A life neither unlived nor unexamined

“I will not die an unlived life.”

This line is from a poem by Dawna Markova, which Adrienne Maree Brown read to us as a focus for our meditation this past week at the generative somatics training I organized in Elkhorn, WI for local activists and social change leaders. The poem struck a deep chord in me, so much so that I will quote it in its entirety here:

“I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible;

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.”

― Dawna Markova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion

The phrase “unlived life” also reminds me of the more famous quote, from Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It, too, seems relevant, and lately I’ve been doing so much living and inhabiting that I have been feeling a bit behind on the examining!! So tonight I decided to forgo both the breast cancer support group and the inner refuge meditation practice options, and stay home to do some reflective writing.

During the somatics workshop this past week, each of us was working on a “declaration,” a phrase that begins “I am a commitment to…” and continues with something we want to manifest in our lives or in the world. The declaration becomes a mantra that is used repeatedly during centering and other ways of practicing more fully embodying it. We are also encouraged to think through how we will know when we are succeeding in manifesting it (the “Conditions of Satisfaction”), what practices we want to adopt to support our success, what next actions we need to take to act on the commitment, and who are “committed listeners” will be who will help hold us accountable to fulfilling on our commitment.

I have worked with this process a number of times, and my new commitment I worked on during this week is still evolving, but it’s something like: “I am a commitment to discovering my new shape and fully inhabiting it, with vulnerability and heart.” Or perhaps just, “I am a commitment to fully inhabiting my naked heart.” This means giving myself time. Time to get used to my new physical shape and my new hormonal reality; time to remember and reflect on the experiences of the past 9 months; time to discover what this next chapter of life will be about. How will I “inhabit my days”?

“I will not die an unlived life.” I think this is already true of me. My mother once told me that I was the most self-actualized person she knew. If I remember correctly, she said this with a mixture of admiration, self-effacement, and amusement typical for her attitude towards my (by her standards) wide-ranging exploits (often some degree of exasperation was also present). She herself was quite fearful, and I think my determination to face into fears rather than letting them narrow my life came partly from growing up as her daughter, and from taking her somewhat painful advice to try to not be like her.

I think my decision to go to Israel was in part a move towards not dying an unlived life; towards facing into fear, and loosening my heart. For many years, I was afraid to return to Israel. Not because of the physical danger. No, I was afraid that I would love Israel as much as I did when I was 14; love the sense of belonging, the triumph of Jews reclaiming heritage and land, the utopian idealism of the kibbutzim; and that, knowing what I know now about the dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians, that that love would tear me apart, or at least confuse the hell out of me.

It’s still not easy, but I think I have grown in my capacity to be with ambiguity and contradiction. Another somatic practice we work with at these trainings involves just that – practicing centering and staying embodied, rather than dissociating or feeling traumatized, in the face of contradictions in our lives. We have two practice partners, and we coach one of them to give voice to one side of the contradiction, and the other to give voice to the other side, and then they both talk at us at once, while we feel our bodies’ reactions. We then practice centering in our physical and energetic selves, and in our purpose, in the face of the contradictions. During the workshop I practiced with the contradiction between on the one hand, the idea that I should be taking care of myself as much as possible in the next few years in order to try to prevent a recurrence of cancer, and on the other hand, living fully and working hard to have the impact I want to have on the world before I die. As I noticed before, when I am deeply centering, there are ways the two sides feel supportive of my purpose and center, rather than like they are tearing me apart.

I don’t think I felt quite safe enough or ready enough to ask people to give voice to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in this way… I’m not sure it would work exactly either… but I’d like to try it. I think there’s a way I, and we, need to learn to hold seemingly incompatible truths with equanimity and love. While the history of the region is fraught with centuries of conquest, conflict, colonialism, and racism, it is also a place of great beauty and deep spiritual aspiration. While it was a great thing for Jewish refugees from Europe to have a place to make a new home, it is tragic that that home was created at the immediate expense of our cousins who had lived there for generations. While it is a marvelous success that Jews learned how to farm and defend themselves after centuries of not being allowed to do either in Europe, it is heartbreaking to me that military might and zealous fundamentalism now seem to far outweigh spiritual insight in the Israeli national character.

I did, during the workshop this past week, do some work related to my feelings about Israel. We were working with what the somatic tradition calls a “grab,” a phrase or event that triggers you and pulls you off center. The exercise was to have your partner say a phrase that “grabs” you, as they grab your wrist, and then practice 1) feeling your somatic response, 2) centering, and 3) turning to face into the “grab.”

The phrase I chose was one that was part of the closing speech given to our Israel tour group by the guide at the Ayalon Institute in Rehovot, aka “the bullet factory.” This museum is a fascinating exhibit / recreation at the site of a former clandestine ammunition factory, where a group of young kibbutzniks-to-be went underground (literally), right under the noses of the British army, for several years in the lead-up to the Israeli War of Independence (what the Palestinians call the Nakhba, the Catastrophe) to make bullets and test guns. The amount of courage and ingenuity involved in this enterprise was truly impressive – a piece of the love / pride side of my contradictory feelings. At the end of the tour of the factory, the tour guide told us, “Zionism is a joint venture of Jewish people everywhere.”

This was the phrase I told my partner to say to me in the “grab” practice. I did, in fact, grow up with this belief – and the related ones, that no matter how safe life seems for Jews in the US, the Holocaust could happen again anywhere, and that my safety and the safety of all Jews everywhere depended on the existence of the State of Israel. This story was told to me by Jews, but reinforce by occasional experiences of anti-Semitism. Like the time in 7th or 8th grade when I went up to my math teacher, Mrs. Collins, and told her that I would be missing yet another two days of school for the more obscure of the High Holidays, after having already missed a few days worth that fall for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. She looked at me with anger and spite and said, “Why don’t you people all just move to Israel?!” (Yes, in a public school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, circa 1979).

So, as I faced into the grab this weekend, I allowed myself to feel the many layers. The sadness and guilt that the oppression of the Palestinians is in some way my fault; anger at the people who are doing this in my name; fear that my safety is in fact diminished by world outrage at this mistreatment fueling anti-Semitism. And, beneath it all, as I continued to face my practice partner, I realized there was a layer of facing into the possibility that I might, indeed, be safer in some convoluted way because of the oppression of the Palestinians. That my safety may actually be at their expense.

As I traveled around Israel and witnessed its exuberance, creativity, triumphalism and in some cases still-utopian leanings (though greatly diminished in socialist content!), I mused about how the creative, in-the-moment flexibility of the culture which is such a strength may have a pushy, land-grabbing opportunism as its shadow side. Ellen and I noticed and laughed together about how we had to re-learn how to participate in a queue in Israel, because the pause we were used to leaving before moving forward in line was apparently interpreted as a lack of interest on our part in moving forward, and an invitation to several others to occupy that space! As I saw the barrier with the West Bank from the bus, and as I listened to my Modern Orthodox friends tell me they believed the settlements were all on land that had not been occupied by Palestinians, I was reminded of an old story by Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” If you haven’t read it, it’s worth a look; and if you have, it’s worth re-reading.

Rabbi Tarfon in Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers) is quoted as saying, "It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either." Pirke Avot 2:21 Part of my discovery process, my wondering about what this next phase of my life will be about, is this: Will I “choose to risk my significance” on this issue? On putting my shoulder to the seemingly immovable grindstone of Middle East peace? Or will I continue to focus closer to home, where there are so many other ways that my current comfort and safety are at the expense of other people and the health of the planet? In either case, I hope “to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.”