My friend Anna lives in the Peruvian Amazon and was recently treated for both malaria and dengue. She was plucked away from the daily rhythms of her life to face severe symptoms, the limits of her body, and a sometimes lonesome and sometimes communal fight. She spent a week away from home battling intense breathlessness, fluid around her organs and fever dreams; it must have been extremely disorienting.
Since we exchanged voice messages, it felt like I had a front-row seat to her evolving situation. From the first breathy message where she thought she may have Covid, to the one where she craved a toothbrush, and the one where she mused how not being able to write for several days felt “completely bizarre” (Anna is my writing buddy and has written almost daily for years). In one message, she asked how I was doing with Covid’s rampage across India. Then one day she told me how it felt to look up from her wrapped up body in the infectious diseases ward to see twelve other patients wrapped up in their own, dealing with their own bugs. She noted everyone’s rituals with their families: someone brushing his wife’s hair, another reading bible verses, yet another putting lotion on their loved one’s feet, and some sleeping in weird arrangements on the floor. “If you look a couple of feet away from you, there is a person with their own infectious disease right there!”. She’ll write about this experience in her own poetic words but what bubbled up for me was Anna’s ability to stay fully and compassionately present to herself while also being fully and compassionately present to others’ experiences.
Throughout her journey, she seemed to have one barometer inside and another outside. She embraced her “mind-altering experience” with a blend of tenderness and pragmatism that gave her stamina to think of others’ battles. She didn’t fake strength, she had innate strength and I wondered how she fired up her emotional cylinders while battling fierce diseases herself. Then it clicked―it was her writing practice. She had learned to separate life’s threads to observe them with curiosity, letting them be without forcing change. I often tell Anna that her writing feels meditative but I now see that writing is also her meditation. I was fortunate to have been invited-in as an observer, to see first-hand the power of her anchoring practice. I honestly don’t think she realized that she exuded this capacity. She was just being…herself.
This is the beauty of having an anchoring practice; it roots us to our personal core. It can be anything at all―hiking, photography, sitting with the elderly, rowing, gardening, running, dancing―as long as the soul’s posture is of silent attention, so we can be completely present to whatever comes up without getting swept away by emotions. We may not even see a difference from one day to the next but over time, our way of being evolves in subtle yet powerful ways as we become this anchored version of ourselves. It’s quite likely that no one will be in the front-row seat to notice our evolution. It doesn’t matter. What will matter is how this repeated connection to self creates the capacity to relate to life and others in it.
“My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.”― Isaac Newton
