Trying to be "good" vs. trying to get free
A chat prompt for Community Tuesday + a reminder that we'll meet at 10:30 EST on Zoom today!
Greetings! I’m moving my family from Cape Cod to Central MA this month, so the brilliant Meredith Rodriguez will be supporting us with some Community Tuesday prompts. Meredith and I spoke recently about needing to have a good cry about the state of the world, to surrender to all that we do not know about how to meet this moment. As points out here, our brains were simply not designed to do that.
At the same time, Meredith reminds us below, as adults, we do know some things. Many of us have in fact spent years studying, training, and gaining experience and expertise in at least one discipline, sometimes several. Many of us know at least one way to work with the raw material of reality, to spin it into something edible, useful, informative or inspiring.
Two things can be true at the same time.
When it feels like so much is falling apart all around us, how paradoxically empowering it feels to lie down on the cool floor of what we’ve already built. To allow the hours we’ve already spent in the dance studio, the garden, the kitchen, or on the cushion, to hold us, and to carry us, into an uncertain future.
— Ryan
"We can make ourselves miserable or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of effort is the same." — Pema Chödrön
I (Meredith) trained as a dancer. From grade school through graduation, I spent five hours after school in the studio, and most of my weekend time rehearsing and working on technique.
The work paid off; dance turned out to be my ticket from Kansas to New York City.
That was more than 25 years ago. I don’t dance very often anymore, except in my kitchen with my kids. A few weeks ago, though, a new friend invited me to an open level hip hop class. All the stars aligned: my calendar was blank, the class was low cost, I had childcare, and the studio was 5 minutes from my house.
It was so good. But it was also really hard.
I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a dance class, but there’s a mirror. Like, a giant mirror taking up an entire wall. For the duration of the class, you’re faced with this reflection of yourself, learning something new, fumbling through it, sometimes appreciating your body doing exactly what you want…and sometimes not.
The beauty is that, after you warm up, you work on one dance. One song, over and over, for an hour and a half. Until you really have it.
During the class, every time we struggled with the elaborate hip-hop footwork, the instructor kept reminding us: “Trust your feet.” He must have said it thirty times. And every time I heard it, my mind would flash back to the studios I grew up in, the mirrors reflecting me as a 10-year-old…a 15-year-old…and an 18 year old who made it all the way to NYC.
I trained for this, I reminded myself. My feet know what to do. I can trust them.
We train so that, eventually, we can let go. We sweat and drill and try again, not so we can control every movement, but so we don’t have to.
As with any training, we also carry these lessons in letting go into the rest of our lives. Parenting. Writing. Cooking dinner. Even just making it through a rough morning.
We build systems, routines, muscle memory—not because we are trying to become perfect, but because we’re actually trying to let go of looking at and evaluating everything as if we are outside of it. We are trying to let go of how we look in the proverbial mirror. About how other people are doing it. About whether the choreography is “right.”
That moment, where hard training meets ease and presence and embodiment and flow — that’s when it gets beautiful. That’s where it gets fun! That’s when it becomes art.
My point is: I’m realizing that all of those hours in the studio, for me, were never just about getting good. They were about getting free.
And when the goal is getting free, discipline is not the destination. It is simply the doorway.
In the subscriber chat this week, we’d like to invite you to consider and share:
What have you trained for — or lived through — that has taught you to trust yourself, even when the going gets tough? Your intuition, your muscle memory, your skill?
Where are the places in your life (if any) where it feels safe to experiment with trusting that you have what you need -- experience, training -- to respond skillfully to reality in this moment? To move and flow through the proverbial choreography you already know, without looking in the mirror to see if what you're doing is "right"?
We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
In the meantime, a few reminders:
We’ll circle up on Zoom today at 10:30am EST to talk about the challenges of caring locally while thinking globally (the topic chosen by our community via the poll in his post). If you haven’t signed up to get the link yet, you can do so until 9:30am EST today here.
Can’t make it today? No worries. We’ve got several more gatherings coming up. Each one includes time for grounding meditation, a facilitated circle discussion, and other opportunities to continue the conversation with other likeminded caregivers. Here’s where you can find us for the rest of 2025:
Affirming neurodivergence (ours and/or our kids'): Tues August 5th, 10:30am EST
Caring for other adults: Tues Sept 2, 10:30am EST
Navigating cross-generational conversations about care: Tues Sept 30, 10:30am EST
Making space for grief: Tues Oct 28, 10:30am EST
Burnout prevention: Dec 2, 10:30am EST (note: this is the week after Thanksgiving)
We hope to see you at one or many of these gatherings soon!
xoxo
Ryan + Meredith