Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line. You get the flu, you fall into a downward spiral and you feel awful. A few days later, you start to feel better, you go on an upswing and you’re relieved that it’s over. But the next day, you feel badly again and you’re back down in the dumps. You feel defeated. Disappointment and depression set in . . . until the next morning when you wake up and you feel better again. The spiral can be dizzying but we’re stuck with it.
The word “spiral” is an age-old symbol for spiritual development. In some circles it represents life’s journey, the way we move outward and inward, learning, expanding, returning and transforming. Buddhism teaches us that if we can stay aware and avoid taking the first step into a negative way of being, we are on our way to
freedom as each stage on the journey unfolds naturally round and round from the previous one. This means there are no warnings as the spiral goes up and down. Ultimately it doesn’t mean anything.You can spiral downwards into despair or you can spiral
upwards into clarity. And you can count on the fact that you’ll do both.
Anais Nin said, “We do not go in circles. We advance in spirals.”
So many things in life happen in a spiral. Good days and bad days. And more often than not, there’s nothing we can do about it. Calvin and Hobbs cartoonist Sam Watterson said, “You know, Hobbs, some days, even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.”
I have a private trainer who puts me through my paces for an hour twice a week. Weight training. Stretching. Balancing. Last week, I felt my feet solidly underneath me. My balance was dependable. I felt strong and the weights felt like extensions of my arms. I was up for anything she threw at me and I ended the session feeling uplifted. This week, it was a different story. My balance was shaky and I felt groundless. I couldn’t feel my feet beneath me, the weights felt heavy and I was hoping shewouldn’t ask me to do anything too challenging. When the session was over, I was far from feeling uplifted. I couldn’t stop focusing on what had gone wrong.
I had to come up with a way to feel okay about having a bad day. I reminded myself that it probably wasn’t as terrible bas it seemed and even if it was, tomorrow there would be a different outcome. I just needed to ride the spiral, notice whether I was up or down and stop trying to fix it. Life just happens that way. And as usual, acceptance is key. If we can find just a little bit of mindfulness to remember that nothing stays the same and neither do we, we can ride it out and hitch a ride back on the upward track.
When I was in the ballet, I worked hard to find out where balance started in my body and I placed my attention there. Still, I had good days and bad days. All the other dancers had them, too. We felt vulnerable and when we lost our balance, we found a graceful way to catch it again. We performed a particular ballet in which I was required to step out onto the stage on the toes of one foot, balance for a moment and move on. I was successful most of the time but sometimes I wasn’t. Instead off getting freaked out, my task was to carry on as if nothing bad had happened. I needed to clear my mind of the stumble and focus on the beauty of what I was doing. I didn’t want that mistake to take over. Mistakes are not failures. They’re opportunities to grow and become courageous.
I love to watch gymnastics. When the girls get on the balance beam and do astounding things, it seems impossible. But sometimes they fall off. They get back on and their challenge is not to get thrown
into self-doubt. They have to pull it back together in few seconds without chastising themselves as they head back upwards.
Olympic gold medal winner, Simone Biles says, “Absolutely take pride in your output on your best days, but make sure you take pride in your output on your bad days. You have to fight through some bad
days to earn the best days of your life.”
Human beings make mistakes. We also create beauty. One day Vincent Van Gogh was cutting off his ear. Another day, he was painting “Starry Night.” This is an extreme example but the point is the same. You can have misery one day. You can have glory the next. Neither of them are stagnant. They are both dynamic, they will change and our job is to surrender to what’s happening, stop judging and trying to figure out what caused it and leave ourselves alone.
Whatever the difficulty, acceptance is always the answer. Sometimes it’s an annoying thing to embrace but it’s the only way to go that won’t bring us suffering. Instead of labeling it, we could ask ourselves, How did I face that challenge? Do I feel good about it? No one can guarantee a good or a bad day, but we can guarantee that it will change. When someone asks, “How are you doing?” on a bad day, and you say, “Fine,” that doesn’t mean you’re lying. You’re not talking about what’s happening to you. You’re talking
about how you’re facing a day with a lot of challenges.
Robert F. Kennedy said, “Change is a motivator. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
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