Give Up.

Hello hello Ceremony community, thank you for joining me here in the circle. Whether you're reading first thing in the morning, on your lunch break or in bed at night- here's to 9 minutes of filling up your cup. Today on the blog I'm speaking to the topic of relenting control. The past 3 years I have learnt to give up control in thousands of tiny ways, (which under a bright light, is the exact same as taking control). So, first I would ask of you, what is it in your life that you feel you need to control the most, what is it that you feel most relaxed about and what is it that you feel you have the least control over. I'll go first: My possessions, where I put them and how they're arranged. *only child alarm goes off Changing my usual routine to follow joy.

My emotions. Alan Watts says, 'In giving away the control, you've got it... That's to say, where you have a loving relationship to the world but you don't have to make your mind up about what it should do.' That felt important to hear on a rainy Sunday. A loving relationship to the world where you don't have to decide what it should do. Wouldn't that be nice to feel? I suppose I do feel that in some ways, but in others I'm clenching tightly to the things I want my way, in my time with my boundaries. Today I walked in the rain for an hour, I took photos of soaked flowers and listened to a podcast called On Being with Krista Tippett and Joy Horjo. Joy is a Native American poet, musician, playwright, and author and is the first First Nation's person to hold the title of Poet Laureate in the USA. Joy is an interesting person to hear speak, she talks about oturé ideas like past lives and the concept of time running parallell to itself with other planes of being. But in this podcast, she is addressing the idea of thoughts and actions weaving into a stream. A stream that creates patterns and the energy of the collective world. I know it sounds esoteric, but go with me for a moment. She's essentially saying, that the daily rituals of our lives, the thoughts we have, the decisions we make, the routines we build, are pouring water into the stream that becomes our lives as a whole, which feed into the ocean of the broader society that we exist in. The idea makes me stand to attention, allowing me better understand what I'm contributing. If we're going to ride the wave of this metaphor; it helps me understand how our tiny rivers first feed into lakes of friendship circles, families and communities, which becomes the ocean of humankind. When I think about writing, participating in Julia Cameron's 'The Artists Way' every day for 37/80 days now, I think about why I feel the need to be 'seen' in this way. And as I'm here in Perth listening all day every day to people's stories through my job, listening to podcasts and reading and writing my own reality down- it becomes clear to me that everyone deserves the opportunity and space to contribute to the stream. When we share our stories of hardship and heartbreak, love, devastation, creativity, loss and joy, we are in a way ensuring that the body of water is more pure. Sharing our raw and unpolished lives can, for some people, take the power away from whatever is holding them back. Often, when someone has been violated (in the many ways this can occur) you may find them talking about it openly with confidence or a bold, unattached tone. By talking about their experience, it takes the private and debilitating control from the abuser, handing it to the abused, so that they can own it, diminishing the all-consuming secret power it had over them before. I certainly feel that way when I talk with my people about my violations. Some people contribute to the stream through music, the universal language. Some use dance or film. People become doctors or childcare workers or chefs. We're all just choosing to spend our time in ways that we feel we can best pour into the river. My favourite line of Jordan Rakei's song Midnight Mischief is 'glimpses of her soul, as a seamless dinner'. It reminds me of the piece I wrote about living an Unextraordinary life. Yesterday I spent my day making gnocchi for my friend. I walked to the shops listening to Odette's Magnolia, I peeled potatoes, made pesto, roasted pumpkin, I drank tea while I did it and had all the doors and windows open. Having a meal with someone can be such a sacred experience, not grand or complicated or expensive. Just real life. I don't know what I want to say I contributed at the end of my life yet, maybe I never will, but that gnocchi was pretty delicious and writing these blogs feels important to me so maybe that's enough for me to know right now. I've been hearing so many stories lately about people who have received life altering information, and as a result their entire existence shifts and they are operating in a new reality. Illness, pregnancy, death, separations, job opportunities. I'm not sure if it's happening more or if it's that social media reveals to us thousands of examples of these happenings more often. But the feeling that something is going to 'happen' grows daily. Good or bad, who is to say, but it seems inevitable that something will occur along my path that's going to turn the world as I know it on it's head, as we all will experience. This is where relenting control comes in. Glennon Doyle talks about this in her podcast 'We Can do Hard Things'. She says (and i'm paraphrasing here), every day I care the most amount. I get up, and I care the most about everything- the world, the kids, my job, my wife, the climate, equality, and then around 6pm I give up. I care the least amount. I give up every day about absolutely everything. I go to bed, and I wake up and I start all over again. What a thing to feel. Exhausting but also a pretty accurate depiction of the human experience. I think though, in the giving up, you're also taking complete control of how you want to feel inside your body and the kind of friend/lover/person you want to be in the world. Giving up, or relenting control, says that you trust in something greater than yourself, whatever that may be. I'll give you an example so that this doesn't all seem so cryptic and hypothetical. My friend and I were discussing how when we were both living in Melbourne, on just a regular week day afternoon some people were walking in the city and a brick wall collapsed and they were killed instantly. My friend said, that in the moment of hearing that news, she realised that we just have absolutely no control over unexplainable things. Some things aren't meant to be understood, dissected and held up to the light. They just happen. Typically I think this is the part of the blog where you would expect me to say 'live your life! get out there! be your best self and do you very best!'. No thank you. This is the part of the blog where I want to say, that in ceasing to care so much about the finer details of every finicky portion of your day, you may feel just a fraction lighter. You may feel, in some small way that you can let time unfold as it should without you needing to worry it into existence. I still can't believe I moved to Perth for three months on a whim. I am habitual in an obsessive and unhealthy way. I go to the same coffee shop and order the same thing every day, I have a consuming fear of being lost when I'm driving somewhere, I am allergic to meeting new people. I am a picky eater, I like my linen and my doona and my bamboo memory foam pillow. I strongly dislike (my step dad told me to stop using the word hate), watching movie's I've never seen or listening to a new artist. But somehow, by 'giving up', I have found myself in a city I've never been to, trying my best to give up every single day on what I think my life should look like, and lean into whatever it will be. Take love for example. I've been in what I would say is two significant relationships. One was long and one was so short you wouldn't even call it a relationship (he certainly wouldn't), but being in relation with that person changed me significantly. The majority of my friends are partnered, they're building upon the foundations of the honeymoon phase to eventually slip into the stream of deep long term connection. I look at my friend O and her partner. They have been together 8 years and the breadth of their connection in my eyes, expands across this kind of invented reality where people are an 'age'. Where people have to have 'things' by X 'age' and that a relationship should look like two people living together, sleeping in the same bed, sharing resources and working towards a shared goal. What they have, is a shared understanding of one another, a shared understanding of the type of existence that feels authentic to them and are choosing to move together through the thick of it. For me, online dating feels like a minefield of disingenuous communication. That is so cynical. If I were you I would be thinking 'yeah, you haven't met your person yet, clearly that's why you don't like online dating'. Correct haha. I know full well that when I do come across the person I'm meant to partner, should that ever happen, that I will be purchasing a one way ticket on the besotted love train, which disgusts me to think about but I've seen a version of it in my last 'relationship' so I know what I'm in for. As a result, I'm giving up. Less looking, more living. Less searching, more sensation. Food, wine, fresh air, movement, knowledge, experiences. This morning when I woke up I had a message from a woman I met when I was living in Canada. If you had told me the first time I made her a hot chocolate that we would still be in touch 4 years later, sending one another photos of our food and our gardens I wouldn't believe you. Tracey helped me through my car accident, she talks to me about partnership, loss, love and contributing to the world in a positive way through her various charitable initiatives. This morning she told me that her 13 year old granddaughter had been reading my blogs. Holy shit (I thought to myself). I swear in these blogs, I talk about sex and unrealistic expectations, about being let down and about leaving any situation that makes you feel bad about yourself. I wanted to delete everything I had ever posted when she said that, and write blogs about things that were much more aspirational. I'm literally a 28 year old woman who has close to zero idea where her life is going and close to zero knowledge about getting there. Tracey said that before reading them her granddaughter thought she could only write in bullet point, but that the way I write has shown her a different way of sharing. I love you little one. At 13 I was an interesting character. It was the last year of my life without technology. I had no phone, no laptop. I can't believe, looking back, that it was the last year of living life totally in the present moment. My friend E and I would make up dances, we'd laugh until we peed (that actually happened once, I'll never let her live it down). We'd walk down to the beach, do fashion shows, make 2 minute noodles. It was fantastic. So I guess what I would say to you little one, if you're reading this, is that you have the whole world at your feet. There was a time in my life that I didn't want to be here anymore. I was hurt, I felt abandoned, alone, tired. But there have been key moments since then, that have been so life affirming for me, that I can't believe I ever felt that way. Moments when I would say to myself in my head 'you've just up-levelled'. And that's how living 'post' depression feels; every time you say no to something you don't want to do, every time you choose real over pretty, every time you decide to do what your gut is telling you over what social media is telling you- you are up levelling. I don't know what it will feel like when I reach the top, but giving up control of how other people view me seems like a very good place to start. Giving up, every day, in every way you can, the idea that your time should be an image of beauty and conformity and purpose feels like taking the first step to actually living. After reading this, if you like, put your headphones in and listen to this song. Love, M

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.