Spontaneity
“The true opposite of depression is neither gaiety nor absence of pain, but vitality—the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings. It is part of the kaleidoscope of life that these feelings are not only happy, beautiful, or good but can reflect the entire range of human experience, including envy, jealousy, rage, disgust, greed, despair, and grief. But this freedom cannot be achieved if its childhood roots are cut off. Our access to the true self is possible only when we no longer have to be afraid of the intense emotional world of early childhood. Once we have experienced and become familiar with this world, it is no longer strange and threatening.”
-Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child
The sun shines on the bench where I sit with two friends on our lunch break, paper coffee cups in hand.
“You don’t fall in love because someone checks every box on a list. You don’t get that lovely feeling of a dinner with friends you love isn’t a logical realization. The connectedness of a beautiful hike or a walk by the sea isn’t on your calendar.”
I hear myself say (okay, it was something like that, I’m not that poetic in real life). It’s one of those things I didn’t know I knew, but spilled out of me in conversation.
The feelings and experiences we treasure most arise. In fact, the more we try to force them into existence, the less likely they are to appear. Chase them and they’ll run away.
Because in wishing things were some way, we wish them to not be the way they are now. We’re rejecting the thoughts and feelings that come up, whether they’re slight boredom or terrible anxiety.
That night with friends you wish never ended? You could be at the same place with the same people and get bored, stressed out and head home early.
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“When is this over? How much more therapy, how many more books until I can finally stop dealing with this? When is this over?“ I asked a therapist a few years ago.
“It’s over when you stop wanting it to be over” he responded.
It was the type of answer I didn’t want. I wanted the 3-step plan, the 12 tips and tricks, the book I should read to solve all of my problems, for good this time.
I understand now.
Zen Buddhism has a central paradox: It’s about reaching a state you can only reach by no longer wanting to reach it. Once anything in your consciousness is as good as anything else, once you no longer need to remove the obstacles, they vanish.
But as long as you view them as obstacles, they’ll remain.
I’ve gotten a taste of Samadhi, the goal state. It’s a realization that all things are fine, have always been fine. I just couldn’t see it. It requires full acceptance of everything that comes up, of our reactions to it and our feelings about our reactions to it—and everything else. And then it requires dropping the idea that anything is required at all.
In worse moments, I’m frustrated I can’t summon that state whenever I want to get rid of frustration, loneliness, worry. But that idea is based on rejection of those things, as if they’re obstacles.
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We think of attachment theory in terms of romantic relationships: The anxious worry they’ll be abandoned, the avoidant worry they’ll be caged in. The secure will be okay eventually, even if it hurts a little now.
But attachment applies to how we relate to friends, bosses, coworkers, frankly, the world. The anxious friend who can’t host a dinner party because they’re too afraid nobody shows up and that means nobody loves them and that just confirms what they always believed. The avoidant friend who leaves friend groups, cities and partners the minute they threaten to become boring or, worse, require commitment.
They’re unwilling to experience their reactions to things, so they become unwilling to experience the thing itself. But whether it’s in relationships, friendships or cities, you only get the deep rewards if you’re willing to experience everything.
If you’re not willing to experience the ordinary, just-okay night with friends, you don’t get the night you don’t want to end. If you’re not willing to have arguments with your partner, you don’t get to have deep trust. If you move the moment tourists stream into your neighborhood, you don’t stay long enough for it to become the place where you bump into your friends and the people at the bakery greet you by name.
To accept, embrace and not judge your thoughts and feelings is what lets those magical moments arise, lets you fall in love, lets you have those magical moments with friends, connect with nature.
As Ava puts it:
As I’ve shifted to being more secure, I’ve noticed exactly what Josh describes: this background sense of “things will be okay” that I never had growing up. By default I was terrified of any less-than-perfect outcome—I thought of the world as a threatening place.
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“You’ve been efforting your way through life”
-“Melissa”
Most of my life I’ve rejected the reality I lived in and tried to make x happen by y point in time. Deploy more effort to something and it appears, I thought.
It works to get fit, make more money, improve at skills (I may have spent a recent Saturday morning cutting onions not because I was cooking, but to practice technique). But this stops working when it comes to the emotions you wanted to feel.
Just one more book, one more therapy modality. One more something and I’ll have earned it, have arrived, solved the problem I am.
This still came from lack, from the idea I’ll finally be lovable if. From viewing what I think and feel as obstacles.
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In hating what arises in our minds and drowning them out with technology, alcohol, food, sex or other distractions, we drown out the opportunity for love to arise. Love for ourselves, others and the world.
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When the Buddhist monk Milarepa returned to the cave he lived in, he saw that demons had taken it over.
He chases them down and tries to scare them away, to no avail. The demons become more comfortable and settle in. The next day, he preaches to the demons so they will see their errors and leave. But they laugh. And stay.
The next day, he tells them “If you’re staying anyway, we might as well be here together”. Suddenly, all but one of them leave.
He wakes up the next day to a single demon. It’s sharp, shiny teeth line a mouth of bubbling green slime. He walked up to it and offered himself to it, putting his head in its mouth.
It’s at that moment the final demon left.
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The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-Carl Rogers