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Beginning
Stretching
Spending too much time hunched over the computer, trying to write, I decided to sign up for a stretching class. "Just Stretch" it was called. It would be healthy, I thought, and I was prepared to be a good and earnest student and work hard, as I usually do. Instead, I heard a miraculously flexible instructor, Nancy, say:
"PRACTICE ENJOYING. DON'T PRACTICE STRUGGLING."
The suggestion was startling, revolutionary, and sweet: "Pain doesn't have to be your teacher."
"Unlearn the habit of trying," she said after we began to stretch. "It's not about trying -- it's about allowing."
But trying is my middle name, I wanted to shout. How do I learn allowing?
Back at my desk after class, I wrote Nancy's words in large bold letters with lots of * * * * * next to each one. Though there was nothing to show on the outside, even the possibility of doing what she suggested made me feel calm inside. All I could think was, "I hope this class never ends!"
I felt like a person who'd been too long in the desert, hungry and thirsty, suddenly offered delicious, unfamiliar nectar. Nancy's last instruction rings in my ears:
"Listen to the whispers."
Struggle
Could I quiet down my own noise to hear the soft whispers from within? What happened next was a shriek, not a whisper.
"Talent is doing what comes naturally," a friend announced.
"What do you think comes naturally to you?" she asked me. The answer came quickly and with great certainty:
"STRUGGLE! I'm an expert at STRUGGLING."
The swiftness and clarity of my response made me laugh. But it wasn't funny. My old, familiar voice of judgment chimed in: "Haven't you learned anything? Aren't you wiser?"
I am wiser. And I am still struggling.
Have good things grown out of my exhausting habit of struggling? Absolutely. I've written two books using struggle as my method. But after seventeen years of this single-minded obsession with writing, I still didn't think of myself as a writer.
Working this way only confirmed an old belief of mine: good things will come to me, but I will have to work hard and work all the time to make them happen. I wondered if I also believed I had to struggle in order to earn the right be happy.
There's a difference between hard work and unnecessary suffering.
If I were composing an ad for a relationship magazine and deciding to really tell the truth about myself, I would say:
Expert at struggle, longing for ease. Signed: EAGER.
I'm sixty-six years old and I want to learn about ease. Even writing the word ease or saying it out loud has a magical effect on me. The expression on my face softens, my shoulders drop two inches, and I'm able to take a full and deep breath.
"I want to learn about ease," I announced to my wise friend Mitzi, with a determined ring in my voice. "I'm going to use my natural talent for struggle to learn how not to struggle." Sometimes, too earnest in my search for answers, I forget to laugh at myself: My struggle toward ease.
Mitzi told me about a time, many years ago, when she was taking a dance class in college. The teacher asked the students to imagine themselves holding a heavy ball and then lifting it over their heads. Mitzi was very busy trying to lift the heavy ball, never succeeding at getting it more than three inches above the ground, only stopping her labors for a moment when she heard the group laughing.
She looked up and saw all the students with their balls over their heads, watching her tugging at her invisible ball. She had succeeded at creating the heaviest ball.
"I don't think you always have to suffer in order to do good work," Mitzi said. "After all, I was the one who made my ball too heavy. The task hadn't been difficult. I created my own struggle."
She turned to me and asked: "Could you begin to imagine a release from the struggle? A gentler way to change?" Could I find a release that feels good and doesn't require so much hard work?
Looking at release on the page, I see ease tucked in.
Today, Valentine's Day, a card arrived with a handmade heart and, in a friend's beautiful handwriting, a reminder from Rilke:
Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart.