Self-Care, Gratitude, and Devotion

I've been sleeping five hours a night, or less. I don't get enough exercise. I'm eating badly, and too much. If you've been to a meeting lately, you know I need a haircut.

I am neglecting myself because I am constantly fixated on the work I have to do for Collapse Club and the new Preparedness Support Group. I sit at the computer for hours, and when I'm not at the computer, I'm furiously ruminating on whatever technical problem I've chosen to obsess about. I go to sleep thinking about "my work," and I wake up (five hours later) thinking about the same.

I justify this behavior to myself by saying: "Everything is urgent! Collapse is upon us! Something must be done!" I don't pretend that my work is going to stop collapse, but I feel an obligation to do something—anything!—to change the tragic and dangerous path that we, as a planet, are on.

But there's a danger that I am fooling myself and missing the point. I'm indulging a life-long habit of "workaholism" where my intense focus on "being productive" substitutes for a healthy emotional life. I jump into furious intellectual work so I don't have to feel lonely, or trapped, or abandoned, or whatever dreadful emotional baggage is left over from my ridiculous childhood. My feelings are threatening and dark, but my mind—ah, my mind!—that I can control.

But while my head is buried in the clouds, my life could be passing me by! I would be in big trouble if I didn't deliberately turn my attention to the glorious, simple details of just being alive: I walk the cat in the neighbor's yard; I breathe the air; I let the sun shine in my eyes. I can actually live for a few moments every day in the place where I actually am without the intervening flood of thoughts. I can be grateful for the reality I inhabit, which comes to me through the grace of powers I do not understand.

For my intermittent peace of mind I credit the friendships that I've found in Collapse Club and the heartfelt sharing that we do every week in our meetings. I have heard in those meetings from many people who are facing the same trouble that I do, and much worse. I know people who are struggling to put food on the table day to day, or to keep a loved one from suffering in the throes of illness, or to find meaning in a life that may be ended much too soon. There is plenty of misery in the world.

But there is also devotion, and commitment, and love. We can make a choice to take whatever situation we find ourselves in and let ourselves be there, for real, with all of the suffering that entails. Because deep down in the experience—through the suffering and not around it—is connection with the true power of life, the meaning of everything, and the peace that defies understanding. But we can only get there together. The burden is too great for any individual to bear. We have each other, no matter what happens, and in that is our salvation.