It’s Never Over || By Beth Hinnen, Certified Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher
These words may strike fear in the heart … or they may be the most freeing ones ever. For me, it’s the latter. As I walk the spiritual path, I make an effort to stay open to new sources of information from many different places (okay, YouTube provides a good chunk of that right now), and I recently heard a spiritual teacher offer, “it’s never over.” There is always a way out, a way over, a way through. Not usually, though, something I can imagine when the “worst” thing is happening. However, it is absolutely true that I never stay stuck at the “worst” or the “best.”
Think about it. Hasn’t it always been worst follows best follows worst follows best on a never-ending roller coaster ride? Sometimes, it’s true, I get stuck in wanting to stay in the “best” forever; the promotion after the big successful project at work, the new born babe after the 9 month slog of pregnancy, the house completely spring cleaned from baseboards to ceiling, not a spot of dirt to be found.
And yet, I sometimes forget how I got to those “best” places, those highs, those crests of the wave where I look out and survey all that I see as my “success” and acknowledge (maybe silently) how good I am. I forget that there was all the planning, intuitive problem solving, the obstacles in the project that looked invincible until, oh, someone offers a different perspective which gets my wheels turning in a different way and smashes the roadblock. And of course, how much fun it was to create a baby (at least, I hope it was fun) and to experience the miracle of a woman’s body swelling and changing on a journey to birthing new life. As for the clean house, all the activities that took place in the safety, warmth, shelter of a roof and four walls, the meals, the gatherings, the pet playtime, the running, gaming, arguing, clashes, silence, and at the core, unconditional love of a couple or family, however it looks. Would I give up all of that to have a clean house 24/7?
It truly is the metaphor of surfing, being at the wave’s crest is exhilarating, intoxicating, joyous, however, staying there, stopping all the momentum of riding the wave down, would require divine intervention and more than that, might negate the thrill of everything I got to experience in getting to that crest; jumping in the water, standing on the board successfully for the first time (that was a crest!), falling off only to discover the water was receptive and buoyant and in some cases, warm. The entire buildup to the cresting, when I look back on it, was actually THE FUN part. The crest was just an acknowledgment of the effort, the recognition of the willingness to go through all of the before part. For truly, if that wasn’t the case, what’s the point to the crest at all?
Back to “it’s never done.” Thank God. This means it’s never just one crest I get to experience, but several, sometimes back to back, and sometimes, months or even years in between. I will admit that a few decades ago, I was depressed. As a writer at the time, I worked on a short story about a woman (weirdly, my age) taking a bath (again weirdly, something I loved to do), mulling over the monotony of her life — get up, dress, eat, work, eat, work, eat, watch TV, go to bed, lather, rinse, repeat. And when she finally gets out of the tub, she slips and falls, hitting her head and … well, I left it up to the reader to decide if she got knocked unconscious or really died. Depressing, huh? That’s exactly how I saw it. “It never ends,” struck fear in my heart.
Luckily, my own story took a different turn. I found Yoga and Buddhism, meditation and community, all driven by an intuitive sense that something else was possible. I stopped telling myself that doing all the mundane tasks of life were boring, when actually, they were, after all, the tasks that made up life itself. If I weren’t doing them, I’d be dead. Getting out of bed in the morning became interesting, exciting; cooking became enjoyable, and eating more so. The acts of cleaning, sweeping, dusting, mopping, started to be satisfying in themselves (though I still at times become wistful about how quickly the spotlessness will be gone). However, my vision expanded and soon, starting a short story became as fun as finishing one. Until, that is, I began looking for publication, for accomplishing a final step, “putting it in stone,” grasping at the day I would write a one-hit wonder novel that would set me up for life, and I would never have to write again. Well, going for publication did just that — looking for an end to writing did indeed end it. I got stuck wanting a crest and dropped doing all the fun prep work of continuing to write.
That is, until “it’s never done” showed up. Hence, this blog you are reading. I’m finally getting it that there is no final point where all the tasks are finished. At each moment, something is finished (parking the car, saying goodbye, completing a purchase), and something is beginning (a new web search, a new meal, a wipe of the countertop), and, for each of these, they are done … until they are not. It’s another way of saying, there is no beginning, there is no end.
And so it continues. For surely, someone is going to leave a dirty dish in the sink, the babe is going to start to walk, the company is going to pivot and a job will be lost. And it all starts again, because life is never done. I now can relax in knowing that the continuation, the ever-changing process of living means just like the surfer’s knees that reflexively, intuitively bend to absorb the changes in the wave, I can simply bend my mind (thank you “Matrix”) and let go of any finality of “endings” and live in the beauty of beginning, and ending, again, and again, and again, and again.
About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.
