This or That?

The first time I remember hearing the term dichotomy was in entomology class in college.  We used a dichotomous key in an attempt to identify random insects.  Here's the scenario:  the professor sets out stations with bugs pinned to a board.  You have a giant manual that asks you a question that has a finite set of unique responses (usually two possibilities but sometimes more).  You pick one of the answers and turn to a page listed that will give you the next question. The next question will have a set of specific finite answers.  And so it goes for a while.  After answering these questions correctly, you are led to a place that tells you without a doubt what kind of little bugger is pinned to that board.   The questions are very specific and require significant knowledge regarding insect physiology.  To use a dichotomous key, you've got to be both knowledgeable about your subject AND committed to getting to a single answer that will be infallibly correct.

The inherent foundation of this methodology, the reason that dichotomous keys are useful, is that everything is wholly defined and known already.  You pick a path and then get led down the decision tree until....wallah!  You know exactly what kind of bug you have.  You get to the one and only answer-problem solved, mystery unveiled.  Zero ambiguity.

What happens if you pick a path and get to the end and the picture is not your bug?  Well...obviously you did something wrong.  Some decision that you made was wrong.  Back up. Start over. Try again.

Not a science geek?  Maybe you experience dichotomy in another area.  Do you like chocolate or vanilla?  Believer in God or atheist?  Democrat or republican?  Heads or tails?  Anything that is supposed to be completely opposite is a dichotomy.

How many times in your life have you thought you had to choose between:

smart girl or fun girl

happy or sad

success or failure

bravery or vulnerability

light or dark

hero or villain

princess or evil witch

strong or weak

saint or sinner

How many times a day did you say to yourself, If I'm this then I can't be that?  If I love that person, then I can't also hate them?  If I want to be a saint then I can't be a sinner.  No room in these ideas for the gray.

I could list these all day.  Ideas that seem to be exact opposites and also pervade my thinking in ways that I am not even aware.

I have spent much of my life boiling most thoughts, feelings, and choices into a dichotomous key.  I have made decisions based on the subconscious belief that there were only two choices and those choices were absolutely distinct.  If I pick the left path, I will end up in a place of complete and utter wholeness, goodness, light and validation.  If I pick the right path, I will end up in a place of loneliness, evil, dark, and discontent.  Either/or.  This or That.


 Here's the thing that I am realizing and trying hard to hold in the place called acceptance...when I boil everything down to a dichotomy, I loose some of the beauty inherent in this mystery called life.

 All those distinctions between this and that....those distinctions don't necessarily exist in the clear cut, black and white way that I believed they existed.  They certainly don't exist within my soul in that kind of clear cut path.  In fact...most things that I believed were distinct and clear cut....actually exist within me in equal measure of giant mixed up goop.

I am a success.  

I am a failure.  

I am brave.  

I am vulnerable.  

I am strong.  

I am pretty f*ing weak. 

All at once. 

All together.  

NOW.

The more I try to only shine up the one side of that coin...the dirtier, more real the other side gets.

Want the world to only see you as strong?
Guess who's showing off their biggest weakness to the world.

Want to always be the hero?
How many bystanders have to get taken out behind the scenes so no one knows you're fallible?

Don't agree?  Let's apply this to some of the basic human experiences.  Is it possible to be both happy and sad?  Sure.  Look at any parent of a graduating senior.   Bittersweet is a word that describes more than chocolate.

What about good and bad?  Can we be both good humans and bad humans?  Of course.  We always are.  Pick any character in history and find a character that never made a mistake.  Even Jesus questioned whether he could get out of the path he was on.  Luke 22:42 42“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will,but Yours be done.” 

We are all, even the best of us-complicated mixtures.

How did we decide that we couldn't be both? When growing up, did you want to be the princess or the evil queen?  I wanted to be a lawyer.  Or an ecologist.  The best darn tooting ecologist that ever walked the face of the earth.  Creating perfectly balanced ecosystems that fed everyone and kept families together-one compost pile at a time.  I am totally serious about this dream vocation.  Why that was my goal can only be explained by a mix of many things: my rural existence, my love for PBS (i.e.-lack of cable), my totally idealistic heart who wanted to save the world.

Some things about that dream still live on in my life.

But others are being put to rest.  How on earth did I come to this dichotomous belief system that still drives me if I take my eye off the wheel?  Where did it start?

I'm not 100% sure but as I run into these little arrows that keep trying to lead me to a distinct, irrevocably segregated answer, I end up uncovering clues.

For now, I'm actively working on recognizing that I am all the answers.

All at once

Good AND Bad 

Kind AND Mean  

Hero AND Villain

These aren't exclusionary events and if I'm heading down a path, I don't have to continue to the end before I can go back to start.

Moving On

How often in life do we change?  We want to believe that we change daily but most of us spend inordinate amounts of time trying NOT to change.  To get back to that place where we were.

Then.

You know what I'm talking about but just for kicks, let me jog your memory:

• That time when you were thinner, prettier, healthier. 
•  That time where you felt like you were enough.  
• That one special moment of clarity or insight.  
• That time where you were right (or righteous).  
• That time where you solved everyone's problems.
• That time where it all worked out just like it's supposed to.
• Happily ever after.  
• Good triumphed over evil.  

So that we don't have to look at NOW.

A while back there was a story going around on facebook or elephant journal or somewhere about life being a river.  It's a buddhist or some similarly enlightened perspective that explains you can never touch the same spot in a river twice....the river has already moved on.  This metaphor really resonates with me when I need to understand that I'm doing it again.  Looking behind me at what was.

I can't quite think of what is safe, kind or acceptable to post on the subject of my past year.  The life I thought I had, the person I thought I was, my likes and dislikes-have all fallen away in an incredible shit storm of destruction.  My life ended-at least what I thought was my life.  And just like all life, once that incarnation ended...something new started.

My faith tells me that in order for something to be forgiven, something has to die.  My idea of myself died last year.  My idea of my life died.  I can't really quite describe it.  My favorite girl G describes it as Brutiful.  It was BRUTAL.  It was beautiful.  Like forest fires burning down on the mountain.  Like stars exploding as they pass through our atmosphere.  Like a Tsunami bearing down on you.

 It was so hard and awful, there were points during last year where I could not believe I was still actually alive-respirating and completing cell division like a good little multi-cellular organism.  Then I would start sobbing or shaking or raging and I would remember-Oh yes, I am very much still alive.


And somewhere in those ashes, something amazing and mundane started to happen.  I began to grow and be reborn in ways that I could not have handled in my old life.  With my old ideas of myself.

I can read through my old blog posts and find snippets of the real me trying to peek out.  I can see now that the playlist was written all along and the next act was coming.  But I wasn't quite ready to take the step.  The step that would end my comfortable, suffocating existence as a people pleasing over-achiever.  That step that would call into question the fairy-tale I was trying so desperately to tap dance along with.  So, someone else did that for me.  I had been dancing on the edge of a giant cliff for my entire adult life.  And someone finally threw me over it.

THANK GOD.  


For the first time in a long time....I am listening to my heart and making decisions that further my own growth.  I am breaking my own heart open in an effort to keep swimming in the river.  I am working hard to sit in kindness and love.


Maybe this will be a place where I can work out my heart through writing.  Or maybe it's time for this blog to pass away too.  Time will tell.  Until then.