The dynamics of going out on a limb

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People fail at staying with challenges all the time. I see myself and others giving up on challenges once we hit an obstacle, or there is a setback.  We either say been-there-done-that all too soon and dust our hands, or we struggle against a thick wall, the kind fortresses have.  I was trying to investigate this staying with a challenge in the context of a couple of recent challenges that I have been facing / have given myself. And wondering, what constitutes staying with the challenge, what constitutes "success" and what constitutes "failure".  For instance, if I have resolved to stick to a particular habit, and I don't do it on the second day itself, does this mean I have failed? And I restart again the next day.  What if I "succeed" now, and keep to the habit for 6 months and then it goes for a toss on my next round of travelling? Different permutations and combinations of successes and failures have happened in this realm by now, and this dichotomous way of working with a challenge fails to move me.  Plus I find that it is very limiting and not useful at all in understanding a situation / a challenge, all the elements of given instance, and oneself, realistically. What I do know is that it is Hard, staying with a challenge.

Staying.  Present continuous.  What if I looked at this as a continuous process, something to be worked upon constantly, and it is constantly changing? A work-in-progress.  There is no arriving at a destination.  There is no one point to be reached.  Looking not at the challenge as a goal to be reached, but at the staying with the challenge as a direction of movement, changes the perspective drastically and opens out many possibilities of working with it.  The shift in perception widened the canvas for me and I started noticing the nuances and details of how challenges manifest, how we define challenges and so on.  

What stands out for me is what I first saw in two very different phenomena, both of which exhibited similar forces at play, in working a challenge.  And then I could stretch my imagination and see the same forces at play everywhere. One phenomenon is the way in which children in general, and in particular reference my daughter, take risks and challenge themselves.  The second is my asana and pranayama practice, and what I have learnt from a couple of my elders, about stretching oneself to attain a posture.  

The forces at play are, one, an anchoring and two, a stretching.  The dance between these two, the balancing act of these forces (if we can manage it) is the dynamics of going out on a limb.  There is something(s) that is constant, the anchor, the grounding.  There are things that are changing, that are exploring, that are new, that are the risks, the new avenues.  I need both forces to stay with a challenge, and keep going out on that limb.  Most of the time we are caught with one force or the other, and do not even know that we need to hold both together.  Our education and our conditioning teaches us to stand polarised and negate the other force.  However, deeper truths can emerge only when we hold both ends together.  

On one end we are so stuck to our comfort zones, so enmeshed in our own complacent worlds, that we don't want to step out at all, We dont want the discomforts of challenges, and dont take risks.  We dont want the discomfort of getting up early in the morning, for instance, or we dont want the discomfort of giving up a pleasing hobby to pursue a passion and let it stagnate. We allow what could be an active, life-giving and nourishing anchor, the ground on which we grow, to become a cesspool, the "dreary desert sand of dead habit" in the words of Rabindranath Tagore. 

On the other end, we are so taken up with the new, that we follow its glitter as it beckons to us and compromise stable ground.  We follow where are feet and eyes take us, and dont pause for conscious choice.  We have such luxury of options today that we no longer know the Ahimsa and the contentment of limited choice.  We can shop for anything we want and explore all that the world has to offer and become compulsive consumers, instead of tapping into the true and deeper seeking / enlivening pursuit that man is capable of, and I believe, is born for.  To go out on a limb and find one's true purpose.  We lose this. 

Children seem to hold these two forces together with such dexterity while playing (but then they also seem to be playing ALL the time! Sigh!).  They take risks, they jump off tables, they walk into crowds and get lost, they take apart things and try to put them back together ruthlessly sometimes.  They are spontaneous, irreverent even and completely un-self-conscious with language, muddling into communication like a bull in a china shop, which however gives them enormous ability to grasp 5-6 languages in the formative years.  This is their seeking force.  While doing all this, they time and again, check back with their primary care takers, their family.  My daughter's trust is implicit, unconditional and absolute, that I or her father will catch her when she jumps off the counter. Her anchor, ground.  When she walks into a crowd, she is sure that I am keeping her in my sight (which every parent would strive to do!).  This is one anchoring for them in their early years.  You can also notice how they form other anchors as they grow.  We are not here talking of mistakes that human anchors may make and so on.  We are here talking of how children hold these two forces together, and for me this is a great learning.  How can I take care of my anchoring, find and nourish my constants in such a way that I can trust these implicitly and absolutely to hold me, when I jump off the cliff, or dive into the ocean.  Such that my anchors do not weigh me down into comfortable habits and yet do not let go off me such that I get carried away by the wind.  

Similarly, in asana and pranayama practice, I will need to stretch and twist and fold down and arch back in order for me to attain new postures, that give me greater strength and flexibility and understanding of my self and allow me to sit longer for meditative practices.   My breath is one of my primary anchors here (there can be others).  And one of my constant quests in my personal practice is to see how I can work with the stretching (the seeking and exploring force) such that it feeds into my constants, like tributaries flowing into the river.  

There is no question of 'failing' at challenges or not being able to go out on a limb, when we can bring into dynamic action, these forces at play.  It is a matter of tapping into these forces inside of us.  And this is a life-long process.  I mean, its not just one limb that you want to go out on, right? ;)