⚖️ Libra Season: Balancing Our Worldviews + Holding the Both/And (Copy)
What’s your opinion on people?
a. people never change, and that’s ok
b. people never change, and that’s not ok
c. people always change, and that’s ok
d. people always change, and that’s not ok
e. none of the above
f. all of the above
g. a + c only
h. what even is option h?!
I’ve heard the words from close friends and mild acquaintances:
“He’ll never change.”
“She’s flaky, changes her mind with the wind.”
“Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
“People don’t change, they are who they are.”
“I don’t trust people who change their minds.”
It’s rough out there. More so, it’s rough in here 👉 🧠
Here’s what I’m learning and wanting to explore more. My worldview - or ontology - is the lens through which I see. It colors all my perceptions. If my worldview is one of doom, gloom, fear, and stuck-ness, so too will my perceptions be. If my worldview is overly positive, naive, or ignorant because I don’t want to accept harsh realities, so too will I put faith into unstable foundations.
Lately, my yoga practice is a of holding the both/and. Dualities. Shiva/Shakti. Hard/soft. Ethereal/material. Anger/joy. Deep grief/deep appreciation. Frustration with the world and our inability to help ourselves and each other. Total awe with humans and their capacity to love and give and trust and support one another.
Both are true. And that makes my brain freak OUT. I’ve been in process of learning to hold some BIG both/ands the last few years, and it is BOTH/AND: totally confronting AND incrementally increasing my threshold for discomfort.
The thing about being able to tolerate more discomfort is… it’s wildly uncomfortable (shocking 😂). AND, it’s a practice in self-compassion. If I can hold the meanest, angriest, ugliest, judgy-est parts of myself softly, without gripping or forcing. what begins to happen is this unraveling of my old worldviews.
“He’ll always be a narcissist.”
“She’ll never leave him.”
“People should be nicer.”
“Our government should care more.”
These thoughts, the emotions tied to them, and the reactions they elicit are real. Valid. And…
They’re not necessarily true. Holding the both/and with more curiousity and compassion not only helps me become more emotionally agile: it also enables me to become an excellent improv partner to my own life. Agency, choice, empowerment, and service come forth when I’m a “Yes, and…”
(Improv’s first rule: be a yes, and!)
Over time, with patience, with compassion, my “both/and” evolves into a “yes, and”, and suddenly my worldview shifts from “bad things happen to bad people who deserve it” (or whatever the limiting view may be), to “things happen, and I can choose to respond from a space of the highest possible outcome for beings involved”.
And tbh, that’s yoga for me these days.
