What Do You Do When Life Feels Heavy?
Hi friends,
Here’s a little snapshot of a conversation I had with a friend about the Shitty State of the World, which we’re going to address in the next Beauty Salon, See/king Beauty During Troubled Times.
“The world feels so heavy*,” my friend sighed, staring into her coffee cup. “How do you keep your shit together when everything’s so bleak?”
“Do I look like I have my shit together?” I asked. She shrugged. Exactly. She also knows I’m going to say that the idea of there being any shit that has to be kept together is poppycock.
I asked her what, exactly, was bleak, what was hopeless? She stared at me a bit viciously.
“Don’t you read the news?”
Yes, I read the news, I watch the news, sometimes I ignore the news and stick my head into the sand as I let the headlines drop little seeds of Anxiety all around me. I grimace when my husband turns on the TV at 6 pm—just the opening theme music gets my heart beating faster! Pandemics, wars, climate disasters, pissed-off people, the division between rich and poor growing ever greater by the second. F*&K. 🥺
I’ve gone through months where I didn’t want to get out of bed not because I was depressed or ill (melancholic for sure), but I lost the wag in my tail, and I was not excited about life, period. Why even get out of bed, was my morning prayer. That’s a crap prayer! Also, feels really wasteful when your life is good, even blessed (safe, peaceful, shelter, food, money, family, friends, health, a gorgeous tree in the front yard). Turning toward beauty, and being in conversation with other beauty hunters has helped a lot, too.
“EVERYTHING is bleak,” my friend huffed. “We’re on the brink of World War III! I can’t even handle it.”
I took a deep breath, nodded and looked directly into my friend’s eyes which were sad and also sparkling because the sun was shining through the cafe windows.
“But what about you, your day, right now—is us having coffee bleak?” I asked.
She glared at me. “Fuck you,” she laughed. I get it. Sometimes you don’t want a pep talk, even if it’s a reality check. But it’s important that we see what’s real: two women having coffee in a free world, everything perfectly fine except for the crap world being conjured through the power of our imagining minds.
“Here’s what you do.” I leaned in closer, as if I actually had an answer.
First off, you have to understand that the news of the day isn’t making you anxious and hopeless, it’s your thoughts about the news. This might not steady the shaking knees and sleeplessness right away, but if you’re willing to get curious about the nature of where your experience comes from (you), this act of awareness can transform fear and resistance to curiosity and inquiry—and this can ease the pain of living. This slowing down and easing into What’s Real (life being lived in this moment) can bring you some fresh ideas about What to Do, if that’s the question. This isn’t about being passive. It’s about being fully engaged but coming from a more resourceful love-of-life grounding.
Secondly, you can handle it. A lot of my anxiety used to come from a fear of Not Being Able to Handle It. It = a natural disaster or war situation that had me walking half-clothed down the street, separated from everyone I loved, living outside, scavenging for food and hiding in bushes to stay alive. A real dystopian image. Bloody frightening!
Over time, I came to see that humans’ (therefore my) natural responsive nature means we can “handle” everything that comes our way in the moment. Then I saw clearly how my anxiety about the future was keeping me from being present to life that was occuring Right Now, and worst of all, was separating me from being present to the people I care about (this last one was a big motivator).
And finally, my Beauty RX to living in the modern world
Here’s what you do to feel better when the world feels HEAVY
When you’re walking around your neighborhood, and you notice a camellia bush with the fluffiest light pink, cotton candy blooms—that perfection that happens right before the edges turn brown—and you stand there admiring how perfect they are (and also struggling to handle all this beauty) and EUREKA, you see a woman walking toward you, and while normally you havne’t been a person who talks to random passers-by, it’s a new age, baby! So you stand there and wait for this woman, a 70-something woman who looks like she won’t bite. As she approaches and gives you a half-smile, you point toward the camellias. Say “Hello,” and “Aren’t these camellias GORGEOUS,” and when she stops and looks at these camellias, and in her English accent says, “Oh yes, they are something,” and “mine don’t look that good, do you think it’s the shade?” And then you, who knows shit about gardening, pretends you do and offers your advice because YOU’RE CONNECTING and it feels delicious, especially to connect over a natural object of beauty, two humans who have never met, connecting over a shrub in the shade of an old brick house, you feel like this is the most important thing you’ve done all day long.
These are the kind of things we’ll be discussing in the Spring Salon: See/king Beauty During Troubled Times: How to Thrive When the World’s On Fire. If you’re looking to have intimate juicy conversations about what life might be like if we put Beauty at the center of it, you’re wanted! Email with any questions or to register.
*Did you know the earth weighs 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. So the world is LITERALLY heavy. Whether you experience its weight figuratively is up to you.