A few years ago a friend of mine said something that was really important. She said that it was important to move from where you actually were at versus the idea of something you had in your head.
As a writer, as someone who has spent a lot of time living in ideas, this was mind blowing and incredibly helpful to me. I think that there’s been so many moments that I’ve been caught up in the idea of something, whether it’s a political idea or a spiritual idea or an intellectual idea—that I’ve rushed to move from that place of idealism rather than paying attention to where I—and my body—is at. In these moments I have gotten hurt in the process.
An example:
On Sex, Love and Goop (yes, I watched that show and yes, do not judge me lol) there was a queer couple that were working with a sex therapist. One of the people in the couple who defined themselves as very kinky and playful and fun kept reaching for the sex toys quickly, and the sex therapist stopped them. The sex therapist told them that they kept reaching for something before their body was actually physically ready for it, and their mind was trying to override their body because they had these ideas of themselves as being kinky, or playful, or always ready and down.
It was just a really tender moment of seeing how we actually inadvertently do so much damage on our own bodies because we don’t move at the pace of what our body wants and needs. Because we spend so much time overriding our bodies. Because we’re moving from a place of idea rather than embodiment.
I think we can all think of examples in our lives where we’ve moved from a place of an idea vs the actuality. Ie— I want that job/ opportunity/ project so much, and then when we get it the actuality shows us that maybe we don’t want that thing. Or, when you love someone and you want so badly to have everything be okay that you ignore the ways that you’re being hurt, to the point where you start to self abandon.
I know we’ve heard this so much, but our bodies will always tell us when something is off. When we’re around someone and we constantly feel anxious, distraught, confused, or like we’re struggling, that means that our body is trying to tell us something. Maybe it’s trying to show us that something is off in the dynamic we’re in, maybe that our needs aren’t getting met, maybe that we just don’t feel like we can actually be ourselves and comfortable. And that’s information for us to actually listen to, rather than ignore. It’s important for us to actually slow down and move at the pace of what our body wants and needs, rather than rushing past it.
In other words: it’s important for us to move from where we are actually at, rather than where we want to be. When we move from where we actually are at, we can meet ourselves fully, really know ourselves more, and live more deeply and presently.
This is hard because it takes a kind of radical accounting, a radical honesty, and even harder—a radical listening and knowing of ourselves. It also takes the courage to actually honor our knowing, and a vulnerability to express our knowing to those around us and to have them slow down enough to also hear our knowing.
I do feel like it’s in these moments of us expressing where we are actually at, and having someone hear us and move with us, that feels so affirming and uplifting and magical. And when we express where we are at and that isn’t held, it can be devastating. When we’re met with defensiveness and gaslighting it can really twist and distort our own knowing.
It’s also important to then recognize that those people aren’t met for us. I know it sounds corny, but they deeply are on their own journey and its more a reflection of where they are at and what they believe about the world. And Inshallah they’ll grow, but that’s also not on us to enact, and its not on our bodies to bear the weight of that growth.
It’s a deep act of trust in ourselves to move from where we are at, to honor our own embodiment. When we do that we also make ourselves easier to trust for others, because then they can trust that we know ourselves enough to communicate what we need effectively.
And what’s hard about this is that…. we have to practice this in relationship to people. Again—embodiment versus the idealized version of this. Sometimes we’re great at it and sometimes we aren’t. And that’s okay too, I think it’s so important to actually offer yourself (and others) so much forgiveness with this. We’ve been trained out of being in touch with our bodies for generations, it’s okay for us to offer some grace when we aren’t on it all the time.