Thriveability Is A Practice Of Comfort In Impermanence
Thriveability Is A Practice Of Comfort In Impermanence
How impermanence is the boat that thriveability sails upon.
I am under no delusion that thriveability requires us fall into binary categories of “leaders” and “followers,” or that I alone as a Certified Meditation & WellBEing Coach can “make” anyone or anything “better” (aka healed, fixed or changed). I am however choosing to accept the Truth that we are all here in this time alive as collaborateurs, interdependently, to nurture and care together.
If you’re out there stressed tf out about…gestures wildly at all the bullshit going on in our world … It might be hopefully some little comfort to know that the Earth is wired for catastrophe within the same wavelengths of causal action that it is also wired for regeneration. Just like the human nervous system…
How do I know?
I am experiencing it.
I came to some spontaneous realizations yesterday morning during my daily meditation involving this thriveability that I Know is True, because it didn’t have to be sold to me. The Truth needs no defense.
The vibe of thriveability doesn’t look or feel like it’s portrayed on the hyper individualistic, Instagram perfectly curated, influencer “guru” style wellness culture version of accomplishment-based thrive…
The thriveability I have tapped into feels like a deep acceptance that my life is considerably more peaceful, graceful and joyous when I live my life awake and present in all of the mundane moments that I consciously weave together myself. A direct input and output cycle of thriveability. As I sat and meditated, I reflected on one of our year’s longest days, truly able to accept that this peaceful, calm & balanced thriveability has only arrived because I was willing to let go and allow myself to tap into the equanimous state of allowing constant evolution…recognizing this vibe as a felt-sense in my body akin to the sensation of feeling my own hiking boots upon the forever shifting Earth beneath my feet.
Tapping into thriveability requires acceptance of the essential Buddhist tenant of comfort in “anicca” or impermanence.
Think about it, or better yet, take a moment and feel about it…
What does it feel like in your body to grasp onto the condition that there is some imagined permanent place in the future that your life “should get to” to “feel” stable?
Do you feel your pace quicken? Do you sense your mind start to run? Do you feel an urge to be bigger, better, more? Does the solving, planning, organizing, catastrophizing mind kick in?
How long before the subtle sense of “what if I’m not good enough, fast enough, liked enough and all of this fails” start to creep in, and does that sensation freeze your action?
My friend if you’re feeling this, you’ve tapped into surviveability. And look, I’ve gotten to deeply know that place my whole life. I get it.
Three years ago I was stuck broke, in my apartment, surviving off of government support after losing my career overnight in the pandemic, neurodivergently trying to fill out application after application and reformat cover letters to just try to get some job so I could continue to put food on my table. I knew I had the skills and experience to transition into a completely new way of living (I was already proving to myself that I could by being 4-months sober from alcohol), but what I had to overcome during those times was my mind telling me I wasn’t worthy.
I had to do the hardest thing in the world…the hardest thing that I wouldn’t have been able to do without the foundation of my mindfulness practice and accept that this feeling was just an impermanent feeling. It sure as hell didn’t feel impermanent, but I placed my faith in practicing impermanence, and what I discovered is impermanence just feels like “letting go.”
Like learning to swim, and having to choose at some moment to just fucking let go of the wall and trust that your own body will figure out how to put into use the practice strokes, and you’ll swim yourself into brand new territory.
That’s what it feels like to always be practicing impermanence, which The Buddha referred to as one of the “3 Marks of Existence.”
You are fucking impermanent.
What does this have to do with thriveability & the Solstice?
Well what I realized this week, is that “stability” is impermanent too.
When we think of the word “stable” it might conjure up a vision of a steadfast mountain. All tall and regal and life sustaining. And it is, don’t get me wrong, but when we get down to the Micro level of it, literally nothing on that mountain is permanent. If we were to hike on it, we’d have to be careful with our feet right? Rocks, roots and soil shifting under step. Limbs on trees constantly breaking, and our mycelium friends doing their thing to return the dead limb to life in a new way. The whole mountain itself being there because the literal molten rock faaaaaaar underneath was constantly moving. To have “stability” in this kind of environment requires us to truly accept that everything constantly changes!
But there’s a comfort in that, right? Going into the forest to take in Mother Nature is often described as “grounding.” Our vulnerable human, mammal body intrinsically knows how to be comforted by the Truth that everything is constantly changing. Impermanent. Ease into the changing nature of impermanence.
THAT is what we must tap into if we want to tap into the vibe (which is literally always there for the tapping) of thriveability.
I don’t know exactly what my life is going to look like 6 months from now at the next Solstice. Or next year. Or 5 years, or in 10. But I’m comforted by the fact that it will be whatever it’s going to be and that ease and comfort of acceptance offers me the peace & equanimity I need today to collaborate with my own life, and the life that is all around me. I’m not worried about things changing because I know they are.
Impermanence is the boat that thriveability sails upon.
I could spend my days worrying about how the hell I’m going to live far into the future (and sometimes I do)…but that worrying actually takes me out of the present moment, into some fictitious future that literally none of us know. So I can accept that this is a transient feeling, and shift my feet on the soil, and keep moving presently.
We don’t manifest thriveability by any one grandiose action, we weave a practice of thriveability with our every day actions. Do that shit long enough and one day maybe you too will be on your meditation cushion truly letting go in the moment and resting in this place of sustaining, easeful, peaceful, pragmatic & mundane thriveability.
Thriveability is a practice of comfort in impermanence.
With love,
-Deanna Sophia Danger-