Monday, January 11, 2016

2016...How will you show up?

Last week was a long week.  With my husband out of town on a work trip, I had my hands full with work, kids, house, year-end paperwork, aging pets (who poop on the floor right as I am walking out the door to get to work), and whatever else comes up.  I often feel like a drill sergeant:  Did you pack your homework?  Do you have your Girl Scout sash?  Brush your hair.  Wear some deodorant.  Have you done our thank you notes from Christmas yet?  I get sick of myself.  We needed some fun, but fun that didn't take too much energy.  At least, that's what I needed.

So last night, we watched School of Rock, with Jack Black - a movie none of us had ever seen before. It was the perfect mix of silliness, personal catharsis, and rock and roll.  But it also happened to fit perfectly into this blog, which I'd been working on earlier about HOW WE SHOW UP.  Here's Jack Black showing up hungover to his first day substitute teaching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbF4qz_-PCM

Another interesting story about 'showing up' comes from The Moth Radio Hour's most recent, https://beta.prx.org/stories/167147, which includes a funny and good story from Nadia Bolz-Weber (a Lutheran minister), who tells about how she tends to show up to large gatherings of Lutherans (and plane flights) and how she 'showed up' anxious and panicky to a precarious, international tourist bus trip down a mountain pass.  It's worth listening to.

In my private practice, I'm paying attention to how people show up. I don't mean if they are wearing sweatpants or a business suit, but how they show up mentally.  Most people show up in consistent ways, mentally/emotionally.  Here are some I've noticed:  'prepared', with notes, questions, writings; vulnerable, ready to be open; passive, with the idea that something I do or say is the answer to all their problems; like a student, wanting to learn something; full of stories, longing to just talk out and tell the story of what's happened in their life since the last time I saw them; skeptical or defended, uncommitted, wanting to feel better, but not sure they want to go too deep.

There is no right way or wrong way to show up to therapy.  Or life.  But many days we don't even ask ourselves how we want to show up.  To our day, our work, our family, a holiday party.  We show up in the same old ways we always show up.  We are irritable, we are hopeful, we are suspicious, we are exhausted, we are angry, we are playful, we are naive, we are curious, we are know-it-alls.

A dynamo woman I know introduced me to a wonderful poem a few years ago, and I know I've written about it before - Summons, by Robert Francis.  She and her husband used it as a reading at their wedding and I love it in part because it reminds me that showing up the same way is a way of sleeping through life.  And being willing to see everyday things like the moon with fresh eyes is a choice that makes my life more rich and full.  Here it is:

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

When we just show up without choosing how we want to show up, we are asleep to our own life (or like Jack Black, hungover).  We always have a choice to wake up and show up.  We have a whole new year ahead of us.  2016.  It's the morning of January 11.  How will you show up today?


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