The Umbrella

Nothing is as simple as it seems, and yet the most profound truths are as simple as pie. This is my umbrella observation for the paradox that is life. I can’t say it enough. Life is both/and. To be sure that it is either this or that is a sure sign that we have used our life reducing powers to cut out most of the rest of the truth. We all do it. We have to. The full complexity of it all is too overwhelming to handle.

This leads to the great paradox in my quest for a state of interbeing. To rephrase what this is about, it is my earnest attempt to find a mode of being that will support our evolution as a species (as opposed to the path that we are currently on, which is leading us to extinction). My own life is the site of my experiment. I’m taking you along for the ride via this blog. I’ll observe here that I wish my site were a whole lot less complicated!!! Yet, this is the material that I have to work with, so let’s get real.

It can all be distilled down to a simple umbrella. To the casual observer it was just an umbrella. To my wife, it was just an umbrella. And what is an umbrella anyway? It’s just this tool that we have created with a structure that pops up and collapses down to support a membrane that keeps us from getting wet in the one position and is easy to take along in the other. The umbrella is ubiquitous, which is to say that it is everywhere and probably most everyone has (at least) one (or has had one as the case may be). They come and go from our lives like pens or hair bands or cash. It’s nothing special. Unless it is.

I’m historically not very good at nurturing my physical being. This in part comes with the territory of having grown up as a competitive gymnast and in part from having a mother whose motto is “suck it up.” I learned at a very young age to suck it up. If you are not sore as a gymnast, you are not a gymnast. Sore is a constant state of being for that endeavor. Oh you have a “rip” on your hand that is bleeding profusely and hurts like hell? That’s nice. You must be a gymnast. It’s your turn at the bars. You are pushing through a sprained ankle, a strained knee, an overuse injury that has pushed your tendons to the brink. That’s just what you do. Don’t be mad at my coaches, my mom or anybody else in my story. All they wanted was for me to succeed in life. And for our society in general that requires pushing through obstacles, learning to be “gritty.”

Well I am most certainly gritty. I learned to disconnect from pain to the degree that nothing can stop me. But I’m not talking about the extreme stuff of Herculean athletic feats right now. What I am talking about is how that training seeps into everyday life. I need to pull an endless string of all-nighters to meet a deadline even though it is going to rack me physically? No problem. I’m getting sick but have classes to teach? No problem, I’ll be there. It’s pouring rain and I’m going to get soaking wet? No problem. Let’s face it, I’m not going to melt.

Shannon and age have brought me down to earth a bit on this front. I have been working to change these patterns over the last few years in an effort to learn how to nurture myself. For example, about four years ago my umbrella went missing. I had therefore experienced repeated incidents of getting soaking wet between my car and the architecture building. That wasn’t such an unusual experience for me. There was a time when I didn’t really even believe in umbrellas. Carrying one was a pain in the ass. Getting wet was much less inconvenient than having to carry that umbrella. But somewhere in my wise old age I decided that I was being ridiculous and bought into this whole umbrella thing. And then it went missing, as umbrellas do.

So one day I decided enough was enough. I went out of my way to carve time and space out of my extremely hectic schedule to go purchase a new umbrella. As you might surmise, I wasn’t overly experienced in this department, so I wasn’t really even sure what to buy. I knew that I had found it extremely helpful if it was compact so that I could store it easily in my backpack and not think about it. That answered nicely to my persistent feeling that carrying around an umbrella is a pain in the ass. I knew from experience that not all umbrellas were created equal in their ability to pop up and contract back down, and that can be particularly annoying when you are trying to transition from outside into a building or your even worse into your car. I also knew they have a tendency to break. So I went out in search of an umbrella that would keep me dry without annoying the hell out of me.

I just happened to luck upon it- the perfect umbrella. It was the right size of compact and had a wide closure band to compact it down even further. It was sleek and black with a single flashy red button on the handle, appealing to the architect in me. That magic button popped it up into place instantaneously. Seriously… pure magic. And it contracted back down with equal grace. It was a match made in heaven. For the past four years that umbrella has been my constant companion, albeit tucked away into the bottom of my backpack so that I only ever think about it when I need it. But when I need it, there it is.

This past Monday night I needed it. An unexpected downpour rolled in. We had worked late that night, so it was dark and we were tired. Shannon, who does an amazing job at self-nurturing, has ironically never quite turned the corner on umbrellas. She still doesn’t really believe in them, so she never has one. There is only ever one over her head when I happen to have mine and it is pouring. As we walked out to the car she gets the idea- because as I highlighted in “Sophie” this is how she is in the world- that after we get to the car she wants to drive back to the building to give our umbrella to another stranded professor who is also umbrellaless.

I immediately tightened up. You want to what? You want to give away my precious umbrella??? Are you crazy?! Well that last thought might not have literally seeped up into consciousness, but it was in there nonetheless. Of course I didn’t say any of that. I just tightened up. It would be one thing to give the umbrella to somebody who we see every day, but this professor only works late on Monday nights when we typically are not there. Once in the car, I pushed back a little on this idea to see how serious she was. “If we give away our only umbrella, then we won’t have one the next time we need one.” She responded that we have many more hanging in the entry at home. I had to think about that one. Was it true? It might be true. After the purchase of my precious umbrella, my old one had decided to stop hiding plus my mother had given us two more. It was true. But I didn’t use any of those umbrellas. They weren’t special to me. This one was. In the Kondonian sense, it brings me joy. It is my constant companion. The others, they can go. “Thank you for your service.”

So now I had a serious dilemma on my hands. To give or not to give, that is the question. I didn’t have much time or space to work it out in either. On the one hand, this umbrella represented self-nurture in a very concrete sense. That, as explained, is a critical evolution for me- to care for my self. On the other hand, the very concept of interbeing is to recognize that all definitions of self are by definition arbitrary. That is to say there is nowhere we can actually draw a concrete boundary that says where “I” begins and where it ends. And what that means is that the world that we experience is nothing more than our extended selves. There is no separation. In that light, to take care of this stranded professor is also to take care of my self, in the extended sense. Which self to choose?

I know full well that to give is to place myself in an ever increasing cycle of the gift network. This is to say that when we give, the gift comes back to us threefold, usually from some other direction. For example, if I give up my umbrella, I am setting myself up to receive an umbrella (or some other equivalent item) from somebody else should I ever find myself stranded. I know this. And yet still, we are talking about my precious umbrella here! I don’t want to part ways with it, not at all. So much so, that anger rose up in me. I was angry to have been put in a position to have to make this choice. If I held on to my umbrella, I honored my self while dishonoring my extended self. If I let go of my umbrella, I honored my extended self in trust that my self would be taken care of in the future- that I would be taken care of in the more general sense by the Beloved.

I would love to report to you that I came to a place that I was able to give my umbrella with an open heart and a sense of nurture toward my self, both extended and not. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I angrily relinquished my umbrella. I did so, because I did not want to be judged. I did so, because I felt I had to in order to be in “the right.” I most certainly did not do so out of love. As far as I was concerned, that professor could deal with her own damned inconvenience. She wasn’t going to melt, after all. I was so upset in the moment that I didn’t even get to say goodbye (to my umbrella). No “thank you for your service” was said. I couldn’t even look as Shannon delivered my precious umbrella. And I remained angry for a long time. Days.

I share all of this with you to be real in a concrete way about what the challenges are for us as we attempt to shift our mode of being out of a worldview that has us convinced that separation is real. Even after you see through that myth, the patterns that have been formed by it remain. And it’s tricky. It’s especially so in the heat of the moment. Patterns are hard to disrupt. To do so requires that we catch our snap directly in the heat of the moment. It requires recognizing the pattern as it is happening, then stopping to breathe and give space for some other possibility. And we have to do this over and over and over again until a new pattern has been established.

It would have been helpful if in that moment I had stopped to feel what I was feeling and to give space to understand why I was feeling it. Then I could have communicated that to Shannon and we could have worked through it together in a way that honored all selves involved. There was no right or wrong in giving the umbrella or not. It was really a question of which choice might best support each self involved. Let’s reverse the roles. If I were the stranded professor, I actually would not want somebody to give me something that is precious to them if I wasn’t sure I would be able to return it. I’d choose the inconvenience of my self so that my extended self could continue to experience joy. If, on the other hand, I saw that giving me the item brought the other joy, then I would accept that gift and seek to pass it on. Either of those options is a win-win. Begrudgingly giving is a win for nobody. So my observation for the week is that when in a situation that doesn’t feel nurturing, just stop. Meet yourself where you are at and nurture what is showing up. Do that first. Do that first because if you don’t feel nurtured, you can’t truly pass it on. You can’t extend your umbrella to cover others until you are situated in your own profound safety. Let’s just say… I’m not there yet.