Addiction
by Kayce S. Hughlett
I find myself floating in this dreamy wash where daylight is extending, darkness is softening, and winter is still flexing her muscles. Most days it is a pleasant sensation, especially when I allow myself to sink in. Other times it can feel cranky, dissonant, and down right uncomfortable as if I’ve run out of breath while swimming underwater. Even as I write today, my thoughts vacillate between going with the flow and getting this “right.” Ah… and there it is Pisces’ dreaminess and her opposite sister Virgo who works hard to smooth out details and achieve a state of perfection.
When I was studying counseling psychology, we called this state a “bind.” Where two opposites are held in tension. We want life to be dreamy and easy (“in flow”), but another voice declares, “Be real. Achieve perfection. Get it right.” What if both opposites can be true at the same time? What if “perfection” carries with it a sense of ease and flow? What if getting things “right” looks like releasing our breath and floating for a while? What if we have the ability to release ourselves from our own bind? And what does all of this have to do with our word of the week: Addiction?
Personally, I could go on and on about the addicts in my life, their drinking, drugging, disruptive behaviors etc. etc. I could blame so much on them! I could deflect what it means to take responsibility for my own self (which is a lovely “addict” thing to do). So when I started tilling the soil of “addiction” for the Garden, I turned my focus to what I refer to as “aging addictions.” Here are a few that popped into my journal.
addiction to:
the notion of “age appropriate behavior”
oldness
pain
settling for
boredom
stagnancy
Netflix, food, drama
routine
fear
care-giving
time or lack thereof
limitations
if i don’t do “it” no one else will
I intentionally haven’t elaborated on this list and invite you to notice what feels familiar to you, what’s missing, AND how does it keep you from living the life you truly desire to live? Are you settling? Getting stuck in old patterns? Talking yourself out of doing that fabulous thing you’ve always wanted to do? Or are you running yourself ragged, because of all the things you think you “should” be doing? Where or how are you addicted to “should”?
Addiction keeps us from being connected to ourselves and others. It hinders our ability to feel all the feels (e.g. sadness, pain, rage, creativity, loss, grief, joy, delight). Most often we numb our feelings out of fear (btw - numbing is a root of addiction). Believe it or not, we can be afraid to feel joy and delight, especially when we abide by the trope that life (and especially aging) is meant to be hard.
This post is already much longer than I intended LOL, so I will leave you with this. What binds you? What if you selected one of your personal addictions (see the list or make your own!) and started to loosen the bind? What if you began to play with the both/and of it? Peeked beneath the fear? What would be beneath? How might ease and perfection blend to make a gorgeous new story for you as an elder? I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
Note: Our image for this week is from Joanna Powell Colbert’s Gaian Tarot. It is called Bindweed and correlates to The Devil card in traditional tarot and is associated with addiction (among other things). If you’d like to dive deeper, you can pull out the Devil card from your favorite deck (or use the image here) and notice what it has to say. For fun, add The Moon card (Pisces correspondent) and let those two have a conversation. Oh… the possibilities :) Enjoy!!