I have never been able to swim.  I have always had a fear of drowning in water.  When I was very young (pre-teen and teen years), I used to have recurring dreams about being in a house that was filling up with water, and every one of those dreams ended with me clinching my teeth so strongly that they broke into pieces (thankfully it didn’t actually happen!).

When I was older (in the late 1970s), I was in college while also pursuing a Naval commission.  Of course, one requirement for completing my training before entering the Navy, was to pass a swim test. This terrified me, because I could not swim, and still had a fear of the water.  I had even taken a swim class in college to prepare me for this test, and I still could not swim well or overcome my fear.  For the test, I was given an option to jump into the deep end of the pool and tread water for several minutes as a test of my ability to stay afloat, and then swim the rest of the length of the pool.  When it came time for me to do this, I jumped into the water, and sank straight to the bottom of the pool.  It felt like I kept going deeper and deeper, and was never coming back up, and because it seemed to go on forever, I decided that I was most likely going to drown.  It was at this point that I stopped resisting what I assumed was going to lead to my certain death, and gave up (believing that I would simply start inhaling the water).  In doing so, a remarkable thing happened:  Instead of drowning, I quickly reached the surface and could breathe again!  I hadn’t even realized that I had been moving upwards – I had misinterpreted what was happening around me in the water as a result of my fear – and it left me disoriented and unaware of my surroundings.  Had I kept resisting, instead of letting go, I could very well have drowned!  But releasing that resistance is most likely what saved me, and I was able to complete the test – and live another day, thankfully!

Fast forward now to 2017.  I had a dream in which I was on a commercial ship of some kind, attending what seemed to be a scheduled meeting in a large meeting space, surrounded by glass walls with a view of the ocean.  Suddenly someone realized that the speaker was not there, and I was asked to fill in and speak to the attendees.  Not knowing what I was going to say (or even why I was there!), I stood on the stage and looked out at the audience, who were sitting in chairs with their backs to the glass walls.  Before I could say a word, I suddenly witnessed the approach of two huge waves of water as tall as the top of the ship coming up behind the audience (one coming from the right and the other coming from the left), and joining together to crash through the glass, sweeping everyone up and taking them out to the sea! They never even saw it coming or had time to react! I was shocked by what I witnessed and also how fast it happened before my eyes, and I was paralyzed by the realization that there was nothing I could do to stop this horrific event and its aftermath!  However, in that moment, somehow, I felt the impulse to simply “let go” of the need to control whatever was happening or what was going to happen next – and in doing so, the strangest thing occurred:  I was immediately “one” with the ship in the very instant that I “let go”!  I sensed I was alone, and yet also sensed I was a part of everything happening, including what was happening with the ship! The ship rolled over 3 times, and I rolled with it – not tossed around by it, but rather, in some suspended state, I moved when it moved, as though it was alive and I was aware of and part of its consciousness!  It was an incredible feeling!  I knew exactly what it was going to do, in the moment it did it, and I did not have to control anything, or resist anything – I simply had to “be”.  It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, and is very difficult to describe!

I mentioned these two water-related instances because I honestly believe that they are symbolically connected, and carry important messages for the moment we are in now. First, of course, is that if we don’t address our fears, they have a way of repeating themselves in our lives over and over again (for me, the fear of water has often been a recurring theme).  Second, what we hold onto, controls us – to be free, we have to let go of what we feel we need to control (and I say this as a person who still deals with lots of my own control issues!).  Third, change is inevitable, and it can arrive quickly and unexpectedly, carrying with it outcomes we most likely never anticipated.  It arrives with a powerful purpose and intent that we often can’t see or understand in the moment.  How we react to it, can make all the difference in the world!  

For many of us in the US who are witnessing and experiencing the destruction of our democracy by millionaires, billionaires and Christian Nationalists, we believe we are in just such a time right now.  Our world is turning upside down and disorienting us, while playing on our fear and our need to control the outcome of a change that is bulldozing its way through our lives.  And at this moment, we don’t know what our future is going to look like, or how we will get through these moments.

The message I got very clearly from my “water” examples, is to “let go”!

When I refer to “letting go”, I am not saying that we should do nothing in the face of cruelty or injustice or massive theft.  Certainly, we have to be doing everything in our power to prevent suffering, to be available to others in need, to treat each other with dignity and respect, to care for our planet and our communities, and to find the space in our minds and hearts to create something better from what is being destroyed.  “Letting go” is not about removing ourselves from everything going on around us. Rather, it is empowering us to trust that we have everything we need, collectively and together, to create a better outcome than what we may currently see or believe is possible. It is quite possible, for example, that the structure of our form of government will change because of the massive destruction currently taking place.  If we can only see what we are losing, and not consider the potential of what could replace it and how WE can create something even better in its aftermath, then, we will, instead, become victims of someone else’s vision of who we are and where we are going!    

It is important to remember that we cannot fight everything and everyone everywhere.  If we do that, two things will happen: (1) Those who disagree with us will dig in their heels, and never see things from our perspectives, and (2) we will burn ourselves out and not have the energy or the inspiration or the clarity to create a better path forward.  We have to find ways of being involved where we can be and where we can make the most difference, and let go of what we cannot personally control.  We have to have faith that others will do the same in their circle of influence, and that, collectively, with all of us doing our part, we will affect important changes that we cannot in the moment see as possibilities.  We don’t always have control over what happens, and can’t always understand fully why it is happening in the moment.  I am always reminded that everything isn’t always what it seems – in the same way that a plant goes through a period of darkness and destructiveness as it travels through the ground to ultimately emerge into the sunlight and reveal its true beauty, which, to that point, had only been a hidden “potential” trapped beneath the earth and feeling its world was coming apart.  In the midst of all the awfulness being churned up in the current state of change, something beautiful and unexpected may be hidden and awaiting the right circumstances to bloom!  We have an important role to play in making that happen, and we can only do that well if we let go of our personal need to control the outcome of the current moment.

For many of us, we are going through a very personal struggle which involves processing our ability to accept the choices that other people have made which, we believe, has resulted in an outcome of suffering and destruction motivated by pure greed and intentional cruelty.  This is difficult to accept and to justify, and is resulting in many people reaching different conclusions about who they will interact with, and how.  There is no easy answer to this, and it is a personal choice for each person.  From my perspective, we all have a right to choose to share our personal lives only with those who share our values – those with whom we feel safe with and resonate well with.  However, there is also value in finding non-confrontational ways of sharing our public lives with those we may disagree with, because we will never understand each other’s perspectives if we stay permanently apart.  To be clear, I am talking about sharing space with people we can safely and civilly engage with – not those who are dangerous or abusive or do not value or respect the rights of others to exist.  I personally believe that we all have much more in common than we realize, and but for the massive efforts to lie and misinform, we would not be as polarized as we are now. 

There is tremendous change taking place currently, and it is hard to watch.  There are also tremendous efforts to keep many uninformed and misinformed about what is happening around us and throughout this period of change.  No matter the source, one thing is for certain:  The need for change is inevitable! We are all forced to go through this, whether we want to or not.  We have reached an unsustainable point in which our extreme polarization is tearing us apart and destroying our ability to move forward.  Like those waves in my dream scooping everyone up, and forcing them all together, we are all of us now in a massive sea of emotion and turbulence that we must experience and learn from together. It may actually begin to change how we view each other, and perhaps in very unexpected ways!

I’ll end on this note (because, once again, this is a long post!):

Do we need a federal government taking rights and supports away from people, cutting off aid to starving children, cutting off healthcare, hacking into our personal data, withdrawing funding sources on a whim, pursuing vendettas against “political enemies”, or bullying other nations?  Absolutely not!  But that is not the only outcome unfolding.  We are also seeing people coming together, learning about one another, learning about how our government and our media and our healthcare and our finances and our security are supposed to work or should have worked, and some are waking up to the realization that they have been lied to!  We are also learning about our relationships with other countries (those we depend on, and those who depend on us) and how fragile that can be.  On a massive scale, we are getting a literal “crash” course in understanding more clearly what is broken, and it will force us to adjust to and consider new ways of thinking and being!  Perhaps a future awaits us that requires more urgent preparation for merging health concerns or climate concerns, which we were not moving fast enough to address because our systems were too slow, our politics was too divided and our citizens were feeling powerless while living in different realities.  Changes – particularly those that seem quite awful, hurtful and mean-spirited – have an unusual way of bringing people together in a common cause.  

We will get through this……..