In my physical discomfort due to morning/all day sickness, the past several weeks I have eaten a lot and watched a lot of TV – a lot being the operative descriptor here. I have been feeling strange about this, habits I have overcome from my younger years coming back in spades. I’ve been coping by reminding myself that it is only temporary, that I am disciplined, I will return to the habits I developed to support my feeling strong and healthy, yada yada. But in my coping I noticed that I was resisting, resisting the fact that I was eating a lot and watching a lot of TV, like I was in a tug-of-war with myself. Like I had no control. I began to wake up to my scarcity-thinking.
It really is like waking up. Resistance, distraction and alienation are strong weapons and make me very sleepy. When I began to wake up, I got curious. Why am I eating a lot, why I am watching a lot of TV?
There are two levels to the answer. The first line of thinking, the one that helped me stay asleep, was that I am so severely nauseous, eating and getting lost in a movie are two of the only ways to help me feel less nauseous. There is some justification here, some defensiveness (only to my own inner Judge), like: “Hey! I am doing the best I can! Leave me alone. I am in pain.” But as I looked more deeply, I could feel into a collective source of information, a collective pattern of behavior and that is when I recognized that the gift of consumption is that it helps us not to feel. The overeating, the excess of entertainment … They stuff me full so that there is no sensation – not nausea, not creative impulse, not really much of anything. Inside of that understanding I opened up to compassion for myself – whether I eat or watch TV or not, and for a society that is struggling with its relationship with food and entertainment and the consequences of its excess.
The truth is, I am very excited and welcoming of this pregnancy and it helps to remember that. It was a conscious decision, one well thought out if not planned to perfection in terms of timing, after all – there is no perfect time. It’s helpful to get present to my gratitude, the support I have, the love for my family and my friends and colleagues. It’s helpful to simply get present, to trust in the next Right Thing.