“You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, so you’ve got to go through it!”

I’m a happy dad and a longtime camp counselor, and for a long time I liked singing the song “Going on a Bear Hunt” with kids. In this era though, I usually just hum this one to myself while I’m walking my dog. Sometimes it comes into my head while I’m struggling, and I want to share why.

I’m committed to this practice of personal engagement and living in sync through my Heartspace. It’s a struggle sometimes! Not being a panacea or silver bullet, after more than 15 years of conscientiously practicing this way, I’ve found that my life isn’t all better, I don’t feel great all of the time, and I still have hard times.

In my research and practice over the years, I’ve never met a person I actually liked who lives that way, in constant bliss and joy. Instead, my people are regular people who have times of ease and seasons of struggle, moments of ecstasy and bouts of sadness. We’re all human.

Living With Ups and Downs

A lot of self-help approaches will try to make everything okay for you, or even spectacular. Think about all the wonderful things you could have!

• A Wonderful Job!
• A Spectacular Relationship!
• Tremendous Friendships!
• Humungous Back Accounts!

In reality though, everyone having all of those all of the time is just a myth.

The Heartspace Model^TM is not for the faint of heart or escapists, people who are avoiding life or running from themselves. Its not for people who want to quickly feel better or immediately fix their lives. It is for those who want to radically confront themselves, embrace their humanity, and strive to do something different for themselves.

For instance, I went through all sorts of tides of emotion today, which, honestly, is like a lot of my days lately. Very interesting stuff just watching the wheels go around and around this way. This is one of the practices I’ve learned through Heartspace.

I took time today to remind myself of some of the lessons I’ve learned before. Reflecting on them as I went, one of the under-explored lessons I’ve learned in my work is about the looping nature of engagement. This is true of social engagement and interdependent engagement too, but here I’m going to focus on its effects in our personal lives.

The Back-and-Forth

Life doesn’t just flow in one direction with only one thing happening at a time, and its not a straight line from birth-to-death.. Instead, there is constantly back-and-forth in nearly everything.

Personal engagement is a non-linear reality of life. It’s not a line where we start here and go there, a spectrum where we are in one position at one time for one event, or for all times. Instead, personal engagement loops around and around. Its unruly and often inconvenient.

That means no matter who you are, how you interact with the world, or what you practice, in the moments throughout every day you are going around and around the Cycle of Engagement. This isn’t crazy-making; instead, it’s just reality. The goal of the Heartspace Model^TM is not to flatten out your emotions and make your life boring, staid, or less vivid—unless that’s what you choose! The goal of the Heartspace Model^TM is to foster deeper, more meaningful engagement throughout your life that you might change the whole world in substantial ways on your own as part of the collective whole.

Embracing It On Purpose

However, as the dynamic loops of engagement show us, sometimes you’re very engaged in things very intentionally with a lot of determination, while other times you’re not, all the way to the point where you might even be unconsciously engaged in almost everything. And that’s the nature of all of life, everything, everywhere, all of the time!

Coping with childhood trauma, running a business, learning in school, struggling for social justice, actively supporting friends, being a full-time parent, or otherwise doing things are all activities that we can engage in. So is simply washing the dishes, changing diapers, walking the dog, scrolling on social media, commuting to work, texting with your BFF, grocery shopping, and the otherwise seemingly mundane things that make up our days. There are seemingly “bad” things we can do, too, that can be very engaging.

It Is Indifferent

The engine of engagement doesn’t care what you or the culture around you judges a thing to be, regardless of whether the action is…

• good or bad, consequential or inconsequential, positive or negative
• affecting the entire world, your immediate family, or yourself on your own
• truly unique or plainly repetitious or
• massive, enormous, grandiose, and eternal, or microscopic, intimate, immediate, and temporary.

Personal engagement continuously happens in these loops. The classic idiom that “Change is the only constant” describes the dynamic nature of this element too.

The dynamic loops of engagement aren’t best described as singular, two-dimensional spirals either. Instead, the activity of engaging actual loops up-and-down and in-and-out, left-and-right, big-and-small, and all these other apparently binary ways of being that exist simultaneously throughout everyone’s lives.

As I continue living this way, I have increasingly come to own these dynamics in new ways with more and more intention and purpose, and determination when it’s time. It’s good to be reminded of all that occasionally, and maybe my reflection here has helped you learn or remember that now, too. Maybe the next time you face a challenge or a victory, you’ll find yourself singing, “You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, so you’ve got to go through it!”

Loopity, loopity, loop…

« Tip Sheet 19