I pride myself on being a dad who’s nearly always home in the evenings. Dinner with the fam, some time to wrestle or play with the doll house before we all do bed time routine together.
But this particular Tuesday night, I have a photography job that’s late in the evening. I won’t be home for dinner or bedtime.
Apparently, Ash has told my son this. Because as I’m packing up for work I see he’s trying to keep his bottom lip from quivering. Eyes are red.
A rush of emotions go through me.
My heart breaks to see him sad I’ll be gone.
Am I wrong for breaking my own rules about working late?
Should I try to cheer him up? Tell him about something special we can do tomorrow?
I want to get past this part so I can get to the photoshoot and enjoy myself…
Lots of feelings. All at once.
I’m really value peace.
Especially my own inner-peace.
I don’t naturally like big feelings, stimulating environments, intense situations.
I want peace. Inner-peace.
Life, though, is messy.
So I’m often trying to iron out life, so it’s neat and clear and flat. Because I think that if I can make it all neat and orderly, I will find peace.
If I’m having big feelings, I want to figure out which one is the real thing I’m feeling.
If me and Ash are having an argument, I want to figure out what the core of the argument is.
If I have conflicting goals - wanting to grow my business and spend more time with my kids - I want to figure out which is the top priority.
I want to clean up the mess and make it neat. Because if I can turn the mess and into simplicity, then (as my thinking goes) things will be clean, manageable… and I can relax and be at peace.
Of course, this doesn’t actually create peace in me. It creates the opposite!
I’m trying to control and manage life. Which is a great recipe for no peace. Anxiety, exhaustion, confusion.
The mind seeks peace through control and singularity.
The heart finds peace through opening up to what is real.
Which is always complexity. Multiplicity. Paradox.
I want this. And I want that.
I’m feeling this. And I’m feeling that.
I want to be closer to you. And I want my autonomy and space.
I want to rest. And I want to go full out.
The mind can’t hold these paradoxes. It thinks, “If I can just feel one thing, be one thing, pick one thing… then I’ll be okay.”
So I might try positive thinking: Be positive! Be grateful! Move one!
Or productivity culture says: Focus, decide, eliminate the rest.
Or spiritual culture: choose the right beliefs, transcend the messiness.
Whatever it is, I try take the mess and simplify it. Which always means eliminating part of it. Eliminating something that is real.
I live with this underlying fear: If I let myself feel it all, I’ll fall apart.
The surprising truth of living in a paradox reality is that our suffering actually comes from insisting life be singular. Clean. Tidy.
Peace doesn’t come from resolving paradox, but learning how to hold it.
That is what it means to come into alignment with life - welcoming in the paradoxes.
When we try to smooth over the complexity, we end up numbing parts of ourselves.
Or we pressure our kids to “be okay.”
Or we mistake our big feelings for weakness.
Or we confuse maturity with emotional neatness.
When we allow the paradoxes that swirl inside us, then we become safer people to be around. Our children learn they don’t have to edit themselves. Our emotions no longer need to compete - they can coexist inside of us.
This is how we find a kind of peace that transceds understanding.
The mind can’t understand this, but our hearts can totally hold grief alongside joy.
Ambition alongside our gratitude.
Desire for intimacy and autonomy.
Our hearts say, Yeah.. of course. Reality is paradoxical. So of course we feel all of this.
My son was born in the middle of winter.
On his due date, it was raining and sleeting. We thought we might have to deliver at a different hospital if we couldn’t make the longer drive on the icy roads to our planned hospital. We made it. (In time for 36 hours of labor.)
When he was two days old, I sat holding him in the hospital watching the Super Bowl, waiting for the nurse to come dispatch us to take him home.
Little did I know, he would grow up to love football. And icy weather.
Last week we were watching a football game and the commentators said that the weather was blustery. There was fog, rain and ice, creating a wintery mix.
I repeated it to my son to make sure he heard: “There’s fog and rain and ice, buddy! All mixed up!”
He lit up. Fog. And Rain. And Ice. All mixed up. “Wow.”
He didn’t know weather - or football - could be this awesome.
Now, it’s Tuesday and I’m trying to leave for my long night of work. And he’s holding in his lip and tears.
“Did Mommy tell you I’m going to be working late tonight?” He nods his head.
“How do you feel?” He doesn’t answer. Just looks at the ground.
“Are you feeling sad?”
“Yes…” He squeaks. A couple tears start to come out.
I hold him, unsure of what to do. I want him to feel better. Or really, I want to feel better. I don’t like these competing feelings in me. This ache watching my son feel sad, this longing to get to work.
I take a couple breaths. I’m holding him, but also trying to hold myself, my feelings.
“You know, bud…” I start, not quite sure where I’m going. “When I’m at work, I feel happy. Because I get to take pictures of people. And that makes me feel happy.”
He just quietly listens without looking at me.
“And, at the same time, sometimes I feel sad. Sad because I’m not with you, and Sister and Mommy.”
He keeps looking at the ground.
“So… Inside of me, I have happiness. And I have sadness. Together.”
His eyes shoot up at me. They don’t look sad anymore. They’re wide and excited.
“Like fog and rain and ice!?” He says with anticipation. Now, I’m the one who’s quiet.
“It’s all mixed up?!” He asks.
Now I get it. “Yes - just like fog and rain and ice! It’s all mixed up in me too.”
With that, he jumps out of my arms. He heads to the backyard to kick the football around by himself.
I yell, “Love you!” at him. He yells it back to me.
I leave for work with so much swirling inside of me. Love. Heart ache. Joy. Melancholy. All mixed up.
Whether or not you believe in a literal heaven, we all have some idea of heaven. Or idea of how things ought to be.
Our idea of heaven is what shapes how we treat life. It functions as our north star.
If we think that peace will finally come when we escape all of this messiness, all of this heartache and grief… then we will spend our lives practicing escape instead of learning how to be present.
If we think that peace will finally come when the sadness goes away, when the questions are answered, when the tension resolves… then we will treat large parts of our own lives as obstacles to peace rather than the place where peace is meant to be found.
A neat-and-tidy heaven trains us to abandon parts of ourselves, parts of life.
But there is another vision of heaven, a much more radical idea: that heaven is here, in our midst, inside of you, among us. It’s this idea that heaven, or true peace and fullness of life, shows up wherever Life is welcomed rather than resisted.
It’s this idea that heaven is always already here, but it requires a turning toward what is real rather than a reaching for what is ideal.
Not the elimination of parts of life, but the fully inclusion of all of life.
Heaven is not a place or time when there’s no longer any weather. Or where it’s always sunny with a high of 75…
It’s not some weatherless perfection. It’s when we learn to love all the weather of life. All the diversity and experiences and paradoxes.
Many people deconstruct from religion because it tried to force life into one tidy answer. That can be really appealing to our minds, but our hearts know that life doesn’t work that way.
If religion or spirituality is going to be helpful at all, it has to start from being honest about what is real. Which is always mess, complexity, paradox.
And that’s not an unfortunate thing - it’s good news! We don’t live in a static, dead universe - we live in a dynamic, alive world! And nothing has to be excluded for life to be sacred.
Peace isn’t waiting on the other side of this mess - it’s found when we step fully into it.
Kids are so much better about holding multiple, contradictory things at once.
You can watch how a young kid can be sad and silly.
Or I’ll watch my daughter feel angry at her brother and still want to play with him.
Experiences move through them fluidly, like weather. No grasping for the sun or resisting the clouds.
They don’t narrative identity to block that up yet… or moral interpretation… or self-judgement.
They just feel.
But at some point, usually early in childhood, we learn that some experiences break connection. Certain feelings cause a parent to withdraw. Or we notice we are praised for being “good” (which really meant “easy”). Or we are in spiritual environments that reward certainty and simplicity.
And our system learns to avoid the complexity. Avoid what will rock the boat. Avoid what might break connection If I simplify myself, I’ll stay connected.
So we might learn to choose cheerfulness over sadness…
or easy-going over honesty…
certainty over curiosity…
This is how our systems adapt so we can be connected, safe and accepted.
It protects us early in life, but later on it can begin to show up in ways that aren’t helpful.
Life is contradictory. It is multiplicity. It is all of it!
So if our systems are still be playing that old game of “which part of myself do I need to hide to stay safe?” then we end up trying to avoid parts of Life. What once helped us stay connected is now creating anxiety, numbness, repression. It takes us out of peace.
When something contradictory arises, the body might react with tightness, or urgency or anxiety. It might try to avoid part of what’s coming up in us. It remembers what we used to need to do.
And this happens more in the body than our conscious minds. Which is why just knowing this doesn’t change it. Our nervous system doesn’t change by understanding something with our head - it needs a new experience of safety to begin to soften and open up.
Healing can begin to happen when our inner contradictions are met with attunement… when our complexity is held without withdrawing… when we can be present and it doesn’t cost us connection.
In developmental psychology, this is called integration. In spirituality, we might call it union. Returning to union with all of life, all the things we feel. Not exiling any of it.
The mind is not great at doing this. The mind is a great tool for categorizing and separating things. It’s not great with contradictions and paradoxes and two things being true at once.
But the heart has no problem with paradox. It can hold sadness and joy together. It can hold contentment and ambition right alongside each other, no problem.
This is why spiritual traditions have said the heart is much more the seat of who we really are, not the mind.
It can be pretty incredibly what can start to shift in our systems (and lives) when we allow ourselves to welcome in and feel what we used to avoid.
For just 5 minutes. Maybe 10.
There was a business owner I was coaching with who came to me because she was feeling stuck in her business.
She wanted to grow her business AND she wanted more time away from it with her growing family.
She was feeling resentful towards the business for causing marriage issues AND she was feeling excited about what the business could grow into next.
She was feeling lots of things, and not feeling lots of things.
Her mind was spinning on what to do… what would create the peace she was longing for?
We started by slowing down the mind and dropping into what was being felt.
Anxiety.
Excitement.
Gratitude.
Frustration.
Trapped.
Possibility.
We started with just feeling these things. For 5 minutes. Maybe 10.
All of these things she was trying to use her mind to solve.
At first, it felt a bit scary and overwhelming and wrong.
But as the feelings felt more welcome... and moved through her… there began to be some peace. And inspiration. And lightness.
She came into alignment with what was real, and things began to flow again.
We practice this kind of presence a little bit at a time. Our capacity grows through safe practice.
We don’t need to throw ourselves into feeling it all, all the time. That can shut our systems down.
So we create times where we can safely open up and begin to welcome what we’ve avoided. For 5 minutes. Maybe 10 minutes.
Let your body lead. Whatever it feels it can practice without overwhelm or dissociation. Respect the body, don’t invade it. We are learning to step into the rain and fog and ice and sun and clouds inside us… but we don’t have to live there. We step into the rain, and then come back inside and dry off when needed.
This is the spiritual journey - the work of becoming safe enough to feel freely again, without losing ourselves. To welcome it all back in, all the contradictions and paradoxes. Allowing the weather to move through us again - without running for shelter. Learning to dance in the sun or rain or sleet… even when it’s all mixed up.
Now it’s Sunday. We’re having our annual winter ice storm here in Austin. Harris is pumped for the wintery mix. I’m wearing my coziest socks.
I’m telling him about our plans for this ice day. We’re going to make a fire. We’re going to make a new logo for his football helmet (the Cardinals). We’re going to play guitar with sister. We’re going to watch a movie.
“And we can play football in the rain and ice - just like the football players?!” He asks, with excitement.
“I don’t want to be outside today, bud.” I say, knowing it’s going to let him down. And sure enough, his face immediately falls.
“Please, dad? Just for a bit?”
Ughhhh here we go again. So many feelings rush up that I want to avoid. Guilt. Sadness. Fear of discomfort. Exhaustion.
And right behind them rush in all my logical justifications for them. It’s totally justified to not go outside today. It may be unhealthy to play in this sleet. He won’t even really like it once he gets wet and cold. I’m protecting him. I’m protecting me. He has to listen to me. I know better. Let me distract him.
I do my best to just breathe into the feelings. To let them be here. To not rush into an answer.
“We could watch some of a football game later today… would you like that, bud?” I hope this distracts and appeases him.
“Okay…” He sighs. “Maybe we could also play SOME football outside in the rain and ice?”
I really don’t want to. I’m in my coziest socks.
Everything in me is wanting to close off to the things I don’t want to feel. And I have all the reasons why I can and should.
But I wonder… Can I welcome these feelings? For 5 minutes?
“Okay.” I tell him. He lights up. “How about we play outside for just 5 minutes. Maybe 10.”