I can so do it now, people. I don't know what has happened, but it has CLICKED. I can stand up on every wave I catch now. My feet just go, my legs just stand, and I just stay up. It's amazing. THE BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD. I rode a wave for 15 full seconds the other day. Yes, it was the babiest of baby waves, and yes, I'm still wobbly, but WHO CARES. Dear surf instructor wrote "LEGEND" on my Insta post and honestly, that's totally what it feels like. Ann Batenburg, Surfing Legend, at your service. ;)
No one is more surprised than me. Perhaps my low expectations have increased my absolute delight in accomplishing this task when every realistic expectation would predict failure given my starting point. There is a whole body of psychological research around expectations, and I'm not sure how this one fits into it, but BTG mentioned a theory about "failing expectations" to me the other day, and it seems that failing expectations have been the key to my growth in a number of areas. Becoming aware of my own "stealth expectations" has been really enlightening -- those expectations that are sneaking around in the back of my mind just outside my awareness have been impacting my life. That those rather crappy expectations have been disappointed is working for me these days. Waking me up to a new reality. Yoda said, "You must unlearn what you have learned." Here's another layer of that ongoing process. Now that I have been able to rest in safety, all kinds of things are coming up from the deep! Some examples of failed expectations...
First, the surfing itself. I have been doing this for roughly 16 months and finally I can stand up with some consistency. My stealth expectation was that I wasn't ever going to be able to really do this. I would continue having a wonderful time in the ocean with these lovely humans, but I would never actually surf a wave "for real." And I was fine with that. That I can now do this to any degree is thrilling beyond measure. In this video, I catch a party wave with Heidi. I chose the wave, popped up, stayed up, pointed to Heidi, cheered, and sailed right onto the beach to step off, celebrating with random passers by. It was awesome! Best wave yet from beginning to end!
We did paddle yoga the other day: yoga on a paddle board. A year ago, I went paddle boarding for the first time and could not stand up on it and keep my balance; I had to kneel or sit. The other day, I not only stood up, I did a couple of freakin' yoga poses! I couldn't have done this a year ago. Amazing! As I was going to the class, I was wondering what the hell I thought I was doing. I absolutely didn't think I could do it.
Third, the Surfing Sisterhood itself. I've spoken at length about this group and their loving kindness, support, and consistency. It is still going strong -- stronger, in fact, every day. We are still surfing every weekend, various people joining or not depending on plans or how they are feeling that day. The group endures. We are doing a surf every day challenge for an organization called Surfaid in September, and as a team, we've already blown past our initial fundraising goal. In order for us working girls to surf every day, we are going out in the evenings for sunset surfs after work, which are incredibly beautiful, even if the conditions actually suck for surfing. Our bonds are getting stronger and that defies every expectation I have about humans. We continue to be loving and supportive and FUN and dedicated to our mutual, interdependent growth.
Fourth, my expectations of what California would be like have only been surpassed. Living here has been just the beautiful, awe-inspiring experience I had hoped for, but didn't expect to love it this much. I haven't felt a feeling of fitting in somewhere like this since I left Chicago. My expectations for my job were high and I have been underwhelmed by the experience. So, the expectations I had when I crossed the border into California two years ago have not been met at all: either underwhelmed or overachieved. Perhaps the problem is with expectations themselves?
Expectations indicate something I want to happen or want to have. Wanting. Buddhists believe that wanting, clinging, desire is the source of all suffering. Pema Chodron writes, "We're always trying to avoid the unpleasantness and grasp the pleasantness." Always trying to protect our soft hearts, our vulnerability. When the world seems unsafe, when the suffering that surrounds me is too much, I close down, armor up. I've been doing it for decades. Now, I'm waking up to my suffering. The Mindful Self-Compassion program says we learn everything in contrast. Once we see how different things can be, we can open up to a new vision of reality. Failing expectations help us see. This has a number of consequences.
Having my crappy expectations fail is opening me up to a new way of being in the world. I have based my life around knowing: I have two master's degrees and a PhD and I was a professor, an expert for awhile. I've always been a straight-A student and hyper achiever. Knowing is one of my coping mechanisms -- a major coping mechanism. Me and Hermione Granger could be best buds. Failing expectations means I don't know. It's the first, most important defense mechanism to fall, and I'm glad it's crumbling. I can know something different instead. Pema writes, “I understood why I practice [meditation]: we can discover the process of letting go and relaxing during our lifetime. In fact, that’s the way to live: stop struggling against the fact that things are slipping through our fingers. Stop struggling against the fact that nothing’s solid to begin with and things don’t last. Knowing that can give us a lot of space and a lot of room if we can relax with it instead of screaming and struggling against it.”
I have organized my life around knowing, predicting, controlling. I have a whole wall of bookshelves piled with books. When I'm feeling at loose ends, I read. I seek information. These failing expectations have left me genuinely wondering what's coming next, what's going on, and who the hell am I anyway? Some days, that's a really good thing. Some days, that fills me with anxiety. Some days, it is what it is and I can accept it, even get curious about it, even if I'm leery about what tomorrow might bring. I am learning to be more gentle with myself.
What surfing teaches me is that a moment-by-moment awareness is all that is necessary. I can fully accept that I cannot control the ocean and it will bring what it brings. I fully embrace my total vulnerability out there on the water. Failing expectations has allowed me to bring this reality to shore. I understand that expecting, and even hoping, could be an addiction. Even the most gossamer hope has a violence in it -- like right now, this moment, is less than whatever I'm hoping for, not enough for me. Not good enough. I am working on staying in the moment, noticing, breathing, relaxing with the emotions that are coming up. Staying where my feet are, feeling grounded. Relaxing into the knowledge that right now is enough. The opposite of striving for perfection or achievement.
I'm developing a new way of knowing. Another expectation is that life is somehow supposed to be happy. Happy is the default; we are not supposed to have sadness or anger or despair. Struggle isn’t supposed to happen. We prefer to live the positive when it’s all human. "This being human is a guesthouse, every morning a new arrival," as Rumi wrote. I have expected things to be happy, and when they are not, then I believe I have done something wrong. Enter self-blame. The Buddhists have figured out that suffering is normal. And there is a path out of suffering. Part of walking that path is finding joyful moments. Deciding to see the beauty and joy that is inherently everywhere in everything. Sitting and breathing every day, finding a peaceful center within yourself. This is a new way to know, a new way to live: equanimity, peacefulness, steadily observing and noticing as wave after wave passes by. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm."
In addition to KNOWING, other defense mechanisms are falling too. Once I became aware of my stealth expectations, I understood that I expect to be abandoned, ignored, invisible. I expect not to get my needs met by other people. I have approached relationships as a caretaker, so I have never felt truly seen, loved, and appreciated. Caretaking makes me invisible prophylactically. Caretaking is inoculation against rejection, because I befriend people who need me without seeing me. Because I have always cared for others to the negation of my own needs, I don't trust that people will show up for me. It's actually wildly uncomfortable to allow people to show up for me. But people are showing up for me now. What do I do with that?
When I gave myself compassion around those really horrible expectations, two interesting things happened. One, my defenses began to transform. Two, I was overwhelmed by a huge amount of grief.
First, a really interesting thing happened with my defenses. I have started looking at them differently. My defenses include caretaking and making myself invisible, perfectionism and hyperachievement, self-blame, and later in life, abandoning people and situations at the first sign of trouble. Early in life I was a caretaker, and later in life, I renounced that way of relating and became an abandoner instead. I have framed myself as a hyperachieving perfectionist working to avoid shame, vulnerability, and make myself safe through being completely need-free. But when thinking about the invisibility thing the other day, I realized something. I had always framed invisibility as "someone made me feel invisible." When dear old Dad flaked out and disappeared on us, I felt abandoned and invisible. I wanted my Dad and he wasn't around. In reality, invisibility was my tool for dealing with the situation. As a child, I was made to feel shame in my vulnerability, unlovable because I wasn't worth sticking around for. I thought I caused my Dad to leave. So like Harry Potter, I pulled out my invisibility cloak to deal with it. Invisibility is my tool for avoiding shame and vulnerability. Shifting that locus of control has had an interesting effect: I have transformed my defenses into tools. These weapons I have used to fend off the world, that have prevented me from engaging with the world, can also be tools I can use to connect with it.
Caretaking becomes community building. I have lots of skills to build and maintain community, because I know how to pay attention to people and meet their needs. Invisibility has allowed me to be a careful observer of people. Perfectionism becomes healthy striving, self-actualization, and a will toward optimal living. Self-blame in another context is agency. And while I'm still struggling with abandonment, initial reframing helped me realize that being abandoned as a kid made me brave. I was on my own and survived. I can take that bravery into a new situation: How can I be brave in connection and not leave too soon? Can I use the abandonment skills I learned to abandon these unhelpful beliefs? Instead of seeing myself as a hyperachieving, caretaking, perfectionist, I become an independent, self-actualizing individual.
It's a big deal to see that these defenses aren't always devastating things that I will have to deal with in my life, in relationships. Big walls I'll have to scale or slide out of the way on rusty casters, always working against me. If I work with them long enough, they might become tools, magical powers, talismans for connection instead of protection. BTG thinks this transformation means that I might be able to love myself. That nothing within me needs to be "stamped out." That I am able to see them in the bigger context -- that I did the best I could with what I had at the time. I don't have to disappear within them. A movement toward greater acceptance. Pema Chodron wrote in Start Where You Are, "When resistance is gone, so are the demons."
Feeling the failure of these expectations in the context of my new life, I see the contrast between what was and what is. I have spent a long time in hiding. Really, 55 years armored up and lonely, trying to avoid the actual vulnerability inherent in truly loving people. I have sought friendship and love amidst unsafe people, and those defenses allowed me connect in an unsafe environment. I'm now in a safer environment. Not fully safe, because nothing is fully safe. But the Sisterhood is safe. Feeling the feelings of genuine love and belonging has brought waves of grief and sadness. Actual pain. Really difficult. Walls crumbling on top of my head and I'm left gasping and concussed under the rubble. In the spin cycle of a powerful wave, absolutely sucked in to the churn.
The Mindful Self-Compassion people call it backdraft. Once the door opens to a new way of viewing the world, I realize how much love I didn't have. How much better things could have been. How much further along I could be with that different kind of support. Big, fat tears of longing for a childhood I never had. A start in life I didn't get. This final failure of expectations, that I was not supported when I was young, means I have this lingering feeling that I have not lived up to potential. My purpose in the world has not been served, so I’ve been flailing around trying to find something suitable in the aftermath. But whatever I find, it always feels less than whatever the right thing might have been. A story I've been telling myself is that my expectations to live into my life’s purpose have failed. And there is a deep longing to find it, to turn that around. Allowing the grief for the failure of those stealth expectations has been arduous. And necessary.
In all of this grief, I sometimes lose a sense of how much I've grown. My failed expectations and buttons being pushed this summer have shown me how far I've come. All of my defenses exist on a continuum from weapon to tool. I can use perfectionism as a weapon to beat myself up, armor up, keep the world out, avoid vulnerability through KNOWING. Imagine how much different my surfing journey would have been if I approached it as a hyperachieving perfectionist? I would have quit long ago. A perfectionist never would have tolerated such high quality failure for 16 months. Instead of perfectionism, I can use healthy striving and the will toward self-actualization as an adaptive strength in building community within the Sisterhood, continuing to grow in surfing, and learning more about how my mind works. Instead of abandonment, I can be brave in facing my necessary grief.
Weapon or tool. Maladaptive or adaptive coping. Choices now. Failed expectations have brought more awareness, deeper awareness. And that awareness brings choices. My defenses are dropping and I know they are because I am staying put and finding a new way to know. Amidst the shifting sands, the churning waves, the vulnerability, my feet are solid on the board, my legs just stand, and I just stay up. This hasn't been easy, but I am doing it. One wave at a time. Noticing, breathing, relaxing. Accepting the moment to moment reality is the opposite of expectation. Let go of hope. Quit expecting. Just be. The happiness is already here.
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