“When we have gone through long periods of being extremely mentally or emotionally stressed, oftentimes our souls can fall into deep rest that feels a lot like being depressed because it has similar symptoms.” Mary Wright
This past week, as I sat with a client who is suffering from illness, they said to me, with tears in their eyes, “some days I just wonder why I bother!” They were referring to their purpose and focus on day to day living. Why bother?
This person, challenged every day, starting with opening their eyes and getting out of bed. At the break of dawn facing yet another day where dependence on others is paramount, fear is front and foremost and exhaustion of the soul is written all over their face.
What could I say? How do I answer this person as I stand, able bodied, healthy, and living a fully independent life? How can I be present to someone who I have never walked in their shoes? What is it to imagine what they must be considering or living with each moment of every day? Where would I start to do so?
The simple answer is I say nothing, I can only stand and be in the presence of this person and not walk away in my own discomfort.
Some days I struggle to get out of bed. For those who know me in person, this may come as a surprise. Cynthia the “breath of fresh air” carrying an air of optimism and hope everywhere I go. Singing the very words that come from my mouth by adding an uplifting tone and adding smiles to the very words that come out of my mouth.
The places I visit, I often have the staff smile as I approach because they depend on the fact that I am smiling first and I am known to uplift the very air in the room, because I choose to do so. I do this because there is so much dread and fear and loss in the world, for my own sake, I choose to live in a perpetual state of happiness. Otherwise, with the work I do, the people I see, I might fall to the ground in a heap of tears.
When I teach and coach, I often make reference to the 5 per cent and the 95 per cent. These are the numbers I use to get people used to thinking in terms of the ego mind and the deeper area of the iceberg. The 5 per cent being the conscious thinking area that we are aware of and the 95 per cent being the deep true self that is often overtaken by the 5 per cent. Are these percentages accurate? I am not sure; it is just how I choose to label them.
We are a set of innate beliefs and values that we are given as we are born. The soul’s roadmap of purpose and meaning as it inhabits the biological piece of this life’s journey. I see it in my baby grandson as he has such a determined way about him at one-year-old. This determination cannot be learned yet, in my opinion, it is a deep yearning to be who he is and as we watch him explore and learn we can see how his wee soul inspires and challenges him to be all he can be at one-year-old.
Just the other day, I watched as he stood at the step stool. The two-step lift device that places his older brother up to counter height so he can climb up to the snack cupboard.
The stool was in the middle of the kitchen floor. The baby did not push it to the cupboard, as one would if they were mimicking what they learned, he went in his one-ness and got three little cars from on the floor in the playroom. He brought them to the step stool in the middle of the room and placed them on the top step.
He then struggled and argued with his little body until he got both feet inside the bottom step and sat on it like a bench. He then proceeded to make car noises and drive them around on the top step like a table. His little soul repurposed the step stool into a table and a race care track. That is innate learning and soul’s purpose. Fascinating how the 95 per cent is so available before the 5 per cent has had a chance to tell him different.
This little boy gives me hope and sets each day on fire. He hits the floor running and is watchful of everything in his world. His older brother who I have spoken about before with my run with me gramma conversation and my third grandson who is the one with the hair across his eyes, goth sober look, with very deep and pondering thinking, all keep me looking at life when I ask, “why bother?”
As I look to the world news and wonder what is to become of us, I must look to the children and find hope in their soul’s desire to simply be present in this lifetime and fulfill their calling each step of the way. As our children teach us how to be adventurous and yet needy, might we take a page from their book?
The client who is asking this “why bother” question is in a world no different than my grandsons.
She lives in a small room in long-term care waiting each day to experience her life through a very small lens. Like the boys, she is dependent on others to prepare meals, help her dress in the morning and to set her up with some screen time, a volunteer to read with her, and wait for help in the bathroom.
At each end of life, ill or aging, and making car noises using a step stool as a table or pressing a call button, we are dependent on each other to bring life. The short time in between, is the allusion we are independent, and this is where I believe we go so wrong, and our soul becomes so tired.
The very source that grows our fingernails, pumps our heart, turns a seed into a plant and calls earth to rotate for yet another year, has created us in community to be interwoven in each other. In our 5 per cent we make the poor choice to be independent, arrogant to want to be self-made, when the 95 per cent wants us to love, help and care for one another. Observe and help when needed all while living together on this blue marble.
As I continue to quest my 312 kms for the charity challenge in the month of August, I do so with a hope in the ripple effect that my journey and my example setting will bring inspiration and hope to others. As I lay in bed in the morning and wonder “why bother?” I remind myself I bother to be that one drop of water in the pond of our human existence that might ripple out to others and then as soon as I can, I go and connect myself to a child who will teach me to stay close to our birth story.
Life knocks the curiosity and choice to bother out of us. Life exhausts the soul, tires the spirit, unless we use the 5 per cent to let the 95 per cent be our driving force. Listen to your deep yearnings and take time to play.
Live in community and with dependence on those close to you, and while this pandemic is trying hard to separate us, let us fight back and join our hearts desire to be fully present and connected in the human soul’s desire to connect.
Cynthia Breadner is a grief specialist and bereavement counsellor, a soul care worker and offers specialized care in Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy with special attention as a cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner and trauma incident resolution facilitator. She volunteers at hospice, works as a LTC chaplain and is a death doula, assisting with end-of-life care for client and family. She is the mother part of the #DanCynAdventures duo and practices fitness, health and wellness. She is available remotely by safe and secure video connections, if you have any questions contact her today!
