I've been feeling like something's amiss this week, and I feel a profound sense of restlessness and disconnection. A friend recommended a process, RAIN that's helped. Here are some of the key exercises:
R -- Recognize the experience and the emotions without judging. Name the emotions if possible.
A -- Allow those emotions to be there. We don't like some of our emotions, but we can accept them.
I -- Investigate why you are going through this. This is not always necessary but can be revealing.
N -- Non-identification with the emotions. We are not our emotions, and this is freeing.
I came to realize that I miss many of my deep friendships from the US. The university was a wonderful place where I met many people whom I came to care about very much even if I'm not always in touch with most of them. But what we all did in that setting was to sit with one another on each of our journeys despite our quite often vast differences.
Yes, we were all students of some sort--from the physical sciences, human sciences, humanities, arts, etc.--and we met because we were students, but all of us still led widely disparate lives with very little in common besides the fact that we were students. We came from the continents of Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Even during college, some of us were older than most of us, and in grad school, some of us were fresh out of university but many of us weren't, so we weren't even part of the same age group. Becky, Sarah, Dean Reese, Miao Laoshi, Maggie, Ron, Hannah, Sanford, Danielle, Val, Barbara, Bill, Carole....different ages, different backgrounds, different life experiences.
But we sat with one another and listened to one another's stories, and that's how we became friends. Of course it was awkward sometimes, and boring sometimes, and confusing sometimes, but we eventually built rich relationships.
That's what I miss most--the expectation that deep friendships can emerge out of unexpected places.
R -- Recognize the experience and the emotions without judging. Name the emotions if possible.
A -- Allow those emotions to be there. We don't like some of our emotions, but we can accept them.
I -- Investigate why you are going through this. This is not always necessary but can be revealing.
N -- Non-identification with the emotions. We are not our emotions, and this is freeing.
I came to realize that I miss many of my deep friendships from the US. The university was a wonderful place where I met many people whom I came to care about very much even if I'm not always in touch with most of them. But what we all did in that setting was to sit with one another on each of our journeys despite our quite often vast differences.
Yes, we were all students of some sort--from the physical sciences, human sciences, humanities, arts, etc.--and we met because we were students, but all of us still led widely disparate lives with very little in common besides the fact that we were students. We came from the continents of Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Even during college, some of us were older than most of us, and in grad school, some of us were fresh out of university but many of us weren't, so we weren't even part of the same age group. Becky, Sarah, Dean Reese, Miao Laoshi, Maggie, Ron, Hannah, Sanford, Danielle, Val, Barbara, Bill, Carole....different ages, different backgrounds, different life experiences.
But we sat with one another and listened to one another's stories, and that's how we became friends. Of course it was awkward sometimes, and boring sometimes, and confusing sometimes, but we eventually built rich relationships.
That's what I miss most--the expectation that deep friendships can emerge out of unexpected places.
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