I am not sure about you, but sometimes my social media feed becomes a space for either validating or challenging what it is that I need to hear in any given moment. It’s kind of like shaking one of those old magic 8 balls to see whether I should proceed with the current plan, love the person in front of me or have a cheese sandwich. I can remember panicking whenever I would get the response: outlook not looking good. I would almost always quickly shake it a second time and a third time until I got the answer I wanted. I smile and chuckle to myself when I think about how many times those magic 8 balls have reinforced some bad decision or belief.
This is what it felt like this weekend when I saw not one but two famous influencers, who work in personal development, telling me to ‘romanticize your life…take pretty pictures… feel like the main character’ and ‘ take pictures of everything…take your life and make it the best story in the world’. When I saw these two posts in a row, I felt like I had shaken that magic 8 ball and the instruction was to bury every gritty, unromantic, painful picture of my life that I have. I mean, let’s move from what can sometimes feel like the wild west to a more romantic setting. And you know what? It was exactly what I wanted to hear. Not what I needed to hear but definitely what I wanted to hear.
It can be tempting to gloss over our lives with a brush of positivity that focusses only on the pretty parts. However, what I have learned is that it is in the more ugly, difficult parts that the real depth of our lives reveals itself. It may sound cliche but we can‘t learn anything about who we are and what we are made of unless we experience challenge. It’s in these moments of ‘no choice‘ that we have to demonstrate some level of stamina, tolerance and psychological strength. Facing adversity builds resilience. Our ability to roll with the punches comes from experience and our willingness to accept that life is not only about comfort and pretty pictures.
Bryan E. Robinson Ph.D. explains it beautifully when he says it is about stepping into life’s growing pains and your ability to “be willing to go to the edge of your emotional pain so you can be fully present with what lays beyond the barrier”. And what lays beyond the barrier is a deepening of wisdom and the richness of what Jon Kabat Zinn refers to as the full catastrophe of life.
In other words, the beauty that shows itself to us when we fully embrace the good, the bad AND the ugly is not dependent on your life being the best story in the world or pretty pictures. Nor is it dependent on what that magical 8 ball randomly spits out to you. It’s much more stable than my or anyone’s social media feed. Instead, true beauty is rooted in each moment we breathe this breath. We just have to remain open, curious and hold ourself and those around us with kindness and love. This is what the practice of mindfulness is all about. To feel it all and to not miss a moment of this miraculous thing that we call life.
Tomorrow (Tuesday, September 9th), we are back with the Sanctuary’s live, online community meditation at 10am. If you would like to practice mindfulness and move towards feeling and embracing it all, we would love to see you there.
-Jane
Click here to join me at the Sanctuary’s online community meditation this Tuesday at 10am.
New course announcement! Dr. Tony Bates and I will be leading a programme called When Things Fall Apart. Make sure to check it out.
To listen to and do a mindfulness meditation based on this blog post, click below
My Silent Place 
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