A culture of consumption

I know I’ve written about seasons and cycles many times but here I go again. We are always moving through cycles and seasons of our own. At our own pace, sometimes with no rhyme or reason. At times, the cycles we are in, is not exactly where we want to be. It is a cycle or two behind where we imagine we could or should be.

But I have learned that we are always exactly where we need to be. Whether we appreciate it or not, is a choice we alone get to make. In ways, I have been oscillating between seasons lately. Moving back and forth instead of a steady path forward. In moments, I am dripping in frustration because of this but today I am accepting and grateful.

When we move in this pattern, as if we are rocking back and forth between two cycles, it often means both cycles still hold valuable lessons for us to absorb. I am willing to admit that I am in this position at the moment. Sometimes the movement between these cycles lasts weeks or months. Other times I have swung from one to the other within the same day. I am doing my best to let go and move where life is asking me to.

There are many ways to name seasons. There are times of expansion followed by contraction. There are seasons of rest before and after the race. There is the winter that inevitably births any spring. But the two seasons I am caught in at the moment feel as if they are consumption and creativity.

When I took the leap and left Colorado, what feels like a decade ago (but was really less than two years ago!), I pushed myself into a season of creativity. I spent a year floating around in this space, untethered to anything. It was one of the first times I allowed myself to stay in this space for more than a few moments.

It was a cycle of dreaming, writing, teaching, exploring and every other kind of expansion that is connected to creating. This was not within my zone of comfort but I allowed myself to be uncomfortable over and over again.

A season of creating is most often preceded by a season of consumption. To pour out of yourself, you must first pour into yourself. In the most simple bodily sense, you have to consume food to create shit! We also have to consume knowledge before we can express our own ideas around it. We must absorb energy before we can release it into the world.

I had consumed so much over the years preceding my season of creation, that I was fully nourished and ready to dive into that space for quite some time. But as I created, I felt myself slowly depleting. And this is why, a season of creation isn’t only preceded by consumption but also followed by one.

At the beginning of this year, I returned to a cycle of consumption in some ways. I also began this odd sense of oscillation between the two. As I settled back into Colorado, I felt myself, in ways, return to the previous season I was in. It felt like a warm hug to return to this familiarity. But as soon as I consumed enough to feel nourished, I continued to create. It showed up differently but that is how seasons of creation operate; constantly shifting and expanding.

Instead of writing so much, as I had done in the past year, I created in person courses and offerings. I taught to people instead of writing my lessons and sending them out into the vast expanse of the internet. It felt new and difficult. It was only possible because I could keep one foot in the season of consumption as the other was in this creative time.

After consuming what felt like enough, I dove back into a prolonged season of creation this past summer. Summer, a season of action and movement in nature, aligned with how I was moving through the world. It felt beautiful to be creating, even if it was in completely different ways again. It was a season of creating connections, capacity and pushing myself even further away from this cycle of consumption that I feel a bit attached to.

But my connection to this past season pulled me back in eventually. Returning to Colorado yet again felt necessary and timely. In ways, I felt so depleted at first that I fell into consumption in the worst of ways. Even though I did return to studying with my two teachers, practicing asana at my favorite studio and allowing myself to rest in nature, I also felt myself being distracted by the ever present availability of all sorts of media at my fingertips for consumption.

To relate consumption back to the body again; there are foods that give us a balanced spectrum of macro and micronutrients and foods that simply give us calories. Some days, we are so depleted, that any type of food will suffice. When we haven’t eaten in a long time, our body doesn’t care if we eat something “healthy” or if we eat candy. All it knows is that it is getting the calories that keep it alive.

As adults, we know that how we fuel our body does make a difference. When we eat a diet rich in a variety of nutrients, everything in our body feels better. Especially when we compare it to eating a diet of sweets and what some call “empty calories”. But again, sometimes we are so depleted, our body craves the quick hit of sugar. This is baked into our bodies by evolution. Quick hits of energy light our brain up and assure us that we will survive another day.

This is not me justifying eating candy for breakfast but I also understand that sometimes our body needs food, no matter what it looks like. For me, when I feel energetically and emotionally depleted, my low hanging fruit of consumption leans towards the “empty calories” of social media and podcasts rather than reading, studying and other nutrients dense practices I have.

Because I know I feel better eating a nourishing and nutrient rich diet, I know this way consuming does not lead me towards feeling nourished and creative. Yet, for weeks, it was all I was capable of.

The world that makes instant gratification media so accessible while also making us feel immense amount of guilt and shame for succumbing to its pull is cruel at times. It’s comical when we scroll on social media to learn how to consume in a healthier way but the same people teaching this make a living by our inability to step away from the very spaces they are vilifying.

We have normalized people being so depleted that they can’t actually move away from the consumption phase and towards creativity. Because there is a sense of false nourishment from these places. Rather than feeling nourished, we are just keeping our heads above water so we can continue to consume. And at the same time, this space does provide at least enough nourishment to keep us afloat and that is necessary at times too.

When I write, it’s usually my space to process what I’m feeling and why. I am moving through this space of keeping my head above water. I felt a complete loss of creativity because I was not actually getting any nourishment from what I was consuming. I knew this but couldn’t pull myself out of the water. I felt frustration and shame for being sucked into this world of consumption.

But thankfully, I have enough nourishing practices and people in my life that I finally feel as though I have been able to pull myself out of the water. As soon as I got myself out, I realized how exhausting it is to barely keep my head above water in this way. I still want to honor how necessary and helpful this part of the cycle of consumption can be.

For me, I had to step back intentionally from an unhealthy diet of too much social media. Only then could I consume anything that actually brought me nourishment. And from this place, I am feeling the creative juices flowing again. And for that, I am so grateful.

It reminds me of something I hear often; we cannot hate ourselves into healing. We have to appreciate and accept every season for what it provides. Only then, can we move through it. If we do not accept the lessons, we may never release the attachment a certain season has on us.

I could not shame myself out of this depleted state. The world is a lot right now and it is so easy to slip into the deep end and feel as if you are about to drown. I got caught in this cycle for some time. It is not a moral failure on my part when everything in our capitalistic society wants us to stay in this state of near drowning. Because when we are there, all we can do is consume yet we never feel satisfied. What a perfect model to keep the wheels of capitalism turning.

I am so grateful that I have the courage, strength and frankly privilege to pull myself out of this space and learn how to consume things that actually nourish me. Because only when I can find nourishment from this season of consumption can I move towards a cycle of creation.

I know I must be nourished to create. Perhaps this oscillation between these cycles will be ongoing for me. It may be something I get to bring awareness to and simply accept as part of life. Some days I will have the capacity to pour beautiful works of art from my soul, and some days I will need to pause and consume.

I will have times when I slip back into the water and struggle to stay afloat. In these moments, empty calories will be all my body craves. And I will give myself whatever I can to stay above water until I can gather the strength to swim to the shore. Because, at the shore, I know there will be nourishment. True nourishment that will tip me back to the cycle of creating that feels so right in my soul.

The lesson for me is to accept what is and stay unattached to where I believe I should be. Life will ebb and flow, moving between cycles of expansion and contraction often. There is grace and compassion to be found in every season if we can pause long enough to witness it. And we will never be worse off for being a little more gentle with ourselves in this harsh and challenging world.