equilibrium

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it is lethal” Paulo Coehlo

This advice strikes me as half-true.

***
I had a friend in college who remains the quietest person I have ever known. Her name was Elizabeth – the only fellow American in our year. Back then it was near impossible to enter an Irish university unless you had come up through the national school system.

Elizabeth had long, straw hair and a long, drawn face. Everything about her was pale and wispy. She was also depressed. I wouldn’t have necessarily guessed this. Such a quiet person can keep tremendous turmoil smothered inside. Except that she told me, and that her college advisor was referring her to a psychiatrist.

Occasionally she confided the odd childhood happening that could, with one brush stroke, account for protracted suffering. What haunts me, though, was her doctor’s diagnosis. He informed Elizabeth that she had had too exotic a life.

As if there was nothing to be done about that.

Too exotic. I often think about that. I wonder if he meant too many plot twists. Not enough consistency for steady character development. Too little yarn of the familiar for a coherent backstory.

The child of a military man, Elizabeth’s family moved from this place to that. During our college years, her parents and younger brother lived in Hawaii. Elizabeth looked like the least likely person from Hawaii I’d ever met.

***

My life gets too exotic from time to time. The usual culprit comes in the form of travel. When my routines collapse, I discombobulate. I regroup when I return to the cool of my own sheets. Chats with my cat. A few days in a row of the morning walk.

I’m more sensitive to space – to the layout of material things, than I once imagined. I mention this because when I first moved to Ireland, I thought I would pop back to London weekly. I wasn’t ready to let go of my life there. I wanted my writers’ group to keep up with our Wednesday meetings. This intention for weekly travel masked how much my life was about to change: I told myself that instead of living in London with regular jaunts back to Dublin, I’d simply vice versa. On the surface of it, my work can unfold wherever my laptop can go. Turns out I am not built that way. I need my desk. I need familiar surroundings – ones I control. A certain amount of knowable order settles my system. It allows my mind to gaze inward rather than scan the horizon. I’m just not a worker capable of roaming the coffee shops. That’s another reason travel upends me.

***
In the book Mindsight, Dr. Dan Siegal sets out a theory of wellbeing based on integration. To explain, he proposes the metaphor of a river where one bank represents chaos, the other, rigidity. To keep well, one must stay away from the banks, in the middle of this river of integration. I confess the metaphor doesn’t quite work for me visually — but the idea of trying to tame chaos with rigidity, does.

“Sometimes we move towards the bank of rigidity – we feel stuck.
Other days we lean toward chaos – life feels unpredictable and out of control. But in general, when we are well and at ease, we move along this winding path of harmony, the integrated flow of a flexible system.”

Siegel’s concept of integration (from the Latin integrātiō — parts become whole), relies on “your system” – your mind, your body, all the bits and pieces of your fine self – staying flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable within the larger swirl of complexity we all live within.

Too much chaos, of any kind — mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, interrupts a coherent narrative, the sort that keeps you sane. Whereas too much rigidity hides a sneakier leech that quietly drains the vitality of your life’s deeper story.

My schedule comes to mind when I think of chaos and rigidity. Too many deadlines, too much email-noise makes me map my day strictly, sequestering time blocks I estimate will pace me in an orderly fashion to the screech of finished!, then dinner time, then the sofa, then bed. I silence the phone to keep distractions at bay.

Every once in a while I remember that the day’s interruptions may be of more value, more tied to a Whole Life, than what I had planned.

The Buddhists speak of “near enemies” – qualities that masquerade as the virtues they pretend to be. It’s easy to spot the far enemy. The opposite of kindness is cruelty. The opposite of wisdom is ignorance. Near enemies hang close. Pity seems like compassion. In Buddhism, the near enemy of love is attachment – clinging to someone else with your suction-cupped needs.

In my interpretation of Seigal’s theory of wellbeing …

• Rigidity is the near enemy of Structure.
• Chaos the near enemy of Spontaneity.

Rigidity and chaos seem like antidotes to one another, but they are not.

• Structure, not rigidity, soothes Chaos.
• Spontaneity, not chaos, relaxes Rigidity.

Back in the 1960’s, the German psychoanalyst Fritz Reimann pointed out that people carry basic, yet contradictory needs. We need the sameness and constancy of security lest we lose control. But what’s secure can solidify to rigid. At the same time, like all living things, we’re here to change and to grow. Even nature agrees, better chaos than stagnation.

But whenever the words too exotic appear in my mind, I know the current has dragged me too close to one bank. So, I reach for the charm of monotony to settle me.

***

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