51. response-able

Today I feel like I’m stretching my limits in responsibility.

Like my response-ability is functioning pretty close to max capacity.

But one thing I’ve observed over time is that every time I think I’ve reached my most response-able point, something happens to stretch it just a liiiiiitle bit further.

It kind of feels like when I’m being guided in a workout out and the instructor says “just ten more - 10, 9, 8…” then starts talking about something else and when I’m sure we’ve reached 2 they chime back in with “6, 5, 4…”

Or like holding an extra long retention in a pranayama practice, and wanting to release the air, but being determined to hold it just a few seconds longer, to see if my third eye pops open and reveals the secrets of the universe. 

I’ve noticed it in the people around me too, in clients feeling a breaking point, my husband drained and burned out, some friends at the end of their grief ropes, others in delusional text-their-ex angst, and even my kids, whose fuses have been shorter than usual lately. 

I’m inclined to blame the stars (that’s what astro-besties are for) because we’re reaching the 80% completion mark of this Mars retrograde, and whatever we’re supposed to learn about what’s paining us and pissing us off is now at the critical juncture, the crescendo or tipping point. 

Sometimes it takes being pushed to a limit to realize it’s not actually the limit, and we can go a little bit further. Often, this growth edge isn’t a very comfortable or fun place to be. We might feel exhausted, drained, fed up, weary, or just plain done-zo with whatever we are confronting. 

But the lesson of Mars retrograde in Cancer, the lustrous gem hidden in the muckpile of maddening and frustrating emotional experiences, is the alchemy of transforming big feelings into meaningful action. 

It’s asking us to become more response-able, especially in regards to what we really want. 

If you’ve been here a minute, you know that my ADHD brain has a special relationship with the 80% completion mark of pretty much anything. It’s like a little bell goes off in my brain that is supposed to alert the crew that we are making great progress and to keep going, but all the hamsters in my head translate the bell to mean the workday is done, and they start scampering off in all directions. The foreman who mans the bell even forgets that he’s supposed to make an announcement to rein everyone back in, because he heard the bell, kicked his feet up and popped a Queen cassette tape into his walkman, and is grooving instead of getting the team back on track.

What I’m saying is, we have 19 days left of really feeling into how agitations, frustrations, derailments, and pervasive demands in our emotional environments can guide us to review, refine, and revise our drive and forward momentum. But, we’re also at the point that it might feel easier to just say “fuck it” and throw in the towel. 

I don’t know about you, but when I skip the last few reps in my workout, or let my breath go a little bit early before the third eye is poppin’, I always feel a little bit of disappointment, maybe even a twinge of self-judgment or shame, as part of me knows that the final push is what will take me where it is I really want to go. 

My words for this year are beauty and boundaries. In tender the harder parts of my relationships, the ongoing homeowners water-damage-flash-flood-mudslide saga, our overdue residence permit renewals and government delays, and countless other experiences lately, I’ve felt stretched to my edges in seeing and creating the beauty; I’ve observed the slipperiness of my efforts at maintaining healthy boundaries. 

But I’m not discouraged. Not after writing this, anyway. Because I didn’t know this was what would come up or come out tonight, but it’s helpful. I’m exercising my response-ability. I’m pushing through the last couple reps, even with an instructor who sucks at counting, even with lungs that just want to exhale, and I’m choosing to show up and respond as best I’m able to the situation at hand. 

It’s like realizing that the only way to rein all these hamsters back into a coordinated effort to push through the last 20% of their workday isn’t going to be force, but an impromptu musical number or a flash mob.

To activate the response-ability, we gotta find the fun in it, we gotta create the beauty, even if it’s absurd and nonsensical, like a rag tag band of seventy-seven hamsters wearing assorted costumes (associated with their widely varied jobs in the headspace ecosphere) getting in formation and singing “Don’t Stop Me Now” as they finish homework, shovel rocks and debris from the driveway, draw cartoons on lunch napkins for bento boxes, spin around in their desk chairs, and hype themselves up to just. keep. going.

If that’s not what responsibility means, or what I’m supposed to be learning from That Little Fluffers transit… well, quite frankly, I don’t want it. 

I can see one very dear hamster in the corner of my mind-gym pick back up the dumbbells, wipe the sweat from his brow with a rainbow-wristbanded paw, steel his mirrored gaze and start tapping his toes to the beat as the music builds: 

I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger,
defying the laws of gravity...
I'm gonna go, go go, there's no stopping meeeeeeeeeee

We’re in the crescendo, my friends. We’re all a bit mad here. 

Put on some Queen for the hamsters in your head if it moves you, and let it inspire you to:

Just. Keep. Going.