Dare I mention Covid here? I do and I have. It is almost four years since we were cloaked in virtual, in both meanings here, global enforced collective stillness with nothing but the news and our phones to get us through whatever it turned into for you.
I know what mine was like, as I am sure you know yours. Loved it, or loathed it, suddenly, on so many levels, everything stopped.
Many of us made seismic decisions, some decorative, others involved moving to, or out of the country, selling up, buying, working from home and now, continuing to do so. It was a reshuffle to most of our lives and for many, loves. Perhaps it bore hope, in some way, that change was possible.
I did make changes. Not moving house, but going online, working from home, closing my London therapy practice, no longer teaching for scraps in a yoga studio.
How we now love or hate our lives post-Covid is a part of the enquiry here. But rinse and repeat comes in many guises.
The landscape of rinse and repeat can be stitched into the day. Some things we do without thinking, like bathing, teeth brushing, getting dressed. There are a raft of actions which we now take for granted like stroking or licking the phone for hours at a time, in a daze to compare and despair, how long can I bear to be so triggered for, by social media? The opening of the computer, the relentless raft of emails, porn and pill offers, and random notices of millions of dollars if you click that link. The WhatsApp messages and their attendant groups, the pinging of notifications. Oh, and let us not forget the nightly scroll of doom: desperately scrolling in slow motion, trying to find something to watch. Can it really only be Friends, again? This is all rinse and repeat in its Pavlovian madness, hoping today it will be more exciting than yesterday.
And then I can notice I am wondering how many salads I have eaten in the last four years, how many games of cards have I played, books read, series watched?
In the weekly repetition of showing up to the Universe there is the emptying the bins… is it really Monday again? Standing at the wide-open fridge door, dating the fridge, hoping it will offer you something warm and delicious that it made with its own fair hands. But it never does.
How long you have been seeing the same food, aisle after aisle in the supermarket? Does everyone really want to see and choose to eat the same, over and over? What is wrong with me that it makes me want to scream?
There is your job, or career. The showing up in a relationship, raising kids, siblings, parents, planting seeds each spring, waiting for the light in the morning after another dreary winter. Paying your taxes, the monumental cost of being online, streaming, wifi, phones, again, all rinse and repeat. The drudgery of wanting more, over and over.
Where am I going here?
We head off together into the landscape of “how are you showing up for your rinse and repeat?”
Where am I going here?
We head off together into the landscape of “how are you showing up for your rinse and repeat?”
Do you hate, resent, regret it? Do you numb yourself daily or just at weekends? Are you shouty? Shaming? Desperately waiting for a diagnosis of ADHD (such long waiting lists…)? Or sitting beneath a damp grey cloak of depression, popping SSRI’s or Adderall to keep showing up? I don’t ask for a confession here, just asking you to notice.
Over the weekend I ran a workshop. On the last afternoon we discussed the power of projection. Don’t think movies, think about what potency and energy are you projecting into every moment of the daily life that you show up for.
There is a powerful way of transforming the drudgery of repetition.
The next post will expand…
I met a Maori Princess this evening & she said, Maori are curious we go out, take our best selves out into the potency of the situation. Her father said, if you really want to do something & you put your whole self into it, we will meet you, your enthusiasm, we will help. You must put your spirit out into whatever it is, interests you, be patient, it’s important to have patience as well as curiosity… A different take on projection I thought, the desire.