Breaking the Habit

When you live life by just getting through, be that physically, emotionally, or otherwise, it becomes a habit. After so many years of living this way, reeling from chronic illness, grief, and a range of other challenges, I have noticed that it is quite hard to stop. Even when things are going well, I notice myself reciting the list of things I need to get through. When I frame my days in this way, it is hard to enjoy them, to be present to whatever is before me. I think this was the point of using this practice as a coping mechanism, honestly. I didn’t want to be all that present to my physical illness and pain. I didn’t want to be all that present with the grief or the complex emotions that were my companions. I did just want to get through, because that seemed like the most that I could hope for under the circumstances. 

The problem with this stance, at least for me, is that it keeps me in that space of subsistence. These habits keep me believing that getting through is as much success as I can hope for. Suffice it to say this is not very conducive to joy, to being attentive to the world around me, to truly connecting with the people and experiences that my life has to offer me. And for a long time that honestly seemed like a reasonable pay off in order to avoid quite a lot of misery. 

Unfortunately, I’m finding now this habit keeps on popping up. It’s like a default setting that I accidentally revert to when I’m not paying attention. I find myself sometimes running through a list of things that need doing with a sigh, only to realize that they are all things that I find delightful, or have the potential to bring me connection, or meaning, or beauty. How can I teach myself that these things do not need to be gotten through, but merely experienced with openness? How can I learn to drop the defense mechanism of just getting by? 

Jesus says a surprising amount about joy. One of my favorites is from John 15:11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” I think so often we listen to the lofty goals God has for us— to do justice, to love our enemies, to hold our possessions loosely, to act with integrity and care in our actions as well as in our thought lives— and we see this too as a list of things that must be gotten through. We see it not a pattern for a beautiful and whole life, but a very difficult and lengthy to-do list. But Jesus says he came also for the fullness of our joy. The doing and the joy are somehow linked. I think it is easy to just skip that part, because it seems confusing. This stuff is so hard! It requires such transformation and growth and healing and trust! Where is the joy? 

I think that often, joy is waiting for us in plain sight, but we don’t have eyes to see it. I know that is true for me. I have been thinking a lot lately about the kind of life I want to have and realizing that in a lot of ways, I already have it. Maybe not in the form I hoped for, but the content is there. The gift, in substantial measure, has already arrived, but I’m too busy scanning the horizon for what’s coming to notice what is already in my midst. I don’t know that I have an answer for how to break the just-get-through posture, even less so when there are serious things to endure, but I do think that joy has something to do with it. I think anything that can slow me down, lift my eyes, get me to pay attention to the abundant reality all around me, can help break me out of that pattern. There are plenty of crises that life has brought me all on its own, and the last thing I want to do is live as if there is a crisis when joy is at hand. 

If, like me, you’re trying to understand how joy and grief and pain and beauty can all live side by side, I don’t have any good answers to offer you. All I know is that I have seen first hand that sometimes they inexplicably do. I’m doing my level best here not to offer you dumb platitudes. I know that life is hard, and sometimes just getting through is the most we can possibly muster. I guess what I mean to say is that I believe that somehow there is joy for us too. If you don’t have it in you to see it right now, that is okay. I believe that it is still there, waiting quietly for the day when maybe you can.