As a kid I’d lie in bed at night staring up at the ceiling. The big white fan would whir round and round and my eyes would search. I looked into the mystery of the darkness with a mix of curiosity and tension. Staring into darkness alters your vision. Like a Seurat painting, everything becomes pixelated. It gave my room a surreal quality. Like a filter my eyes could peek through only at night, making reality appear different. I stared with wonder, for what seemed like hours, but  probably was only minutes, up at my ceiling and throughout my room with this new way of seeing the world. I never told anyone about it. It was my secret nighttime ritual. Stare into the pixelated darkness and discover. Allow my world to take on a dreaminess that eventually carried me off to sleep.

The mystery and joy of these discoveries happened in the absence of stimulation. No TV, or audiobooks, or podcasts, or guided meditations, or music, or white noise, or soothing lights to help me get to sleep. There was only space and darkness. In the gap between awake and asleep, there was time to learn about myself, my surroundings, and the world. I could pause and be with my own mind, my own thoughts, my own feelings. Ok so, it turns out I was an incredibly anxious child (lol) and often I sat with many unpleasant things right before bed…but, the pixelated discoveries I made were fun. I learned that I could do something to feel better, on my very own. That the world was mysterious and not always as it seemed. It broadened my curiosity, allowed me to suspend disbelief for things unknown. It taught me to discover through my own eyes.

Last Monday, I sat in my office opposite an adolescent as we did some grounding. Finding her feet, slowing down, orienting to the space. As we slowed down she noticed, her hands felt extremely uncomfortable trying to be still. “It feels really tingly and weird when they’re not moving.” I invited her to track the tingliness and the weirdness. She stayed with it for an uncomfortable second. I thought about it, about how infrequent it is that busy adolescents actually have space, with no stimulation, to just be. To sit with themselves and make discoveries. How there is always a device to pick up, always a stream of information to attach to, always someone to text, or something to watch. I explained to her, “often when our bodies feel discomfort, there is a story hidden underneath.” She looked at me with a mix of awe and cynicism. “What kind of story?!” “We’ll have to listen for long enough to find out,” I replied. A moment later her hands began to fidget and we moved on.

This skill, of simply being. Without an activity, without guidance, without a focal point…and seeing what emerges from the void, is priceless. This is where true wisdom is found. This is where self is found. In this moment, sitting with this teen I realized, we no longer have this space. The world we exist in is not set up for these gaps I found as a kid. Gaps that I had to navigate on my own, without an endless stream of input telling me what to think, how to feel, what to be interested in. Now, if we want this kind of space we have to claw for it, create it, be disciplined about it…which somehow feels contradictory to its very essence. It takes away from the artistry of it all. The boundless flow from one moment into the next. Moseying down a stream, noticing our surroundings, noticing our internal state, allowing things to arise within us and through us. Now, people pay thousands of dollars to travel to retreat centers to have this device-free time and space. Typically, this makes them feel better. Clearer. More connected to themselves, to who they really are. Yet, as they land back in the swirl of daily life, the clarity is snatched away like a frivolous luxury, not to be enjoyed any longer.

Getting lost in the stimuli bombards our senses from the outside-in. We forget that if we want to hear the stories already happening inside of us, we have to get quiet enough to do so. The external noise can be deafening and it takes time, space, and tolerating discomfort for long enough to listen. However, if we are willing to withstand the discomfort, listen to it, and begin to understand the messages from the inside-out, life takes on a whole new dimension. There is agency, there is freedom. No longer are you simply swirling around in the soup of incoming STUFF. You already have a whole complex world, unique to you, to notice, interpret, and be aware of right inside your very being. There may be interesting ideas, desires, and deeper self-awareness just waiting for you to tune in. All it takes is your willingness to discover it in the darkness.

Picture this. Devices are off and away. Door is closed. You find a comfortable spot…and you sit. You notice the discomfort, perhaps the familiar thoughts start to swirl, the to do-list bubbles up, but you push past that. Not now…I’m discovering. You set the intention to listen for any untold stories inside of you. You slow and quiet as much as you can, perhaps using your breath to guide you downward. And you just keep listening. There is no particular goal, there is no “finished,” there is no checklist…there is just time and space and willingness to ride the waves of discomfort as your body reorients towards the inside. You allow your awareness to be diffuse but also to focus-in when something emerges, whether it’s a physical sensation, an idea, an emotional experience, or something in your physical environment that wants to be discovered. You are making space to be curious about your own human experience. Just keep leaning into the curiosity. You may only have 10 minutes to do this, that’s ok. The more you practice the more easily your body will trust that you are there to really listen. That’s when the best discoveries are really made.

3 years ago today my mom died. She was 70. She had 2 types of cancer. I was 34. It was 2022, the tail end of the pandemic kept us isolated. The devastation of her death still haunts me. She was so sick, yet I was wildly unprepared for the reality. Nothing in me could accept the truth that she would die. She couldn’t accept it either. My mom was a college professor and her semester had just begun. Two days before she died she sat in her hospital bed begging us to bring her a laptop so she could email her chair to let him know that she would have to miss class…this week. She wanted to tell him that she was sick with a bug. Terrified to type anything else into existence. Something in me knew how ludicrous her plan was, even if I couldn’t quite acknowledge the truth myself. She lay immobile in a hospital bed, unable to sit up, eat, or toilet. Exchanges with her doctor revealed a sadness that could only mean she would leave us very soon. I begged her to give me the email address so that I could take care of it. It took a few hours of convincing before she gave in. This was my mom clinging to her life. She was not ready to relinquish control nor ready to stop surviving.

Death as a subject is shrouded in hushed voices, saddened eyes, and constricted breath. It is something we as humans tend to shut out of our minds. Death comes in many forms. The tragic and untimely which leave the bereaved in agony and shock. But for most, death happens with slightly more predictability as the body ages and sickness takes hold. While an inevitable part of life, it is still avoided like a shameful secret. Superstitious energy surrounds it, as though speaking about death somehow conjures it into existence. As a human who has witnessed death and as a human who will eventually face death, the truth is I barely, if ever, REALLY think about the arc of my life as one that includes death. There is the abstract notion that one day I will no longer be here, but there is no practical consideration for my life’s complete experience as one that ends with me dying.

I’ve been reading a book. It is called Staring At The Sun: Overcoming the Dread of Death by Dr. Irvin Yalom, a foremost thinker, author, and psychiatrist in the realm of existential psychology. This is the branch of psychology that considers our existence and thus our eventual non-existence. It infuses the reality of death deep into psychological treatment, understanding that when you strip away our defenses, the underpinning for all anxiety is that we are terrified to die. The book reads beautifully (as all of his books do) but it talks about death so honestly and so obviously that it has really left me wondering. What if our life were described to us with openness and awe, as the rising and setting of a sun? That we pop into existence from a dark void. We live, we shine, we nurture, we warm others, maybe even burn others, and then a time comes to vanish back into that same void. What if, without fear or avoidance, death could be folded into the human psyche as a normal and healthy part of a life? The only way to actually complete it. This reality is wholly omitted from our life map (i.e., kid, school, teenager, college, job, marriage, kids, house, retirement, etc.) It is tucked away in a dark corner to “be dealt with” when the time comes. We avoid death because death makes us DEEPLY uncomfortable.

You see, everything inside of us is wired to survive. As a species we have adapted to survive our lives for as long as we possibly can. This data point might suggest that humans REALLY enjoy living (I mean, I only intentionally prolong the things I love doing, right?!)  However, when I look around it’s not the case. People are not waltzing through their existence with carefree nonchalance begging the DJ to play one more song. Most people are coping, surviving as best they can. Our survival energy is STRONG. It has blown out enjoyment energy on the leaderboard of priorities. To be fair this isn’t a conscious decision. Blame it on evolution. We are wired to survive at all costs. It is how a species propagates, and BOY have the humans prop-a-gated (8.2 billion and counting…) This wiring has allowed us to have long expansive lives, but it also has made way for this teeny tiny companion we’ve dubbed anxiety to accompany us through our time here. The emotional havoc-wreaker that causes us panic, worry, stress, dread, fear, and sickness just so we can survive our lives a little longer, while simultaneously shattering our immune systems and leading us further from health. Picture this… a video game where we struggle to outrun the clock on our own ETA to heaven, unaware of our surroundings or the potential for momentary bliss so long as we outrun that clock. That’s kind of what survival energy has us doing out here!

But my friends…in this dance for survival we have lost the thread. We’ve forgotten there is more to life than simply surviving it. Presence, enjoyment, depth of experience. Death will appear on our timelines whether we like it or not. Orienting to this reality is not morose or depressed, it is truth and as far as I know truth is liberating (albeit sometimes terrifying.) Yes, our wiring commands us to survive but can’t we get a little more creative? Just surviving is passé! Can’t we look under the hood and figure out what it would look like to have a completely different type of experience? While we’re here…while we’re still in the game – what do we have to lose? Doesn’t the finality of death put things into ultimate perspective? In our finite time how do we paint the most beautiful, fulfilling, purposeful, connected, inspiring canvas one has ever seen?  Wouldn’t envisioning the full arc of our lives to incorporate our death be an immensely useful tool in doing so? The ending, while sad and hard and painful, creates a container that make the drops of life we have to live that much sweeter.

I wonder what it would’ve been like if death were talked about in my family in this way. “Dying is natural. It is ok. We all must do it and when our time comes, we’ll figure out how to face it. Dying does not mean you are a failure or have given up. It is just a thing that happens when our bodies stop working. Your wiring may convince you that it’s your job to keep surviving, but there will come a time when your job will be the opposite – to accept your ending with the same integrity and openness as the life you’ve lived. Let’s talk about dying as much as we need to. Let’s talk about living as much as we can. It is all part of life.” Would my mom have faced her death with more acceptance, more readiness? Instead of clinging to anxious terror and stubborn insistence to prolong her life, even as her body was so clearly shutting down, would this knowing of death have allowed her to see the significance of the moment she was in? Would she have been able to let go and witness the beauty of the life she lived in her grand finale? And if I had been taught this very thing as well? Perhaps, we could have snuggled up and watched the sunset together, saying a proper goodbye before she vanished.

(R.I.P. mom. I love and miss you always ❤️)