disorientating dilemma

Image by Jon Tyson

Spiritual leader Ram Dass once said that there is no such thing as good and there is no such thing as bad there just is and it’s the judging and the labeling of that thing that causes us to suffer. And on this last lazy afternoon, I look back and think ah-ha yes, it was the labeling and the judgement of self, and dare I say of and from others, that caused the pain I felt last year. And of course, we can’t compare pain, can we? My pain may be trivial for someone else. “Just get on with it”, they might quip. But this pain caused me to stop in my tracks. It caused me to wobble.

Something happened. The constant going over it and over it. The self-criticism. “How could I have done it differently?” “What just happened?” “How could I have prevented it?”

Or is what happened exactly right for me to learn new ways of dealing with what arises in the future? Is it part of my journey toward wisdom? Is it through pain and a sense of loss that refinement of spirit occurs, that soul grows? Is it through a dilemma that one understands compassion and patience? The compassion and patience for others, and importantly, compassion and patience of self.

For the last few years, I have passionately wanted to write another book, to create a three-dimensional recording of my creative process and its potential for impacting others; how it can be used as a tool towards a more contented and productive creative life. In theatre, my chosen art form, the creative experience is fleeting. It happens in the now and then is gone. But a book is something you can tuck under your arm, hop on a train, and read for hours. Or pull out at one in the morning when you can’t sleep, and dive in. I’ve written various things over the years, but I haven’t written the book that I so dearly want to read. A book that not only sums up the creative process (which varies considerably depending on who you are) but also a book that can act as a guide for those like me who has suffered what Stephen Cope has exquisitely called “a disorientating dilemma”.

Something that we all experience from time to time. Some only see it as an annoying obstacle to overcome, and others see it as an urgent invitation to initiate change. Nancy Slonim Aronie (2022) who wrote “Memoir as Medicine” learned through writing “that suffering doesn’t kill you…writing it down made me realize that I could take what happens to me and turn it into something else, something beautiful, something full of grace”.

Writing (and in my case also drawing) is a way of narrowing my focus and widening my lens of understanding. By writing about and drawing these experiences, one can change the way of perceiving them, and in so doing open the door to learning “what we don’t know we know”. It’s magic really.

Over many months, I have written and drawn things in my journal that inevitably related back to my disorientating dilemma. A dream job, that was totally sabotaged by the worldwide pandemic and people’s cognitive biases, including my own. The pandemic has presented us with a variety of choices: choices that could be problematic and ones that could be relevant. There is a tension that swings between a business-as-usual approach (“nothing to be afraid of” “just like the flu” and “I’m not going to let it change my life”) and catastrophic expectations. Gleb Tsipursky (2020) in his book “Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal” reminds us that it is “challenging… to avoid short-termism and sufficiently value the long-term”. When I look around me, I can see this playing out daily, people not prepared to sacrifice their ‘personal freedom’ by wearing masks indoors as a way of protecting each other from illness. Tsipursky also reminds us of what he calls the planning fallacy: “Our excessive confidence in everything going according to plan, and reluctance to either build in enough additional resources to address risks and problems, or to pivot quickly enough when needed to adjust to new conditions”. This really struck home for me: that the struggles I experienced were the result of not building in enough additional resources to address what could go wrong. And things did go wrong: management optimistically believed that what happened successfully only a couple of years previously could be repeated but this time with far fewer resources and a reduced support network, not to mention a worldwide pandemic with people holding vastly different views about how to work and live together safely and with respect.

Consequently, the experience left me feeling debilitated, depleted, and confused, and it has taken time to process what occurred. With the help of yoga, followed by transformative chats with my family (it helps being married to a terrific coach) and close friends; generative conversations with compassionate colleagues; gestalt therapy sessions/workshops with Brisbane Gestalt Art Therapy Centre culminating in several journals full of scribblings and drawings I seem to have come to a place of resolve. A gentle and metamorphic space. A place of peace and acceptance.

At the time, the planets did not align, the sun did not shine each day, and the thing that gave me a reprieve at the time was walking with a dear friend who was also participating in the residencies. And my commitment to the mat. Multiple times a day I climbed onto my mat. From thousands of miles away I connected back to my Brisbane yoga studio week after week and participated in live-stream classes with my teacher Chanthalah. Her compassionate and considerate presence gave me the courage to keep going, despite the disorientation I was experiencing, both within myself and with others, coupled with my duty to keep everyone safe and healthy.

Stephen Cope (2022) in his book “Dharma in Difficult Times” asks the important question “To what causes do we feel a sacred duty? …We each have a sacred duty in this life…no exceptions…in every moment of our lives, no matter how difficult, there lies buried deep within our souls a knowledge of this duty-a mystic knowledge”.

I feel that one of my sacred duties is to create and facilitate creative experiences to provide opportunities for change. Happenings that gently nudge participants out of their ‘stuck-ness’ of everyday habits and problems, and offer them simple creative processes to build new pathways forward.

But sometimes things happen. Things don’t go as planned. Stephen Cope talks about this and when I read his explanation, it gave me pause. Cope reminds us of a famous line of poetry by Emily Dickinson: “My life closed twice before its close”. He talks about the time when he experienced a ‘disorientating dilemma’, and his life felt as though it was closing in on him. As I read this, I realized I was in a similar position. My “sacred duty”, my reason for working, had seemingly become a ruptured dilemma. Cope explains that such a dilemma “usually occurs when people have experiences that do not fit their expectations or make sense to them, and they cannot resolve the situations without some change in their view of the world”.

And this is where the gifts of disorientation lay: a vibrant opportunity to change my perspective to a more realistic and practical one and then create new strategies to move forward, holding gently the polarities that presented themselves. Tsipursky’s (2020) words pointed me in the right direction. I needed to “address a clear decision-making process criteria to weigh the various options of how… to get to [my]… vision”.

I initially wanted to act on what I had meticulously planned, secure in the knowledge that my program had worked hundreds of times before, but very quickly I realized I was basing the work on unrealistic expectations. . When things did not go according to plan, I withdrew my vulnerable self and hid behind a persona. I was not wholly aware I was doing so, but looking back, that’s how I managed to complete the commitment, my sacred duty, with as much integrity and willpower as I could.

My task, on my return home, was to understand that my cognitive and intuitive biases required questioning, and I needed to stop “fall[ing] into the trap of generating insufficient options to make the best decisions, especially for solving underlying challenges” (Tsipursky, 2020). I needed to generate many more choices. But with limited resources available at the time, it was a difficult task.

Tsipursky suggests that in traumatic times, at least five options are necessary to minimize risks and maximize rewards. Due to the pandemic, the distance, and a lack of support from management due to illness, I had few alternatives. I turned to my mother’s advice “one step at a time, sweet J-s-s, one step at a time”.

Perhaps it was my naivety, my eternal optimism, and (it’s hard to admit) even hubris (didn’t I have the skills to solve any problem that presented itself…after all I had facilitated successful workshops for forty years ?) that contributed to the subsequent disorientation. On the other hand, the dilemma provided one of the richest growth experiences I have had in a long time. The fact that I can now think clearly about the situation shows how cogent reflective practice can be, how resourceful friends (both near and far) and (gestalt) therapy sessions/workshops can open new doorways, and how drawing and creative writing can provide a unique and impactful insight into our behaviours and encourage future options. And finally how yoga, our loyal companion, holds us and provides a safe haven when things get tricky. Two of my dear yoga teachers, Judy and Max, often say “How lucky we are to have found the mat”. I concur.