Part 5: The Hard Work of Not Doing

“An object in motion, stays in motion,” is how Newton’s first law begins.

Shortly after being liberated from my career, on my first meeting-free day, I felt like Pinocchio at that moment when his strings are cut. “I’m a boy, a real boy!”

I was beside myself with giddiness, with optimism. I can do ANYTHING! And already I was making lists of how I would fill my time. And not fun things, mind you, but all the things that I never had time to do with my high-stress, corporate career. I’m going to clean, organize, sort – and it hit me sideways, I was more of a basketcase than I thought.

I’ve had the badge of busy so long, it’s rusted in place. I may need a sawzall to get it off. I twitch like an addict if I’m found without lists, plans, and a relentless pursuit of productivity.

I also have corporate hangovers. Thoughts like, “it’s Q4, what projects can we squeeze in – do we have any budget to invest in setting up the year?” And now, as the year starts, “what can we do right now to make our year, to ensure a strong Q1?”

Only I don’t work for the company anymore, and this new-found freedom had also brought me to the mythical cross-roads. What next? Which way forth? About the only thing I knew for sure, was that I didn’t want more of the same, and that I needed to take the time to slow down and figure out what the heck I did want.

The hustle itself is a distraction, even the things I love can be obstacles or delays. I say yes to fostering pups, hosting dinners, helping loved ones – I love these things. And yet, I find I need to make time for the real work, the hard work, the soul-search in the stillness.

One of my old yoga teachers, back when we did lunchtime yoga at work, would guide us to pause in the space between inhale and exhale, in that moment of suspended animation – of almost not being. She’d say things like, “we’re still here, we just exhaled, but before the next inhale in the future, be right here, right now, in this pause.”

I sucked at this.

My new yoga teacher must know this. She makes me hold each pose for four complete breaths, both inhale and exhale. My muscles experience internal earthquakes trying to do it. It is so much easier to go fast: inhale – up dog, exhale – down dog. But do you fully experience it? She spots me about to move on too quickly and says, “Stay for the exhale.”

I break a sweat trying to hold onto the slowness. How do sloths truly manage? 

“Stay for the exhale,” I tell myself.

I think of moments in the ocean, where the salt keeps you afloat and you can get lost in the clouds above, floating in the tides. I think of young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, when he’s submerged in a suburban pool with only shadowy visions of life up above. I think of the trendy new isolation tanks, where you can escape all the external noise, pressures, societal impositions – climb in, float, and not think at all, just be.

Just be.

The quiet, the stillness, the forced inactivity – it’s training me to relax. It’s giving me a moment to put down all the thoughts I’ve collected, all the titles and roles I play – mother, wife, daughter, ex-corporate executive, consumer, citizen, friend… all of it, laid gently on the floor. I even pry off that busy-badge that I never wanted and for most my life, didn’t even know I had.

In this moment, I find myself. I am naked, stripped of all the things people want me to be and just me, a bag of cells floating like a murmuration in a moment in time. Me, the primordial sludge of my essence, before all the external influence.

It is here that I choose to be human. I inhale and pause and find the feelings that are all there – joy, sadness, excitement, fear. They welcome me, embrace me, fill me with sensations, and I wait with them. When the exhale comes, they dissipate softly.

On the inhale, I feel my spirit growing in strength, swelling into a flame. I pause as my ears strain to hear all the silence. I can’t even hear my blood pumping, but I know those cells are bouncing through veins, moving me along steadily, rhythmically. The exhale comes like a lazy, slow breeze across skin with newborn hairs bending upright in the dawn.

I want to pause here, but the next inhale comes, and with it I find a blanket woven with pieces of me. I can feel the warmth of my husband’s strong hand in mine, the grip of my middle child’s hug on my shoulders, and even the stench of my elder dog’s breath. It’s all there, this must be where my laughter is born, where these connections happen, where love radiates.

I pause. I feel it for me, for you, and for everything.

It’s infinite.

And yes, I’m staying for the exhale.