Contemplation: On Rolling With It
Over the last week I have been repeating one phrase often: “Well, one just has to roll with it.” Most often when I tell someone I have been given notice on the flat where I live, as I mentioned in my previous piece.
And the thing I wonder is whether it is always true. Saying it could be a way of sanitising my feelings, of bypassing my experience without truly acknowledging what is happening beneath the surface. To some extent, I believe it is. I know why I do it. It is a story I tell myself to keep from becoming overwhelmed by whatever is happening around me, and that is helpful. The danger is that the true feeling still sits beneath the surface, simmering unaddressed, creating problems I am unaware of.
In my case, if I am honest: disappointment. A loss of the feeling of safety that a home gives. The plain inconvenience of having to move. And underneath those, the sense of not being considered at all.
I brought this up with my therapist, and she thought that, from what she knows of me, I am doing two things at once. The story keeps me from becoming overwhelmed and helps me stay solutions orientated, while the very fact that I bring the feeling up shows I am not disregarding it. Even so, how does one keep the balance? How do I keep myself from tipping one way or the other? For me, it is an ongoing practice of checking in with myself, of noticing where I am in any given moment.
Perhaps you have felt this in yourself too. A neat and tidy story you tell yourself about something, without acknowledging the emotion that lives beneath it. The story lives in the mind. The emotion has a different idea and lives in the body, giving you a stomach ache when you are not being entirely truthful with yourself.
Next time you catch yourself in a neat and tidy story, pause and ask: what is this story helping me manage, and what is it helping me avoid?
Balance is not choosing between the story and the feeling. It is honouring both.
I curate spaces and experiences, through sound, breath and intuition.
This is the work I do with people, one to one: sitting with what lives beneath the story. If that speaks to you, sessions are open here.