go of the necessary need for a grand purpose, which will provide inexhaustible excuses for you to do sometimes horrible things in the name of that grand purpose. The grand purpose which will lead you to doing so many things and enjoying none of it. The grand purpose that will tell you it is ok to ignore the beauty and the people around you, ‘because you have more important work to do.’ The grand purpose which you will be a slave to, until the moment you are about to die, when you suddenly realise that the only thing you want in the whole world, is somebody who loves you at your bedside.

Let go, and go from there

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