I’ve been thinking a lot about what I call…
The Doing/Being Dilemma
Also known as the challenge discerning when to act and when to accept what is.
It’s fall here in Minnesota and the colors have begun to pop. While I love the way that mother nature paints our world with bursts of vivid hues of yellow, orange and red, I still find this time of year feels bitter-sweet to me because it signals the coming of winter. I am not a winter lover and Minnesota has a lot of winter to get through each year.
But I know that I cannot change the weather. The seasons turn no matter what. No dilemma here.
Though I could move to a place with a different climate there are reasons I stay in Minnesota. I love the nature of this state and the beauty of it’s many forests, lakes, and wild areas. My adult children live here and I value being near to my kids and grandchildren. So I feel sad now and then in the fall but mostly I savor the fleeting beauty of this season and accept that winter is a necessary part of my life here.
Unfortunately other areas of life are not so clear-cut — like physical health. In order to grow stronger and fitter how much effort is enough and how much effort is too much?
When is acceptance another word for passivity and when is it necessary? My recovery from hip replacement surgery this summer and early fall gave me hope that I could build my strength and fitness and be able to spend more time hiking in my beloved woods and wild areas.
“Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle
The new hip joint IS great and has alleviated a lot of pain. But…here’s the rub, I’ve got other physical challenges that are still there. I want, oh God, I really really want to be able to go out and hike for miles every day with my camera no matter what the weather. For years I’ve been hoping/trying/working towards being able to hike 3 miles without pain.
Despite all that I’ve done it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s possible that the physical therapy, yoga and other work that I’m doing will help me get stronger and fitter, but it’s also possible that this is as good as it gets. Hence the dilemma that I am feeling. How do I navigate between accepting what is and hoping for what might be while loving and respecting my body and listening to my body.
Recently I realized that the body I have is not the body I wanted.
That sounds like a trite realization. But it wasn’t because I realized that I have not been accepting and appreciating the body that I have. Instead I’m always wanting something else, stronger, fitter, thinner, better. I’ve felt ashamed that I couldn’t “tough it out” and push through pain and wished that I could be one of those people who could DO MORE.
I wondered
What would it be like to have unconditional love and regard for this body of mine?
If I did not treat myself and my body with unconditional love, I probably couldn’t extend unconditional love to anyone else either. So I decided to focus on being unconditionally loving towards my body, of saying, “Thank you” and “I appreciate you,” to my body.
I began an experiment of having conversations with my body. “What would you like me to call you?” I asked my body. “Grace” she answered “because I am full of grace.”
“Do you want to go for a walk today,” I ask my body. Some days the answer is yes. Then we discuss where to walk, when, and how far. If I’m sounding a bit like I’ve got multiple personality disorder, bear with me because I am learning how to love my body and I can’t do it without opening a conversation with it.
I’ve begun walking without taking my camera along. It turns out that the weight of it on my shoulder is causing my body pain. So I’ve been using my iPhone camera instead. It’s hard to do that because I love going out with my camera. But I do it because I asked the question and got a clear answer from my body.
I ask my body which exercises she’d like to do each day. Surprisingly there has only been one day when the answer was no exercises. I am learning that “I” (my body) am not lazy by default. There is no need to push or force anything. Bodies are made to move and want to move when they can.
“The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience. By accepting absolutely everything, what I mean is that we are aware of what is happening within our body and mind in any given moment, without trying to control or judge or pull away. I do not mean that we are putting up with harmful behavior—our own or another’s. This is an inner process of accepting our actual, present-moment experience. It means feeling sorrow and pain without resisting. It means feeling desire or dislike for someone or something without judging ourselves for the feeling or being driven to act on it.”
― Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha
The answer to my doing/being dilemma is unconditional love and acceptance. Asking, listening and trusting that my body knows what it needs.
This is not the first time in my life that I’ve worked on Radical Acceptance or realized that I was pushing myself instead of accepting and allowing. But it seems that like all important lessons in life, the lesson keeps revisiting me in new and different ways, taking me deeper into life, love and wisdom (I hope).
“I found myself praying: “May I love and accept myself just as I am.”
― Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
May you walk in beauty. May you love and accept yourself just as you are.
Wood duck swimming in the pond behind our house
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