In Spite Of vs. In the Midst Of
My cab slows to a stop and I'm already 20 minutes late for a four-day personal development retreat in Chicago, and I'm feeling stressed. I don't like to be late.
I step in a puddle while crossing the intersection toward the nondescript building I've been instructed to find, wheeling my suitcase through the murky street water.
I'm in my early twenties and have journeyed from South Dakota, where I teach 10th grade English, for a much needed break to focus on myself and my life plan.
The prior year I lost my childhood dog, my college mentor and both grandparents on my father's side within the span of a month. An internal fog I'd not been able to clear still hung inside of me, and a good friend was kind enough to pay for me to attend this program so I might get unstuck and forge on.
Walking through the front doors with soggy ankles I'm immediately taken by the smell of the place. It smells like relaxation, focus and destiny all woven together. I later learn this organization patented their own scent, knowing the power of the olfactory sense and its connection to human memory.
Over the next four days I unpack every area of my life alongside a group of a dozen folks, reconstruct my beliefs and vision for the future, and build a strategy to help me get what I want.
Sometimes I remember the smell of that place as I look back at my life plan 10 years later. I remember what I imagined for myself as a twenty-something and how I learned about perfecting the ingredients (read: routines, work hours, travel schedule, email best practices) of my life so I could create the moments I wanted. That was the process we learned at the retreat: identify what you want and build the structures to make it so.
For many years I believed building the life I wanted, and thus, finding joy, was an ongoing battle against entropy and complacency. With my newfound personal development tools I came to trust it was possible to find joy in spite of unpredictable events, unsatisfying relationships and unhappy chapters of my life.
I believed the right plan could eradicate the pain unwanted experiences.
This worked for a little while. With enough willpower we can feel anything we want to feel in spite of our circumstances. But eventually, fatigue sets in and we desperately search for a new method of time management, a better online self-development course, a new coffee shop from which to do our creative work, or a new relationship to fill our needs.
If you're anything like me you go through seasons where you put in hours of effort to spite your current circumstance and rally a new attack against the dissipating sheen of temporary control.
But no system offers us a perfect life or salvation from the daily challenge of living.
Joy is not dependent on circumstances - and we're not even talking about unwanted unfortunate circumstances yet.
What happens when someone dies, a relationship ends abruptly, we get sick or one day we wake up and we realize we don't really know ourselves?
In these moments, it's no use to power up our internal muscle and increase the structure of our lives so we might feel joy in spite of our circumstances. A better morning routine doesn't reverse a miscarriage. A new daily planner won't repair a dying relationship.
In these harder and unexpected moments our better bet is to learn to flow where the water is already flowing.
We tap into a wise survival instinct when we partner with our painful circumstances and learn to dance with joy in the midst of whatever is going on.
A mentor of mine is currently going through a bout with cancer.
He's not only got the cancer to deal with, but has been through the ringer since the start of 2020 with a few other life challenges. To boot, all of this is happening while the world is arrested by the Coronavirus.
He's in the midst of a season no one would envy and some might label joyless. He has absolutely no control over what is happening to him.
Yet, as he and I were video chatting recently he paused and looked into the corner of his living quarters and commented on a potted orchid he's been carrying with him for a while.
He told me the last time the orchid bloomed was almost five years ago, but he kept it on the porch and dutifully watered it, because it's a living thing, he said.
And now - as he and his orchid have been transported from his familiar surroundings to a different city where he is undergoing treatment, as life is changing, and things seem unsteady - the orchid has decided to bloom.
In the midst of all his pain, there is this new life.
Forget silver linings and rose colored glasses; the orchid isn't a distraction or empty encouragement to my friend - it's clarity at a deeper level.
The orchid represents the beauty one can only see when their vision has been clarified by a refining season of unsettling events. A flower blooming in the midst of sadness is a gift only the wounded know.
The orchid is also not a city on a hill the tired traveler might point to as a sign they are nearly finished with their pilgrimage. Nor is it a stance against pain one might adopt in order to spite of the daily dissapointment of living.
It is a celebration in the midst of an unfortunate time.
It is a reminder of the deeper beauty found in bothness.
The orchid blooms in the midst of unbearable pain with a message of a different kind of joy.
The kind of joy we might carry with us always - not to spite our circumstances, but to relearn a forgotten, more complex, more soulful dance to which we've always known footwork.
A dance which happens in the midst of the unpredictable and uncontrollable adventure of our lives.