Hi <<First Name>>.
Welcome to the weirdest equinox of my (and maybe your?) life to date. I wanted to reach out with some thoughts that have been helping me this week, and a ritual practice for the spring equinox (Ostara if you're witchy!) Also, here is an exploratory writing prompt focused on the uncertainty we're all, every one of us, feeling right now.
So this is the thought sustaining me right now: we are always revising toward the unknown.
Until two weeks ago, we thought we knew basically where we were headed. We masterfully planned weddings, fundraising campaigns, international trips, book launches…
But we didn’t know what was coming, and furthermore we didn’t know that we didn’t know what was coming. Or we didn’t recognize it, we thought sure, it might rain on my wedding day or a recession might happen or there might be a terrorist situation in that other country or my publisher might have to push back the book’s launch – but we didn’t think this would happen. That something would happen that would change all of it.
But this was always a possibility. And once we are through this, whatever “through” looks like, there will be (and there are now) uncountable other dire and brilliant possibilities for our next.
We have to revise toward the unknown. And it’s hard, it’s the hardest thing. We want to know. It’s why we love scientists, and psychics, and really anyone willing to use the right words and tone to reach the soothable part of our psyche that just wants someone else to be in charge, to fix it, to tell us what is happening, what is coming, and what to do about it.
In January (which feels like it was approximately seven years ago), I made a fundraising plan for a really important new political/cultural/literary space in Chicago. It involved donations from people who can give a little and people who can give a lot, it involved lots of gatherings large and small, and it all has to change. The plan from six weeks ago was a plan for a different world.
This had me completely paralyzed for the past few days. How on earth could I plan with no idea into and for what world I’m planning? Where to even begin?
Today I remembered that it’s almost the spring equinox, that precipitous moment when we pivot our focus from the interior realm to the exterior; from the dark, contemplative season to the possibility of rebirth, growth, blossoming.
So I looked around me. I saw the new buds on the trees along my street, and I knew they held the promise of growth but not its guarantee. I saw the crocus pushing up through the mud, and knew it could bloom or be crushed or nipped by a late frost.
I saw my life and my work and the choice before me. I could not make the world more certain, I could only choose how I moved into and with its uncertainty.
So I begin by acknowledging that things have changed, by mourning the loss of the illusion of normalcy and predictability.
I begin by acknowledging that those changes are uncomfortable, are making things difficult and even dangerous for many, are not changes I would have chosen.
I begin by acknowledging what remains. By seeing abundance. By letting the fear and worry rise up and then letting them go, knowing they will return.
And then I plan, not with certainty but with uncertainty. Not against the unknown, but with it. These things are the things we can do right now. This is our best guess about where the world will be in two months, and what we will do if the world is something like that. And so on. And so on. And on.
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A ritual practice for this equinox:
I believe in preparing for worst-case scenarios, or at least almost-worst. I have shelf-stable food and a water purifier and am keeping the car’s gas tank full for once.
But the spring equinox also offers us a chance to consider what is possible in the best ways – what is possible if we allow for uncertainty, if we choose to move with the tide, float and let it carry us back to shore.
For this practice, first language or draw the endings to these sentences:
* I know it is true that:
* What I don’t know is:
* But I trust that:
* And my great hope is:
And then take that great hope and from it draw out a best- or good-case scenario:
* IF:
* then maybe:
* and then:
* and then:
* and then:
It’s a holiday of abundance, so repeat and repeat and repeat. When you feel finished, lay all these lovely scenarios out before you. Close your eyes and feel the possibility they radiate. Let that radiant hope fill your body, toes to fingertips to crown. Bask in it, like the spring sun sure to come.
{Practice worksheets available here:
https://mailchi.mp/fb03b3396b79/sprex20}
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