Oscillaton - 059
The Rhythm Behind Everything
“I’m avoiding thinking about my mom” I admitted to my therapist.
"But, I can’t grieve all the time, can I?"
She shared that traditional grief work encourages us to face the pain head-on, constantly until it’s over. But in 1999, a paper came out introducing the idea of Dual Processing Model of grief counseling.
It explains two modes of processing: loss-oriented (focusing on the loneliness of life after a death) and restoration-oriented (focusing on the tasks that need to be done post-mortem).
"Basically," she says, "a very healthy way of dealing with this is via oscillation. A little time on, a little time off."
If you’ve been keeping track, July and August I wrote all about my mom’s death. And then last month I wrote about... games?!
I have been oscillating.
In fact, the more I think about this, it’s the underlying nature of nearly everything. Day/Night. Inhale/Exhale. Awake/Asleep. Plant/Harvest. Bear/Bull. Beat/Offbeat. Consume/Digest. Activity/Rest. A little time on, a little time off.
I’m thinking about waves and rhythms. About oscillation.
How can we harness it? What happens when it goes wrong?
Let's turn it on.
Pink Sand by Tobias Hägg
Happiness and Embracing Change
Every quarter, I fill out a wheel of life.
It's a circle divided up into 8 slices, each one labeled with an area of my life– career, relationships, creativity, finances, health, environment, learning. Filling in each slice is part of an ongoing process. It's helpful to see where I need to shift my focus in the coming months based on today's wheel. I also love having documentation to look back on where I was last year or 10 years ago.
About a decade ago, my career was up and down every quarter. And relationships? Oof. All over the place. These days, it's a little more consistent.
Still, I'll never have a full circle.
That's just part of being human.
There are periods of fulfillment and they're followed by ones of desire and growth. Consistency followed by change.
Seesawing convenience and quality.
The wheel has helped me recognize this pattern.
And knowing this cycle is going to be the next 50 years– in EACH part of my life– I can embrace periods of loneliness, desire, and transition with more self-compassion.
The wheel is not a goal.
It’s a reflection that informs my direction.
Animation by Min Liu
Are We Having a Great Fall?
Sweaters are appearing.
Plaid flannel, boots, and puffy vests.
Warm drinks in to-go cups. Pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg.
Apple picking, halloween, long walks in colorful woods.
We dance to the rhythm of the seasons.
And yet
The rhythm is off.
Do we love the consistency of seasonality so much that we ignore how it's changing?
Do we need the change to remind us that everything is "normal"?
Epic rain, storms, and droughts
fires, and floods, and regular blackouts
leave no doubts.
This is not normal.
The rhythm is off.
NYC 3 months apart:
Poorest air quality in the world by David Dee Delgado on June 7 (left) and Brooklyn flooding by Paul Martinka on September 29 (right)
The Pendulum is Speeding Up
Dating used to feel like a pendulum.
Whatever I liked or didn't from one partner–career, style, extroversion, religious affiliation, closeness to family, money issues, health– would make we swing the opposite way in the next partner.
That process reminds me of politics, too. It might be easy to see how Reagan and Bush led to Clinton which led to George W Bush then Obama led to Trump led to Biden. The pendulum swings back and forth.
It reflects a time of personal or societal experimentation and learning.
Throughout history it's been a trend.
Ancient Greece's philosophy of humanism leads to Roman's philosophy of hedonism.
The middle ages lead to the Renaissance and enlightenment eras.
WWII led to suburban sprawl which led to second wave feminism...
But the pendulum is moving faster.
Greece to Roman time was hundreds of years.
The post-war babyboom to second wave feminism is a decade or two.
Smartphones to social media ubiquity is just a few years.
As a society, and globally, the ever-swinging pendulum has me–maybe us all– feeling frenetic. It's hard to keep up and impossible to plan for what's coming.
Given the choice, swinging the pendulum ourselves (like in dating) can feel like the fastest way to learn. But when we're not in control and experiencing the chaos of a constantly-changing world, it's no wonder we're all feeling burned out.
War and Nonwar
The world feels exceptionally heavy right now.
This month, people who want safety, freedom, and full lives have made decisions that are destroying other lives.
War has ravaged a place I have once called home.
And its effects are crawling their way into our lives here. At home.
It's taken about 30 drafts of this one little essay to not get political.
Or explain the history. Or write something that might be misinterpreted.
Or feel like there's a clear piece of advice or conclusion.
I'm lost. Or stuck. Or both.
But I have been thinking about it through the lens of this month's theme.
These events cycle.
Periods of intense war are followed by nonwar– times of recovery, listening, grieving, and rebuilding.
My two hopes for all of us:
First of all we learn something from this time that may bring us all a little closer.
And second is that the upcoming period of nonwar comes soon and lasts longer than we could imagine.
Here's to nonwar.
–––––
Thanks for taking the time today to sit with me.
If you have reflections or thoughts, I'd love to spend time with them. Just reply.
Stay safe out there.
Despite everything, let's try for optimism,
Jake
Hey it’s me again.
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