The Glass Ceiling of Joyful Embodiment

Chapter 15 of the book Belonging is called The Invitational Presence. In it, Toka-pa Turner writes about time. She says, “But as many aboriginal cultures view it, time is more circular in pattern; not like the Western linear comprehension of time as past-present-future, but flexible to the individual at the centre of that ‘time-circle.’ In the Australian Aboriginal Dreaming, the past and future are embedded in the present. One’s embodiment is the ground into which all continuity flows, so the past can be just as influenced as the future by one’s way of going in the here and now.”

I have been studying my capacity to feel good, and, because I work with people who are dedicated to writing their stories—in essence living their life twice—I am also studying them. I am also studying my friends and the people who talk to me as I’m out running errands. I listen and I listen and I listen and what I hear over and over again, in my head and out in the world is I’m not interested in having all my dreams come true. In fact, I don’t even want to talk about them because the truth is I forgot what they were a long time ago. I want to tell you what is bothering me. I want to tell you all the things that are wrong.

This is what I see: when we treat the past as something set in concrete, events that happened that affected us in certain identifiable ways, a pattern of blame and collapse is often established. Some part of our body deflates when we think of a past when we felt hurt, damaged, unseen. Even anger is a form of deflating, I would argue, as the heart is a mechanism built to thrive on love. The past owns us the way an embedded anchor owns a ship. The past defines us the way a numbered stamp on the end of a light bulb lets us know the wattage. We get stamped by our experiences, and then we stay anchored to the past.

In the adoptee community, we tend to live neck deep (Hell! Top-of-the-head deep!) in the past. “In shock” could be another term for “in the fog”. “Waking up to the shock” could be another term for “coming out of the fog.” The past is something that happened to us. It’s something that marked us bastards, orphans, adoptees. It’s something that took away the life we were “supposed” to live and gave us some other, random life with some other, random family.

We live so obsessively thinking about the past we forget to have dreams for our futures. So many adoptees seem to have health and financial problems! How can you not be depleted when you are living on the air of memory?

What if, as Toka-pa wrote, our embodied self—this body, these hands, this head—contain the past and the future both in the very moment we label “now”? What if it’s all a dance—life, memory, time? What if nothing is stationary, set it stone, real? What if the past, this thing we think defines us, is fluid, changeable, something we can bend and shape to our will?

What if when you write your story you have permission to remember however you want? What if the only truth is the one you create?

If you had a childhood full of trauma and pain, and if you want to write your story, isn’t it enough that you experienced pain once? Is there a more joyful way to live in the present moment when you also live in the past? Can you love every minute of your life from this moment forward just because you are free to make of it what you will?

This piece is all over the place, but I don’t care.

I was having fun, trying to get my brain to think in new ways. I’m trying to bust through the glass ceiling that limits how high I can jump. I think I’ve brilliantly misunderstood what it means to be human, that worrying is a good thing, that too much happiness is dangerous.

I remember the first time I heard Nick Lowe sing his song about loving the sound of breaking glass. I thought it was so surprising! He was singing in a sweet way about something normally associated with trouble or danger or fury. It was so fun to sing along with him!

I love the sound of breaking glass
Especially when I'm lonely
I need the noises of destruction
When there's nothing new

Oh nothing new, sound of breaking glass

I love the sound of breaking glass
Deep into the night
I love the sound of its condition
Flying all around

Oh all around, sound of breaking glass
Nothing new, sound of breaking glass

Oh all around, sound of breaking glass
Nothin' new, sound of breakin' glass

Safe at last sound of breaking glass

I love the sound of breaking glass
Deep into the night
I love the work on it can do

Oh change of mind
Oh a change of mind
Sound of breaking…

Nick Lowe