it's my birthday - falling apart and coming together
another year, another ordeal
32 today. Every year I look for some kind of singular significance around the number. Last year, 31, was a prime number, only one of two in the 30s series. This year, an exponential number (25) with many factors: 2, 4, 8, 16. The child in me who found safety in the consistency of mathematics pokes his head out from under folds of subconscious. I don’t really identify much with him, anymore.
As a child I used to self-soothe by finishing homework. I’d get started on doing homework during class, and try to finish on the bus ride home — if I got it done fast enough there would be time for reading or video games or surfing the internet. Things like math, which had a “right answer,” were easily finished. But when an assignment required deep thinking, research, or patience, I had no stomach for it. I didn’t do well what I couldn’t blow through in an an afternoon.
I guess the only unfolding processes I allowed myself to get lost in were books. I’d read books at the kitchen table, in my bed, under my desk in Spanish class, at Carnatic music concerts, on family trips. My reward for following the rules — if I did my homework, if I got through the tasks, I could escape to alternate worlds.
As I reflect on this, I realize just how much of my existence is opposite, today. I’ve folded fantasy into reality, insisting that the universe offers me, in this body, in this lifetime, what was promised by all those stories. I’ve learned that rules are often imposed to give the rule-maker a sense of safety. I — who grew up not knowing safety — am finding comfort and confidence in the dissolution of rules.
I no longer try to rush “assignments” (much of which are defined by me). Instead, I let things take their own course, trusting that everything has its own timing and spiritual drive. I still struggle to let go of the inner need to complete, to push forward. And on days when I really let myself rest, when I let myself become still and present, when I let go, I move through an incredible amount of work1.
In my dream last night I am on a softball team that meets in a forested park. I am there for an unknown reason, but I am committed to it. I realize that there is no one who looks like me on my team. I wonder (as I often do) if this means there is no one there who thinks like me or feels like me. I wonder (as I often do) if this means I will either have to suppress the intensity with which I feel or accept that I will also feel othered.
My dream self is just as horrid at sports as I am in the waking world. Though I never enjoyed playing sports, I found a way to enjoy watching them: by learning all the rules. I never cared who won or who lost, I never had a team or an affinity for a city or country, but I did enjoy seeing the rules enforced (and at times, flaunted).
Even something seemingly rigid and safe like the rules of sports has fluidity. Rules are always being negotiated and changed. In fact, I will make the bold claim that the world of sports has a healthier relationship with systems change than the world of politics or the world of corporate culture2.
Back to the dream: my team has a meeting, and as I am prone to do, I accidentally say something hurtful and offensive. I become aware of eyes on me. I become aware of a collective need for some kind of ritual of falling apart. I become aware of my own need for a space where I can fall apart.
My brother plays on an opposing team, and on the day of our game I learn from my mother that he has been practicing vigorously so that they will win. I haven’t been practicing much at all, just trying to see if I can cry in front of my teammates. Somehow I’m convinced that if we can cry together, we will win. Or we won’t, and it won’t matter.
Do you see the way the stories of my childhood have contaminated3 my disposition?
On the base level, what I care most for is connection. I have now been coaching for 4 years. It’s a career that premises entirely on connection, on faith that connection can be healing and transformative. I’ve learned how to leverage my natural inclination for connection into a way of being in deeper service, into an offering that I can invite others into.
I’ve also learned that it’s healthy not to get too attached to any form. I don’t need to be a coach to be in connection. I don’t need to be in a romantic relationship to feel and express love. I don’t need us to be in the same room to feel your presence.
In my ongoing rigorous study of my own relationships, I’ve learned how beautiful and how fragile connection is. We all look at the world through our own individual prisms.
No one wants to be projected on. No one wants to feel like they are compared to anyone else; we’re all seeking some form of uniqueness. No one wants to feel alone.
When we feel alone, we withdraw, we put walls up, we hide. When we feel seen in our uniqueness, we invite ourselves to be seen more. When we feel projected on, we feel an urge to defend, or to dismiss the projection and who conveys it.
None of these are hard and fast rules; I’m working on leaving the world of rules. But by studying the system that is “human relations” one starts to notice patterns. One pattern I’ve been noticing a lot is my own eagerness when it comes to resolving conflict.
In the last few years I’ve taken to treating ruptures4 with friends, colleagues, family members as homework assignments. Can I resolve this before the bus gets home? Perhaps, again, there’s that need to do the right thing, to move the story forward. Once I’ve “solved my problem set” I can be allowed to seek out stillness and presence with myself.
I’m practicing remembering that stillness and presence is always available to me. I am always allowed to go back there. In fact, when I let myself pause, I learn more about how to be with and receive the rupture. I might communicate with more humility, or give the other person space to fully feel all their feelings, or allow them to move our story forward. I don’t have be the authority, the leader, or the coach, or the person in charge, or the older sibling every time.
The question I’ve been asking most these days is “can I fall apart here?"
There are two elements to this:
Can I trust this person or space, this authority, to take care of me, emotionally speaking?
Wiil I allow myself to put down the mask and bravely let myself be seen as an imperfect, yearning, bodied human being?
When I used to (and still sometimes do) get caught up in the pattern of needing to be the authority, it is immensely difficult to let someone else take care of me. I am so attached to my own way of taking care of another that I have to remember the importance of being cared for. I have to remember the ways that letting someone else care for me is an offer for connection.
Falling apart in front of another is deeply uncomfortable. Sometimes someone wants to hold me in ways I perceive I don’t want to be held. But they hold me, nonetheless. And if I let myself fall apart, I get to be sit with and witness my own internal rupture, my ego breaking down, my feelings of futility and helplessness, my grief over all the wayward relationships, the waves of beauty and grace and sadness and hope and longing that pass through me.
Every year I think to myself that I’ve made it. I have, in the past, felt confident in my own poise and that I’ve learned something from this lifetime. However, this year I’m aware of how long the road is left to go. I have much, much more to learn. Many more ruptures and moments of tension and difficulty. Many, many more lessons.
When I need it, I know someone will be there to hold me.
work as indistinguishable from play as indistinguishable from “the deepest expression of one’s purpose,” aka “inner work” aka “character development” aka ???
i will not elaborate on this. it’s my birthday and i don’t want to. plus it might be flat out wrong
contamination not as in the presence of impurities but rather the kind of mycelial dialogue that happens when two beings encounter one another
not everyone uses the word rupture. here i mean a breach in an otherwise harmonious dynamic
Happy birthday 🫶🫀
hats off to you for this one, sir. I especially love the explanation of what happens when people feel alone/seen/projected upon.
happy birthday - wishing you a wonderful year ahead.