On Expansion

This beautiful balloon was at Lexi's school this morning! (arranged by her science teacher, on the left)

Tyler on the bike!

​​Earlier this month, Tyler fell. And fell. And fell.
 
“I’ll never learn to ride a bike,” he said dejectedly.  We have been trying to teach him to ride a bike periodically over the last TWO YEARS. He was actually getting worse. It was clear that his fear of falling made him more cautious, more discouraged (and frankly, more jaded, like an adult).
 
“You can do this!” I kept telling him, to which he’d roll his eyes and scoff.
 
Jory thought Ty needed training wheels. I decided Ty needed peer pressure. Nothing like a friend to help you through a challenge.
 
His bike-riding 6-year old friend Johannes brought over his little bike, one that was actually too small for both of them. Johannes showed Tyler how to go down hills by balancing his body weight and not pedaling. By the end of the week, Tyler’s confidence had soared stratospherically.
 
Tyler fell until he didn’t need to anymore. He could ride the bike, pedals and all.
 
It was a huge victory of expansion: both for his body and for his mind.
 
“The mystery, strangely enough” Deepak Chopra writes, “is how we manage to restrict the unbounded potential of our own minds.”
 
I am reading Chopra’s Life After Death which I found in my mother’s library. (Amherst friends: Professor Thurman liked it so much he wrote one of the endorsements for it on the back).
 
In this mélange of physics, metaphysics, Indian, Buddhist, Christian spirituality, and documented experiences, Chopra at one point makes a list of qualities of the mind that come either under “expansion” or “contraction” with the belief that we are either expanding or contracting.
 
With the universe uniformly expanding in all directions, it would seem that we are made to ever-expand (and that does seem to be the case with our midsections in middle age).
 
However, as we all know, one huge force makes us need and want to contract: LOSS. Loss of memory, mobility, balance, agility. Loss of loved ones and friends. Loss of finances, employment, security. And with all of that, comes loss of confidence, hope, dreams. In addition, mental illness: anxiety and depression wreak absolute havoc on our best intentions.
 
According to Chopra, “Crave security” is contraction, while “Comfortable with Uncertainty” is expansion. Easier said than done. We’re going into our sixth month of unemployment for Jory. Hard to breath into expansion when circumstances feel so stifling it’s hard to breathe at all sometimes.
 
And yet.

As with Tyler, we must train the qualities of our overworked, fearful, anxious minds. What’s the alternative? I mean: what else can we do?
 
Lillie Grace modeled a perfect way to expand despite her fears. She was rattled last week because she wanted to be part of her school’s Mock Trial. It’s a state-wide conference down in Las Cruces this year, wherein 7th graders have a court case to crack. But the catch was that only four of the six students vying for the prosecution would be selected for the team. She had to audition for the team on a zoom call that day.
 
She had just had surgery the day before: the six titanium screws had come out of her knee.  While this is a huge (literal) step forward in the long term, in the short term, she was back on crutches, pain meds, and restricted movement. She therefore was feeling constricted and inadequate, like she could never be chosen on a prosecution team.
 
After moaning and procrastinating, she came to me for help. She understands that we need to find pillars of expansion when we can’t support ourselves. Life is crushing, and sometimes we need someone else to hold our hand and guide us.
 
I first reminded Lil the odds were over 50% that she would get a spot on the team, so she had a realistic chance. We sat together and she read me the case line by line. She honed her questions as we discussed the case. She would have to think of the follow ups on the spot. So, we agreed that if she didn’t make the team, we’d find another opportunity for her.
 
She came back after the hour-zoom call elated. She had just been appointed Lead Prosecutor, and will be going down to Las Cruces for an overnight in early November. With this expansion, the discouragement and pain of her knee seemed to lesson.
 
Not that it always works like this. Lexi joined her volleyball team, practiced daily on and off the court, with a coach, with her parents, with her friends, and still never made a serve over the net. Yet with the end of volleyball season, rather than join her basketball team, she is going to join a club volleyball team to get extra support. Next year, when her serve sizzles, it will mean all the more to her.
 
The question I ask myself every morning now is: how can I cultivate a mindset of expansion today? And if I’m stuck, whom can I call?
 
According to Chopra, choosing expansion paradoxically means less focus on material things, more focus on experiences (physically bigger does not mean emotionally healthier)!! Choosing expanion means choosing less conformity, more individualism. Expansion is less ego-driven, more altruistic. It means less denial, more self-knowledge.
 
Despite all the losses we encounter, we are meant to keep expanding. All of us. None of us learned to ride a bike alone. So when did we stop asking for help? The way is not always easy. The how is seldom obvious. But the alternative is simply contracting.