Take a moment to settle yourself in your body,
To inhale,
Exhale,
And anchor yourself here.
Welcome to a slightly longer hit of hope.
Please bear with me as I provide some background information for today's meditation.
A big word floated into my mind recently,
And it turns out I had the meaning of the word wrong.
The word is incohate,
And I thought it meant chaos,
Disorder,
Confusion.
Turns out I am not alone.
The Oxford English Dictionary has now added that definition,
But it explains that incohate has only recently come to mean that because people are confusing it with chaotic.
But that's not what the word originally meant.
But before we get to its original meaning,
Let's sit with this new definition for a moment.
Do you ever get overwhelmed by the incohate?
All of those uncertainties floating out there?
Do you ever try and control everything because you can't bear the chaos,
Disorder,
Confusion?
What's going to come next?
What will this person do?
How might I succeed?
Or rather,
What are all the ways I'm bound to fail?
There are so many ways we can get overwhelmed by the incohate.
I have to talk to you,
A stranger?
For how long?
I have to pretend to be interested in what you have to say or remember what you said at the Christmas party last year about the twins?
Because gosh,
If I remember right,
One of them passed away suddenly and I do not want to say anything wrong.
The stakes can feel so high.
You do not want to be awkward,
Hurtful,
Mean.
You do not want to be the one to say the wrong thing,
Drop the ball,
Forget the important memo or meeting,
Or leave a child waiting at school because you forgot it was an early out.
So you control,
You grip,
You clench your fists tighter and tighter.
And you are always afraid,
Always exhausted.
So very exhausted.
For good or ill,
You cannot control everything.
You cannot keep the incohate at bay.
It is always there,
Just like the cold dark behind the day's sun.
Acknowledging that can be terrifying.
But if you cannot control things,
Then what happens?
If you cannot control things,
Must you ask,
As Dorothy Parker did every time the doorbell rang,
What fresh hell is this?
You could do that.
I have.
It doesn't work.
It's unsustainable.
Sure,
You can plan,
You can be prepared,
But you cannot control anything but you.
Your thoughts,
Your actions.
That's it.
That's all you have control over.
Which then leads us to the real meaning of incohate.
Just begun.
An early stage and thus imperfect.
It can also mean to begin,
To initiate,
To take the first steps,
To cause,
To bring about.
What if you lived into this real definition?
Life is hard,
Full of pain and uncertainties.
You are imperfect.
Yes.
But what would it look like and feel like to see each day as a stage in your life?
Something imperfect.
Something just begun.
What would it look like and feel like to see each day as a new opportunity to begin,
To initiate,
To take the first steps,
To cause,
To bring about?
What would you,
Right here and right now,
Like to begin?
What would you,
Right here and right now,
Like to cause in order to bring about?
Because that is life.
You act and that causes effects.
So what effects would you like to bring about?
More fear?
More anxiety?
Gripping?
Despair?
Or would you like to bring about bravery?
Kindness?
Compassion?
Hope?
It's up to you.
It really is up to you.
Which definition will you live into?
What reality will you create?
Namaste.
