Trouble in Paradise
Musings on Heart Powered Human Leadership
I had just arrived in a perfect Paradise; a remote island in Indonesia and found myself muttering out loud whilst marching up the beach on my own during sunset. I hate it here and I truly meant this one hundred percent. I really, really hated it and I wanted to leave but I couldn’t because there are no boats for a few days. I felt trapped. I hated the coral shards under my bare feet, the brown dry grass (that was bright green on the brochure) the limited, lacklustre food, the lack of working internet. I was in paradise and I was in trouble.
Let me explain.
I am coming to the end of a three month sabbatical for my 60th in Thailand, Australia and Indonesia. Those words sound magical don’t they? They sure did at the beginning of the trip. Full of hopeful anticipation and ideas of celebration. Thinking there would be a lot of space to be and things to enjoy, lots of downtime and reconnecting with those I love. Lots of relaxation and discovery — including of self.
In reality — half of that was beautifully fulfilled — however the space, downtime and relaxation only really happened for me at the beginning and again now at the end. It has been an intense time of being constantly with others and of meeting myself in a completely different world.
My good and wise friend Paula was the only one who said to me pre-trip when I outlined the plans for this sabbatical — ‘that doesn’t sound like much of a sabbatical’ — and she was right. After seven years away from the country of my birth, I didn’t want to miss a moment of connection, of celebration, of new experience — I wanted to create the optimum number of peak experiences — and I did. And in doing so, I forgot something — there is no sunshine without rain, no day without night, no full tide without low tide.
I forgot that we need space around things to integrate and appreciate them. To quote my own poem — I was constantly Running to Yoga:
But whenever I am ‘busying’ I really miss the show
I miss the point, the offering, that Life sweetly bestowsTo see that, you must see the thing AND see that it needs space
For somehow like a donut, It’s the space that makes it aceYou cannot see the artwork when they’re jumbled side by side
It is the space around each one that makes them come alive
My time in Australia WAS filled with connection, enjoyment and discovery. It was also filled from time to time with heart rending disappointments, challenges and shocks. Sorrows. And to navigate that I needed space to feel and be. As an extrovert I am attracted to and energised by time with others, so I can tend to automatically prioritise that. Yet at age sixty, I discovered that I had cultivated a more reflective, spacious inner space that has become nourishing to me like water in the desert and I didn’t even realise it was that precious until it was suddenly limited.
Here is what I found out on a beach in a tropical paradise.
Wherever you go — there you are.
I felt angry, helpless and sad. Disappointed. In English the word disappointment is, well, disappointing. Luckily we also have a more visceral slang that works better for describing my state: gutted.
I was gutted. What was happening inside was huge and seismic and it definitely seemed related to my circumstances (brown land, coral shards, basic food, no wifi) but it was all in my eyes. And my eyes were — as my husband sometimes tells me — black.
Through black glasses it is impossible to find the good. Even when there is good to see. That is why it can be so unhelpful when other people try to refocus you on the positive, solve the problem or try to distract you. When life is that dark, the problem isn’t out there — it is in you.
What was in me was everything I hadn’t had the space to feel, to allow, to integrate. All that I had pushed away in order to maximise the light. But there is no light without darkness.
Without the benefit of various distractions, numbing activities and other people; I was fully left to my own devices. And they were devising a reckoning. What goes up must come down and the minute my feet touched the (sharp coral filled) sand I knew I would be meeting myself for a week on a fairly deserted island where distractions, numbing and other people would be minimised and I think now that was what was really freaking me out.
I didn’t really want to feel what was real in me.
So I made everything else wrong instead. As I sit here today, on a wooden, handmade sunbed on the beach, underneath the shade of a tree, hearing the lapping of the waves with a gentle soft breeze rustling my hair I am astonished, humbled and chastened at how I could have seen anything other than the perfection of this place.
But as Anais Nin said so well:
‘ We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.’
I do deeply know and teach this, however, I don’t think I have ever been so concretely aware of the truth of that as I was two days ago. I also see something deeper about my own disappointment, my guttedness. Underneath disappointment is usually sadness. Some kind of a loss — of a hope, a dream, an ideal. Of an agreement not met, something relied upon proving unreliable. And isn’t life serving that up to us every day?
The ice cream falls from the cone. And although there’s no use crying over spilt milk, maybe we actually need to.
Maybe it is in the natural design of feelings — to be felt. Not numbed, avoided or distracted from.
So how did I move through the despair, disgust and desperation I felt when I got here? Actually I didn’t. For about four hours I was in a tantrum against reality that I couldn’t shift. I just did not know what to do with myself. But I knew enough to not avoid my experience. I really didn’t want to inflict myself on my innocent husband who thought this seemed like paradise to him, so I took myself for a solo walk which allowed me at least to vent something with minimal impact on others.
That didn’t help either. And I got coral shards in my shoes.
Finally I surrendered to my experience. Fully. The best way I know to come home to what is so, is on a yoga mat. Doing my regular practise of 10–15 minutes. It was sunset and we had a verandah overlooking the beach. I did my ritual of lighting my candle, incense and listening to my heart-connecting music and got on the mat — all the time weeping with frustration and disappointment at so many things.
Not this. I just did not want this. Mostly I did not want to feel like this. Yet, what we resist, persists. So it was only when my husband said: ‘Lets give it a few days and if we want to leave — we can’, that I felt a momentary relief and in that space, was able to grieve whatever needed grieving deeply.
And then everything changed.
My eyes changed. The next day I woke up and it truly was as if I had entered a new world. I swear, the hills and grass looked greener. The environment felt nourishing instead of lacking, and this was almost impossible to believe but in a different tide THE BEACH HAD LESS CORAL SHARDS. I even liked the food.
“The mind is its own place and, in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.” — John Milton
Never were truer words spoken.
My dear friend Laurence and I pulled a stone for me from her African Runes before I left to bring me a prophesy of this trip — I pulled the stone Water: The meaning was to treat everything as your own mirror.
When there is trouble in paradise, you can guarantee the trouble is in you. It is all a mirror and the only way out is through. I have never seen so clearly this truth of our human experience. The power lies in truly being in the now with ALL that is — inside and out. As I am often fond of saying…
You have to feel what is real to heal and reveal.
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