Breaking the Rules – Summer Unlearning

Summer is officially here for me. The kids are on summer break, the community pool is open, and summer thunderstorms are coaxing forth a new way of being.

Though I’ve been thinking about this blog for two weeks, I hadn’t found the inspiration to write anything. I floated between my readings on dharma (loose translation is sacred duty), healing and trauma, imagining, (in)equity and (in)justice, the journey of transformation…you get the picture. I was all over the place, wasn’t feeling a coherent arc develop, and was feeling the self-imposed pressure of needing to get something, anything out because I should write a monthly blog. I was should-ing myself harshly and without compassion or grace when my yoga teacher shared the following Mary Oliver poem about unlearning, forgetting, and healing.

Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer

I went out of the schoolhouse fast

And through the gardens to the woods,

And spent summer forgetting what I’d been taught –

Two times two, and diligence, and so forth,

How to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and

               So forth,

Machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.

By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back

To the chalky rooms and desks, to sit and remember

The way the river kept rolling its pebbles,

The way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny

               In the bank,

The way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

Ah! I had taken to heart the idea that there is “a right way” to do this, that I must follow this strict schedule else I might “lose my audience”, and that my business depends on it. I had learned that there is “a way” to be “successful”. Or else.

All. Wrong. For. Me.

The right way for me is to share when I have something to share; that’s how my reflections started, and I am going to dance my way back to that rootedness. You can expect more sporadic – and more deeply inspired – Reflections over the coming months.

You are not my audience; you are my community of friends, colleagues, and companions on this journey of life. Our relationship is not about scarcity-driven ownership; it’s about an abundant sense of agency and connection. I don’t need to fill your cyberspace with my words until and unless there is a direct connection between our heartspaces.

My business does not depend on a regularly scheduled marketing blogpost.  Rather, it depends on me staying in integrity with myself and this evolving approach to cultivating connection based on shared values and aspirations. An anti-capitalist attitude perhaps, and one that I can joyfully embody.  

And so, I am going to take the next few months to try to forget how I am “supposed to do” business and get back to the why of my work. I’ll keep coaching and facilitating transformation – a vocation as close to my dharma as I have yet found. And, I’ll play and wonder and swim and watch the tide and walk barefoot and soak in the warmth of the humid Georgia sunshine.

I’ll dance.

I’ll break, extend, and perhaps even make obsolete those rules that no longer serve me.

If your dance card has space, come and dance in the sand* with me. Let’s forget, break the rules, and remember our truest Selves together.

 *Mary Oliver was drawn to the woods; I’m drawn to the beach!

As long as you are dancing, you can

break the rules.

Sometimes breaking the rules is just

               Extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

– Mary Oliver