So full you can’t stand it

November 12, 2023

“When you love and nurture yourself not how you think you should be (somehow different than you are right now) but exactly how are you are in this (totally imperfect raw etc…) moment. That’s where we start to get a sense of wholeness and fullness.”

There’s a beautiful orange glowing light in the woods that’s visible from my bedroom window, about 500 feet towards the mountain which is up the hill at my neighbor’s entrance. I am only able to see this darling light once the trees are bare, so it’s just come into view again.

It’s the strangest thing, but I get so much pleasure and comfort and security seeing this little light from my bedroom window. It literally helps me fall asleep. Somehow it makes me feel that I’m living in a magical story of wonder and mystery.

Probing deeper into the territory of wholeness, I’m testing the bounds of how one could feel so full and so whole, in such an entirely new landscape of living, and still tolerate it. So full you can barely stand it.

Of course it sounds kind of crazy having to “tolerate” feeling full and whole doesn’t it? Yet it is something to truly practice “tolerating” because it’s not familiar enough to most of our nervous systems.

Not only are we programmed to scan for threats in the environment, but we are also encoded with what researchers now refer to as a negativity bias which literally keeps us alert to potential disadvantages in service of species perpetuity. We’re acculturated to finding something negative to focus on or worry about.

Add to that any degree of adverse childhood experiences and you have a pretty good backdrop for living through the cup half empty lens. Don’t worry it’s pretty normal, yet low grade anxiousness doesn’t have to be the norm.

All that said, it’s no surprise that fullness and wholeness is an acquired skill and an acquired taste. What I really wonder about these days is if this new terrain I’m now exploring is even possible to taste without benefiting from the vicissitudes of middle age. Can people in their twenties and thirties learn to tolerate feeling so full you can’t stand it?

Even more surprising, is that I’m happening upon this delicious new place as a empty nester who is self-partnered. Who would’ve thought this was the oasis?

All of my dreams and fantasies of a great life involved a close and loving partner and family unit. And I have spent many decades with that exact formula which has no doubt contributed to the fullness I now experience. Yet here I am finally living my transcendentalist teenage fantasy in my very own home with a blazing fire, in the woods next to a lake and a mountain—and I just can’t get enough of it!

So full you can’t stand it….I dare you to probe the perimeter of wholeness and scale the edges of fullness. See how deep you can let yourself descend into the richness and sacredness of every moment of your life. Who knows, you just might decide you love exactly where you are.

🌀