Softening is an Option

Picking my way along the well-worn woodland path is riskier now. At every step I'm confronted with a threat. The choice between being stung by a Wood Nettle and feeling its itchiness on my knees for the next few minutes or unknowingly getting poison ivy oil on my clothes then finding my skin in raging blisters three days from now.

It would have been easier to stay around the house where these irritants have been cleared. But I didn't.

A little suffering seems to go a long way.

I remember as a child jumping off a stone wall into a thick patch of Stinging Nettles at the edge of a field. They taught me to look down before leaping. I had been looking into the vast field thinking of all the adventures to be had, rather than paying attention to the threshold of the crossing between the two worlds.

Poison Ivy especially has become a teacher for me. I have suffered its effects in full force, the tender skin on the underside of my arms and around my eyes, weeping and itching for days on end. My first response was of course resistance, make it stop! Not much makes it stop.

I've sat in its discomfort long enough to recognize the futility of that impulse and move into curiosity. What amazing things are happening in my body right now? How can I be more aware of this moment? Ah! Make it stop! But wait, what's it feel like when I get past "horrible"?

If I walk slowly enough the Wood Nettles tend not to sting. I make it to the other side of the patch with only a few tingly spots on my knees. It has become a game, to see how slowly I can move through them, resisting the urge to blow past what is threatening and let myself dance with it, be in relationship with it.

Maybe I can even honor the nettles, bow to their ability to snap me into fully attention and ignite my capacity to choose a more considered response in the face of potential threat. Waving in the breeze, needles pointing in all directions, they seem to invite me to soften. Encouraging me to consider that softening and slowing, could, at times, be a useful response to threat.

Could I make softening one of my range of possible responses when life throws something prickly at me? Could I make myself an invitation to drop below our typical defense mechanisms into an open field of exploration, of staying connected while observing our tendency to want to armor up? And if I could, what adventures may lie in that field, what possibilities beckon from beyond the habitual?

What threats might you soften to?