Michelle Obama begins her book, Becoming, with the sentence, “I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving.” Although her reference to striving was from young piano students in the apartment beneath hers, the thought of growing up to the sound of striving instantly pinched something deep inside me.
I grew up listening to the sound of striving, too.
An inward form of striving. A hum at times. A freight train roar and shake-the-rails rumble at others. As a child it was balance beams of masking tape on the carpet in the hall to straighten out cartwheels. In my teens it was mornings sideways in front of a mirror clumsily covered in a bra I was certain I would never fit into. As a college student it was hours of index cards scrawled with every last bit of the DSM IV that would fit between 3 inches and 5 inches. It was constant striving. An incessant inner life game of tug-of-war that I could never seem to win, no matter which side of the mud pit I was on. And it was exhausting.
And it is exhausting.
I recently turned 40. And now, as a ‘mid-life’ adult, I find myself in a sound tunnel of striving that is even more paralyzing than the physical and mental spaces I found myself in as a kid. Because, somehow, every relationship I lean into, I hear it. Every relationship I pull away from, I hear it. And the louder it gets, the more I realize I’ve never fully arrived at an absence of striving. There have been moments at the tops of mountains, in the expanses of rocky deserts and surrounded by the deep blues of oceans that my striving has been an inaudible murmur, a baseline hum, proverbial white noise. But, if I’m honest enough with myself, I struggle to pinpoint a time where my striving fell silent. Where peace won. Where contentment raised a victorious fist to the sky.
I sat at the park today for 2 1/2 hours, eyes closed, face lifted toward the sun. Zen-ing out? No. Not even close. In fight mode, wrestling with emotions from a previous days’ interaction brought on by, none other than, my constant affair with striving. Striving to be seen. Striving to be noticed, loved, heard, thought about, wanted. Striving to be better, stronger, smarter, happier, more resourceful. Feel free to add your own fill in the blank here. The list goes on and on. I was thoroughly pissed at myself for not being able to deal with my $#!t.. And I want to say that by the end of this blog I will be able to happily tell you that after those 2 1/2 hours of vitamin D, I found inner peace. That I’ve silenced my lifetime of striving with a 3 step approach. But, the fact is I haven’t.
Peace isn’t a 3 step approach.
And regardless of how many of you are now taking pity on me, wanting to help me overcome my baggage, or are just thoroughly over my whining, I’m not asking anyone to give me the path to inner peace. I’m not asking anyone to tell me to read my bible more, or trust God more or allow myself more me time, or connect with a therapist, or tap out my stress, or eat more ice cream or eat less ice cream or make better friends or get more sleep or have more sex or soak up more sun or get a freakin’ long overdue massage that unexpectedly rebirths you into a realm of calm and serenity you never knew existed. Although all of those are nice and very productive at creating corners of peace, I’m not asking for anyone’s advice. In fact, I may not even be asking for anything from anyone.
Except solidarity.
Grace. Humanness. A commitment to lighting up our dark corners. To allowing us all to be vulnerable in those spaces we find ourselves in and affirming that with a commitment to keep pursuing the truth regardless of how shameful or embarrassing or wrong or juvenile those spaces are. No matter how many times we blow it with ourselves or with others.
Peace isn’t something we choose to do or be. It’s a realm we are ushered into. Something we are drawn by. Something we are blessed with. An unexplainable state given by the divine that literally transcends all understanding. It isn’t an absence of chaos, it is an absence of striving.
It is breath and light and a recognition of our failures and an invitation to something far more fulfilling.
And I don’t know what it looks like to have arrived.
But, I definitely know what it feels like to be standing at the beginning.