Quiet before the storm?
Today (election day in the U.S.) and the past few weeks feels different than any other election I have experienced. In the eleven presidential elections I have participated in, this is the first time I am experiencing true powerlessness; an unsettling feeling as a citizen living in a democracy.
The term ‘quiet before the storm’ keeps coming into my mind today. The quiet that is outside my window, the grey skies here in Austin today, the way people are going through the motions of their daily routine, including myself, just feels ‘off’ as if something is not normal but can’t figure out exactly what it is.
To help me process and be with what I am experiencing I consulted a feelings wheel and thesaurus and found these words resonating with me: eery, creepy, weird, unearthly, odd, unusual and bizarre. These are the emotions that are swirling around within me and cannot be vanished easily by taking off a halloween costume.
The sense and feel of unusual can pop up but this sense that something is odd and bizarre has been consistent for many months. The ‘normal’ flow of presidential election campaigns that kicks into gear 5 months before election day was very far from normal. The current democrat candidate did not go through a primary and the republican candidate experienced two assassination attempts. This is not normal, at all.
What also feels odd and bizarre is the quiet. I have not noticed talk within the mainstream media or amongst family or friends of how not normal this election has been; it is as if not normal IS the new normal and by not talking about changes and shifts from previous patterns is a new normal. Or is the quiet a protective behavior because we are, unconsciously, sensing a storm is on the horizon and this is our way of expressing survival instincts?
As I have gotten older and mindful I do enjoy a slower pace and many moments, throughout the day, of quiet. I have found solace and ease in taking time to be still and connect with what is happening around me and in me. I am present with the flow of my daily routine and also present with feeling irritated when I struggle to break out of the routine. It is not lost on me that consistency is more important to my flow than the behaviors themselves.
I do like consistency and believe that many of you do to, even if you are not completely conscious of being pulled towards consistency. Consistent and predictable rhythms help ground us with some certainty that we can get through the day. Normal can be boring but it can be grounding.
The quiet I sense right now does not feel normal which is why adjectives like eery, creepy and unearthly aptly describe the quiet. The powerlessness I am experiencing is related to a deep knowing that I cannot bring normal back. The external forces, whether it is mother nature or a powerful human entity, cannot be influenced by little ole me; the current state of unpredictability is serving an end game I am unfamiliar with and I have a deep knowing that have no power to change the outcome.
All of us earthly creatures rely on the natural rhythm of seasons and planetary movements that grounds our short existence. Human beings settle into additional rhythms structured with rituals, holidays, school or work calendars and lifestyle habits. Our minds and bodies become accustomed to the rhythm of these external and environmental events. The consistency of the rhythm that unfolds year after year is stored within our mind bodies as normalcy and different regions and cultures have their own definition of normalcy based on these external and repetitive cycles.
Again, right now and for the past few months, the rhythm of American life as I knew it, even in a post-pandemic society, is not normal.
Our autonomic nervous system is wired, through the vagus nerve, to use our five senses and our gut microbes, to be on the lookout for ‘not normal’ such as a perceived threat to our survival. I call this wiring our danger detection system and it is running in the background all the time. Our ability to bounce back from a slight perceived threat is called resiliency. I have worked very hard to cultivate and resource resiliency and have been able to bounce back from normal stressors and uncertainty. The not normal stuff is depleting my resiliency.
It feel like I am running out of ways to recharge my resilient batteries. Perhaps that is why there is quiet — perhaps many of us have depleted our coping resources and are hunkering down in an effort to put fuel in our tanks.
If you too are sensing an energy around or within you that feels eery, quiet, bizarre or surreal please know you are not alone. You may be holding fear, uncertainty or powerlessness and the best you can do right now is disconnect into quiet OR be distracted by judgmental, racing thoughts. The quiet or the racing thoughts are behaviors influenced by your danger detection system to prepare and protect. If you can bring awareness and gratitude to the way your mind and body are protecting you, the intensity of the what you are experiencing could soften.
For me, I am grateful for having the capacity to be mindful, non-judgmental and objective with what is happening around and within me and to accept what is happening just the way it is even if it means I do not like the way it is. And right now, what is happening, is not normal. Our external world feels bizarre and unpredictable. I don’t like it but I am present with it.
Us humans are wired to feel a spectrum of emotions in response to our environment but we are also wired to determine if we have the capacity and resources to connect with these emotions. This means that however you are coping with, or not coping with, the not normal part of our current season, that is totally OK. If you can only be with the feelings of fear and uncertainty for ten seconds, three minutes or an hour please have no judgment towards yourself or others.
By embracing compassion that we are all doing the best we can during a very unusual and not normal time we can ground our nervous systems, just a little bit, into ease to help us be with the quiet before the storm.