Hi friends,
I’ve got a bruise like an Ash Wednesday smudge between my eyebrows.
A few days ago my acupuncturist needled my yintang point (also known as Extra-1, love that). Doing so is meant to release tension and anxiety and create a mentally stabilizing effect. “Ah, busy mind,” he said when he removed the needle to a stubborn stream of little blood droplets. The whole area had become swollen, he said.
The night before I’d awoken at 3am from a crystal clear but flash of a dream which was simply the feeling of knowing that I was dying. There was no other context or even emotion, just the experience of what it actually feels like to know you’re death is imminent. Like you always knew it would come but, ah, so here it finally is.
And now I have a souvenir bruise on my over-active frontal cortex; a third-eye black eye. A reminder that I’m spilling out of my own gourd. A signifier that right now is a lot.
Sooooooo that’s me these days: stress, pressure, mild depression, anxiety. Just having a very chill and carefree August.
How are you?
[actual question; take a deep breath in and out - see what the answer really feels like]
The Olympics were a welcome distraction from my mind a few weeks back. If you’re anything like me, you started fairly oblivious and apathetic to them but ended it depressed that they’re over. A gold medal transformation from not giving a shit to caring too much! Human capacity is amazing. {And if you found yourself falling hard into full parasocial yearning, believe me I know how that feels. I medaled in that back in 1996.)
This year, I primarily watched track and field because I find the events especially primal and stunning. It’s just your body, solo, sometimes for just less than a dozen seconds, pushed to its absolute limit. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Steeplechase is still an event. The Darius Rucker of track and field: still jamming and touring.
It brought back memories of my own fraught day on the cross-country team. The chilled air stung my dry nose, and my chicken legs lagged behind. It was simply too hard and I quit. My older sister was wildly more adept, a State Champion, running the 400M hurdles and 4x400M relay -- events American world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone dominated once again. “The best to ever do it,” (ever) they said.
In one post-race interview she was asked how she handled the heaps of pressure on her as the Gold favorite and current world record holder.
“Pressure’s an illusion. It’s what you make it.”
That really hit. I thought, “damn, I know in my bones that’s true and want to be in a place where I can actualize that in my body.”
I’ve been feeling heaps of pressure lately about all sorts of things. Like you name it, I probably feel it.
Pressure is so damn sneaky, but strong. Ears pop, water bottle crunches together. Wheels touch the ground. It’s the “I shoulds,” it’s the “I wishes,” it’s the “I needs.”
Pressure comes in so many shapes and forms, from without and within. Whether you are a world record holder or just a regular person, we have the same potentiality to feel pressure.
Stress and pressure in the body feel like being plugged into a socket and not in a good way. The incessant buzz of a blazing security light in the background of your picture.
To know it’s just an illusion?! Oppressive PSIs just psssssssss s s ss s s s deflate and dissipate into nothing because they were never really there at all.
Freedom from. Freedom to. Free-ness. Lightness. Spaciousness.
I felt pressure to write and publish this post. I’m behind, because I have been fairly diligent about publishing twice monthly (at least) on a Friday. I love to do it. It makes me so happy, it gives me purpose. But I find myself short on time, energy, and other resources needed — somehow more so than the early days when my son was just born. Yet the commitment to publishing stands. That’s discipline, I think. That’s tenacity. That’s excellence. Just fucking get it done!
But sometimes we just run ourselves ragged, and by we I’ll just speak for myself here.
What kind of pressure are you feeling right now? It might take a few minutes, eyes closed, breathing easily, scanning the body, to even identify. Call them out. List them off. No pressure left behind! Here are some of mine…
Pressure to be extraordinarily productive but also be super chill and grounded.
Pressure to take time for myself but also to spend the fleeting precious moments with my son.
Pressure to make good money but not sell my soul to institutions that excavate and ruin them.
Pressure to catch up with the dozens of wonderful friends and colleagues I’d genuinely like to stay in touch with but wonder…where in the hell is the time?!
Pressure to be in the moment but also be planning ahead.
Pressure to create output blasted against the pressure to receive input (read a book?! listen to a podcast?!).
Pressure to manage all emotions all the time.
Pressure to see the bigger picture and stay grounded.
I’m currently watching “America’s Sweethearts” about the high intensity perfection machine that is the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and on it one woman says something like, “pressure is a privilege.” I can see how this is true.
It’s a privilege and it’s an illusion. Built partially on the assumption that someone, anyone, or maybe everyone cares. Built partially on Big Ego Energy.
Pressure is the second arrow in the Buddhist parable. We all have shit to do. Requirements. Responsibilities. Sometimes big, high stakes opportunities that are part of a contingent web, so doing them well or not doing them at all will inevitably effect other people. That is just the way it is. That’s the first arrow of living life. But feeling pressure — stress in your body and angst in your mind — about a certain outcome (which in totality is outside of your control) is an added pain. That’s the second arrow.
Pressure is maya, the sanskirt term for illusion and deceit. Of course you matter and people care, to some extent, but the inflation and hardening of that into this BIG THING an illusion. At least some pressure seems good, necessary, and inevitable. It helps things stay in motion or stay at rest. Sleep pressure, as they call it, helps my son to sleep mostly through the night.
But pressure with a capital P R E S S U R E, magnified in your minds eye to swallow up everything else… this is an unnecessary burden to saddle yourself with, which never changes an outcome.
With all respect and love, you don’t matter that much and no body really cares. I matter an appropriate amount, not more or less, and no body really cares if I publish this post a week or seven late.
Pressure is part of lila (LEE-luh), the Hindu concept for divine play. I love lila. So damn good. Lila says that the nature of the divine is playful so that creation — the cosmos, and everything we experience, see, touch, and feel — is an expression of that. We are gorgeous, meaningful cosmic jokes, all of us.
Psssssssss s s ss s s s
On “America’s Sweethearts” Director and head coach Kelly Finglass (who must be a pressure expert) pops the bubble of one exhausted rookie hoping to make the squad:
“You are wound up, nervous, over-practicing, over-thinking, over-trying. You’re in a pressure cooker and I want to take the lid off for you. We’re making cuts tonight and you’re being released.”
“Yes ma’am,” the woman tearfully responds.
Psssssssss s s ss s s s
So anyway, here’s some of how I’m managing the TREMENDOUS pressure I find myself under, a regular person who will never be an Olympian.
Drop the story that I need to do X in Y way by Z (or else…). It’s an illusion, a trick. Just experiment and drop it, see what happens. Experiment with being someone who doesn’t do the thing (for me, personally, this is a big deal). Experiment and see if any part of the world caves in (it won’t).
Welcome in playfulness. Remember you’re part of lila. I am lila. I am both a cosmic joke and a galactic jokester. Just try it, or don’t, get curious about doing the thing and maybe not perfectly or in the way you thought you should.
Just send it. Get out of that pressure system! The time is now. Gotta make a move and the only way to do it is just to do it. Trust that what it is is what it should be.
This last point is ultimately what’s helped me to get this piece to you. I am committed to creating and putting work out there. Right now that’s the core practice for me. Mindful, of course, but not over-thought. The pressure to write something perfect, meaningful, and complete stands in my way. So I exited the pressure system, and sent it (this piece). Here it is. Once once thing moves, other things start to move too. That’s almost always a good thing. All hail the cross-breeze! Need more cross-breeze in my life.
I love the phrase “send it”, which I think (?) originated in rock climbing? And/or some other extreme sports, maybe as a technical term (?) But now seems to just means “yeaahhh! do it!” We only have now. “Lick the stamp and send it,” is even closer to my aging millennial heart because our generation might be the last to remember what it’s like to actually have to lick a stamp (or dozens, if you’re helping your mom send out Christmas cards) before you send something.
First, you carefully tear a stamp away from its perforated siblings and gather just the right amount of saliva in your mouth. You relax your tongue so it’s more like the stamp is licking you, rather than the other way around. Slack jawed being mindful to hold just a hair’s breath of the stamp’s delicate scalloped edge, you lick. Then, with precious and care, affix it evenly aligned with the right angles of the envelope’s top right corner (being mindful that the saliva underneath can make it skitterish). Perhaps you blow gently to help the glue try. Now you’re ready to fucking send it.
Sending it is not rushed, thoughtless, or impulsive, in my view. Sending it is the culmination of effort and a deep trust in yourself that you’ve done what you can (aka your “best”) and it’s time to let go. Sending it is the remembrance of lila, the recognition of maya, and the avoidance of the second arrow.
There was a lot of send in the Olympics so I’m channeling this as I head into a very non-Olympian fall where I’m trying to deflate pressure by just moving through it.
Watching the face of the woman who’d go on to be the gold medalist in pole vault, I thought about that very final last moment before she started to run.
Calculation, calculation, calculation, maybe a prayer, and then sheer send.
And, look, a totally valid alternative to sending it (out) can be sending something to the trash. Delete. Discard. Cancel. Quit. Whatever. I am also traveling this path. You’ll never read all the pieces I will never send!
Just find the lid on the pressure cooker and take it off. Whatever you need to do to keep moving, to remember your divine playfulness and appropriate level of mattering.
I’m with you on this! And I’m recognizing, or calling it, performance anxiety. And I keep circling back to *who* am I trying to perform for?
Im so with this post as a 9 months pregnant person who’s trying to be productive but the body just needs to take a nap at random hours of the day. And then at night I can’t sleep but also don’t want to get up so I read too many substack posts. Remembering to take the lid off. Remembering Lila. Thank you.