Hey there.
So I am writing a play and a friend of mine who is an actor in New York City recommended I read the book Backwards and Forwards by David Ball.
Not only was the book invaluable in working on my play,
But it became this weird sort of deep psychoanalysis for me personally.
And what captured my attention and imagination the most included stasis,
Trigger,
And heap.
So according to Ball,
Stasis is usually when the play opens.
What is the current,
Generally comfortable situation?
That is ordinary life.
That is life when we know what's going on,
We know what to expect.
Life is normal.
It's what we all longed for during the pandemic.
When are things going to get back to normal,
We would ask.
In writing a play,
If you want an audience to care,
You have to disrupt the stasis,
The normal,
Because that creates tension,
Which creates interest.
How is this going to turn out?
So in Hamlet,
You have a ghost haunting the ramparts.
In our lives,
The disruption might be as big as a pandemic,
A job loss,
A breakup,
A diagnosis,
Or it might be construction on your normal way to work.
So you have to take a new way in,
And suddenly you see a new store that looks amazing,
And you stop,
And oh my gosh,
You've spent $500 that you were saving for that trip somewhere beachy keen,
And now you're going to have to explain this to your partner or go without chocolate for the next six months.
And that's the second big idea.
The stasis,
This sense of normal,
Gets broken up because something happens,
And that makes something else happen.
David Ball called this trigger and heap.
So if I have a bad day at work,
I might arrive home and get more frustrated than usual with those around me.
The trigger was the bad day at work,
And the heap then could be the argument around the dinner table.
This might not really be news to us.
We kind of all know this,
But what we might not realize is basically we can trace all our current behaviors backwards.
In other words,
It isn't just one trigger and heap.
We are living a lifetime of them,
As is everyone else around us.
So no wonder there is drama.
And while it may be tempting to play Freud and analyze everyone else's triggers and their resulting heaps,
In yoga,
There's a concept called svadhyaya,
Or self-study,
Which means it's far more interesting to look inside rather than out.
So if something went absolutely sideways in our own lives,
Why?
If there are recurring situations that you are living again and again,
Even though you don't want to,
Why?
Svadhyaya allows us to discover our connections between events,
Because the key here is our present reveals our particular past.
A particular past that led to a particular path that led you right here,
Right now.
And that is true for every single human being in the history history of the world.
So to ask the question,
How is your present revealing a very particular past?
It's not asking you to wallow in shame and blame,
Nor is it permission to live forever and ever,
Amen,
In the past.
To examine our own triggers and heaps is a chance to look at ourselves here and now with the most compassionate and curious eyes we can muster.
Oh sweet one,
Here's what just happened.
What in your past might have influenced the choices you made?
The key here is to be on your own side as you do this.
The choice you made,
How were you trying to survive?
Or how were you living into the scripts that you were handed throughout your life,
Usually without your consent?
These are big questions,
And the answers don't come in a day.
But it is a really interesting way to trace our triggers and our heaps,
And then to consider some new ways we can try living,
Some new scripts we might try,
Ones that serve us better.
This is not easy,
None of it is.
But if we want to know why we do what we do,
And maybe why others do what they do,
For me this feels like as good a place as any to start.
Get centered,
Get curious,
See your scripts,
See your actions as the series leading up to this moment right here,
Right now,
And then start writing new scripts,
Ones where you are real and real and human and fierce and ready to begin again and fail better as you live light.
