These Are Certainly Uncertain Times

These Are Certainly Uncertain Times

As news about the coronavirus began to spread in early March 2020, I found myself doing something I often do when I’m feeling vulnerable: voraciously gathering information, reading and listening to the news multiple times a day, and incessantly refreshing Twitter. 

At the time, I was spending my days in a conference room at hotel in Boston, with more than 30 people, for a training in Functional Integration®, the hands-on part of the Feldenkrais Method®. As the 10 days wore on, and coronavirus cases started to pop up in Boston and the surrounding area, it became questionable whether it was smart to gather together and spend the day touching each other.

But none of our public officials seemed to be offering any clear advice. The idea of “flattening the curve” was just beginning to show up in the news. There was a lot of speculation about what was happening—and some horrific projections about what might come to pass—but no consensus about what was the best thing to do right then. In addition, it was becoming frighteningly clear that our country’s leadership was failing to act in any effective way.

THERE ARE NO ADULTS IN THE ROOM

I eventually left my training early to return home, and over the next week, feelings of anxiety continued to increase. One morning, during a distracted meditation, I had the shocking realization there were no adults in the room. No one knew what was happening in the present, let alone what was going to happen in the future. 

The only thing that was certain was uncertainty.

Now this is not a new idea to me, but living in uncertainty—practicing “I don’t know mind,” or beginner’s mind—is a lesson I have to be reminded of again and again. In this case, I saw how I’d been trying to wrap myself in facts as if they were my own personal protective equipment against the sense of wild vulnerability that threatened to overwhelm me. If I could buffer myself in “the known,” then I could bypass the difficult feelings and go about my business.

Economist and psychologist Herbert Simon said, “…information consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

I had been using information to try to manage my emotions, but all it did was distract me from being with the very legitimate set of feelings and reactions I was having as I watched our society start to collapse into fear and distress. My effort to find certainty and know what was going on was taking my attention away from the most important thing—being with myself, here, now, feeling all the feelings, and having the human experience.

It makes sense to want answers, to desire reassurance that it’s all going to be okay. And it probably will be okay in some big cosmic sense. But on this relative level, it’s also not going to be okay for a good many people. An uncertain number won’t come out of this alive or whole, and it’s going to hurt. Of course life is always that way, but the scale of this is impossible to ignore.

THE SOMATICS OF (UN)CERTAINTY

As I saw all this during my meditation, I felt a tremendous release in my body. I hadn’t realized how much tension I’d been holding, and it melted away. Rather than the fear taking over, it just dissipated. Despite all the Feldenkrais practice I’ve done in recent years—seeing my old habits and patterns of movement and making space for new possibilities—I was still surprised at how much my cognitive attempt to control the world was reflected in the muscles and tissues of my body.

When I was young, I was in a candlepin bowling league (a style of bowling unique to New England with small balls and straight pins). I can remember sending the ball down the lane and then contorting my body in an effort to somehow make the ball to go where I wanted it to go. My ribs would jut out to the side and one knee would bend against the other, my whole body participating in an attempt to direct the ball into that magic spot right between the first and second pins. 

In this case, my tight eyes, clenched jaw, frozen neck, rigid belly, and shallow breath were all futile attempts at gaining some kind of control over the uncontrollable spread of the coronavirus. 

As I sat with the reality that control is an illusion and nothing is certain, the image of being on a rollercoaster dropped into my mind. When you get on a rollercoaster, the best thing to do is strap yourself in and go with the flow. No matter how much tension you hold in your body, it won’t have any measurable effect on the ride. But you can make your own experience less painful by holding less tension in your system and responding to the curves and dips with as little resistance as your energized system can muster.

To do this takes practice. I work with my mind-body in meditation and therapy, and with my body-mind through walking, dancing, and Feldenkrais. Your practice may be different from mine, but if there ever were a moment, now is the time to commit to something that speaks to you. If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that we’ll need to marshal our attention into the here and now if we hope to make our ride through these uncertain times a little less difficult.