i am under-grounded

Someone recently asked me a question that they’ve been asking everyone right now. How do you be a sensitive and loving person in our time? Here’s what I answered. I’d love to know your answers, too. ❤️

I would start by saying I have been living inside of this question my whole life, even before we got here, to these particular times which, even a short time ago, I could still allow myself to believe were impossible. So if I take that part—the ‘in these times’—out of the equation, the answer is more clear. Even more, I can simplify further since I also believe that we humans, in spite of all our kicking and screaming and armoring against it, are sensitive and loving in our nature.

That’s hard to believe right now, since what it looks like and feels like is that humans are essentially war-making creatures who are more interested in power over than power with. But my belief still stands for a lot of reasons which I’m happy to go into at some point. But for the sake of this question, if we factor out the ‘in these times’, and the ‘sensitive and loving’ caveats, we’re just kind of left with, “how do we be?”

That question haunts me but also grounds me. It’s kind of an annoying question, like that joke: A guy stops a woman on the street in NYC and asks her “how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” And she says, “Practice, practice, practice.” She is technically answering the question that’s been asked, but I still want to punch someone every time I hear it.

The question haunts me because it’s questioning something that just is. How do I be? I don’t know, but here I am, despite not having an answer to that question, so what now? So it feels like someone’s being an asshole, in either asking or answering but it’s hard to put your finger on who, exactly.

The question also grounds me because it drops me straight into the center of my curiosity. If the question is asked, that implies there might be an answer, and looking for an answer to the question is not a bad way to engage in life.

So, an oversimplified way to answer the question could be, stay grounded in my curiosity, no matter what. My curiosity will lead me to practice things here and there, and again my curiosity will help me notice and understand which things I practice help me stay connected to my loving and sensitive self.

If we add back in the factors we took out, the “in these times” and the “loving and sensitive” parts, those things both add layers. I remember learning, early in my Somatics training, that working with armoring with someone who doesn’t have a lot of trauma vs working with someone who does have a lot of trauma is the exact same work. And I’m pretty sure you’re the one who said this. You said, “it’s the same work, the contractions with a more traumatized body are just deeper and stronger, but it’s the same work.”

I think the same is true here, whether we’re trying some days just to get to neutral instead of all the way to sensitive and loving, or on the days when the shadow of late-stage capitalism and genocide cast such a dark shadow it’s hard to remember our collective humanity, those are just different depths of contraction. The work is the same. Go slow, stay curious, build your capacity to be with what is, learn to titrate into more capacity, rest when you need to, allow for the help you need, keep breathing, feed yourself, drink water, move your body, let the love that already surrounds you into your awareness.

That’s what I think.