How true right? What is the one thing you crave when you have a toddler going to young Christopher Columbus to daily question time when the voice kicks in? SILENCE. Why? You want to feel that state of CALM again. You recollect your feeling of calm back then when you could sit on your couch under a warm cosy blanket with a warming chai or hot chocolate, and gaze into nothingness. No sounds that mean act now lest the sound turns into a shriek or things you cherish are but a thousand broken pieces laying splattered across the floor.
Can you remember when last you felt calm? Maybe last night when you finally got your space, sat on the armchair in silence after your bubba fell asleep. Was that calm or your body winding down, your mind doing it’s daily round up, and then feeling too pooped and off to bed?
Covid has left many of us bereft of our usual pastimes, time fillers, distractions and simply things to do. We might even choose to simply not engage outwardly anymore and stay out in our nests. This you say brings you a calmness. And then you get a call from a friend or your toddler jumps on top of you, breaks one more glass, and your feeling of calm disappears. You feel chaotic. You now say you feel overwhelmed and might even blame the friend or your toddler for that motion in your state of mind.
You might even wind down nightly with some music that is calming; and you feel a sense of calm. And then the sun rises, your toddler is on top of you before your wake up neurons have even had a chance to fire up! You think your toddler might have just had a dream and try to put him back to sleep. Only now he desists and goes to the armchair. You open your eyes feeling that slight irritation at yet another night of disrupted sleep, only to see that it’s daylight. You missed your alarm. And you didn’t think to check the time because by now your brain is wired to respond to a bubba that wakes up nightly. You rush about the morning and calm is a far cry from how you are really feeling. Right now it’s about survival to nap time because the whole way you woke up has gotten you out of kilter.
Where is that state of calm you felt before you turned in for the night? And what of the calm you have felt after detoxing your life from the people and relationships that were too much to handle for you? You felt calm when you say alone on your couch no triggers no distractions only you and your isms, or did you feel “calm”.
Folks, real calm comes from within. It’s a pure way of being that won’t suddenly be hijacked by the happenings of daily life such as a baby or a friend or the news or anything else. It simply is. That calm you sense when you are in your aloneness is not calm. It is simply a state of rest. And that rest comes with the potential to act when fuelled by whatever it will take to move from that. It could be something needs your attention such as dealing with the Human Resources manager at a company you have just had an interview with, which does not go to plan and leaves you feeling anything but calm. When the state of calm is a way of being, whilst you might feel disturbed that disturbance does not move you from your stillness. You remain calm and are in a position to respond in a way that is appropriate and consistent. There is no reaction or irrationality.
That state of calm arrives when we feel safe and connect to our higher consciousness. That connection remains in place all of the time and is not subject to the changes of the vicissitudes of life. It is simply there. If we can hone in on this connected calm we can then give ourself the gap we need when we are presented with life stuff that might unhinge us.
We get that calm working through life as a opposed to avoiding it. Otherwise you just become overlay sensitised to anything and everything. Potentially all or most of life’s interactions might cause you perturbation. You might begin to isolate yourself even further. With your child you might disconnect yourself or zone out. Some might choose to have their child taken care of or “dealt” with by childcare. Your bundle of joy might become a constant source of stress and anxiety for you.
Those little pockets of calm we feel are states of rest that we need in order to start our journey into a permanent state of calm. Create time for yourself and that can even be while you fold the clothes, do the laundry and any other mundane routine tasks that require little mental space. These tasks and their monotony frees up some space for you and in this time you might look inside find your state of calm, and then keep returning to it until it becomes you. It’s not the same as being detached from reaction in life. You can still be involved and very attached but that life simply doesn’t get the better of you.
Then we are calm. Ditch the dishwasher for good old fashioned way of washing up with your hands. Take up ironing the clothes. Air them out on the line when you can. All of these unmechanised tasks do wonders for your brain.
Wash up!