Super Variety Fun-size Bag of Tricks for Being Okay
Let your eyes half-close, focusing on something a little in front of you. Begin to count your breaths. Count “one” on the in-breath and “two” on the out-breath. Get all the way up to ten and then start over. If you start to get tangled up in a thought, notice you’re doing that and remind yourself that you don’t need to think about it right now. One of my favorite images is of a pond in a forest. Animals show up to drink from the pond, causing little ripples across the surface. There are deer, raccoons, and small birds. You see them arrive and you let them drink, but you don’t follow them when they continue on to wherever they’re going. You stay there with the pond, mostly still but simmering with life.
That’s my main trick for getting through periods of tension and dread, like what we’re going through right now with the Supreme Court confirmation behind us and the election right ahead of us, another police shooting of a Black man in Philadelphia. This moment is deeply uncomfortable. That discomfort has motivated incredible action, which is gratifying. We need to keep doing the work we’re doing, hopefully long-term. But we also need to reach for every tool and trick we’ve got for taking care of ourselves, because panic and fatigue won’t help us function.
Food is obviously a big source of comfort for me. The ritual of making it and sitting down at the table, plus the actual eating of it. Baking feels and smells really good, and baking for other people feels good in another way. (Neighbors are easy drop-offs, but I will also accept any baked goods ;) ) Now that it’s colder, I pretty much always start my day with oatmeal (Combine 2/3 cup of rolled oats in a pot with 1 cup water, a pinch of salt, and a handful of golden raisins. Cook until the water is gone. Mix in a teaspoon of maple syrup and a dash of spice like nutmeg or turmeric, and serve with milk or almond milk.) I end it with a mug of almond milk simmered with a teaspoon of ground cardamom. Both of these things make me feel warm on the inside, in a way that somehow lasts for hours.
What we tend to call “comfort food” — usually junk food — seems like it would be a good release of tension but doesn’t always make me feel good. I only have to remember election night four years ago, when I bought two servings of chik’n nuggets, because kid food seemed like it would be comforting, then ate all of them with dipping sauces and couldn’t eat another thing like that for a year. I’m not here to judge though. Just think back to meals you’ve had and when you felt good after them. There’s plenty of fried food or oily sauces that I felt good after eating, but they tended to include some fiber and vegetables as well. Tempura vegetables, okonomiyaki, roasted brussels sprouts with aioli. I usually feel perfectly fine during and after eating pizza, so that’s probably what we’ll get on election night.
When I’m not cooking or eating, I do yoga (these ghostly early-Covid videos from the now-cancelled YTTP). I don’t like a lot of reality TV, but Terrace House (Opening New Doors) is so warm and sweet that all I have to do now is hear the intro theme to feel calm. Mostly I read. Here’s an incomplete list of books that have felt wise or soothing or helped somehow over the years:
All About Love, by bell hooks
What If This Were Enough?, by Heather Havrilesky
H is for Hawk, by Helen MacDonald
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
The Guest Cat, by Takashi Hiraide
Call Me By Your Name, by André Aciman
Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
The Soul of An Octopus, by Sy Montgomery
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
How do you deal with it all? Do you have any book recommendations for me? I’d love to hear them.