These days, with four broken bones in my foot, I’ve taken to tooling around New York City on a knee scooter. As you might imagine, the ride is bumpy. My scooter is the opposite of a mountain bike; its wheels are petite and fragile and it takes nothing more than a twig or pebble to tip it over. I’ve gone flying numerous times, landing on my broken foot and in excruciating pain.

As I’ve gotten more skilled as a scooter pilot however, I’ve noticed something important about what makes for a hard ride and what makes it easier. It seems that the rougher the road, the more precarious my path, the tighter I tended to grip onto the handlebars, to tense my body and brace against the bouncing and jostling of the vehicle. The more turbulence I met, the more rigid I became in body and mind. As a result of the chronic bracing and constriction, I ended up with a spasming upper back and strained pectoral muscles, which made taking a deep breath an impossibility.

But I also noticed, thankfully, and just in time to trade in my scooter for my own feet, that if I opened my hands, loosened my grip just slightly when the bumps came, relaxed my upper body as the scooter tried to right itself in the uneven terrain, if I just allowed the bumping, tilting, and shaking to happen, remarkably, I didn’t tip over. The scooter adjusted and found its way back to smoothness without my having to mount a fight against it, and without my having to break anything else along the way. 

In life, when the bumps come, when the road gets rough, as it has been for all of us of late, we tend to brace against it, fight with it, and try to control it. When we lose our job, the doctor calls with bad news, our marriage falls apart, or this gigantic bump, the pandemic arrives, we resist, brace, tense our minds and bodies, and (understandably) fight against what we don’t want. The more difficulty life delivers, the more unpredictability and impermanence, the tighter we grip onto what we know, what we have, an imaginary safety and permanence. We cling to an idea of what we had and what we’re losing. The more flexibility life demands, the more rigid we become, and the more we suffer. 

When life throws us curveballs, or balls that hit us smack in the knee, we suffer not only from the pain of our smashed kneecap, but equally (if not more), from the thought that this shouldn’t be happening to us. We “shouldn’t” get hit in the knee, we don’t deserve that, this is not the life we signed up for. We get stuck in the idea of what our life “should” look like—which, for sure, is not this. We fight against reality, a reality, by the way, that has no interest in our protestations. article continues after advertisement

We not only brace against reality, cling onto an idea of how our life “should” be, but at the same time, we personalize the bumps in our path. We deny the truth, that everyone struggles and every human life includes difficulty, which means us too and our life. We reject the fact that we are not different from other humans, that we too will encounter bumps, and that this is indeed the human condition.

When difficulty arrives, we are temporarily shattered out of our uniqueness, out of our delusion that we are magically protected from hard times. But, we continue imagining that we are different and that our challenges are happening specifically to and against us. We feel punished, victimized, and personally deprived of what we deserve, burdened with difficulties that “shouldn’t” be, and that we “shouldn’t” have to endure. The result: We suffer more.  

So, what does loosening our grip on the handlebars look like in real life? In reality, what does it mean to relax our body and mind, to allow the bumps in the road, ride through the chop without bracing against it, stay loose when the ground and we are shaking?

To begin with, it means that we stop fighting with the truth, stop bracing against what’s happening: the reality of the bumps. It means that we release the idea that this can’t be happening. Whether we want it or not, this is happening, this is our reality for now. The bumps in the road are here. That’s the inarguable truth, which doesn’t mean we like it or will stop doing what we can do to make it better. But the sooner we accept our reality, the sooner we can start adapting to it, righting ourselves within it. 

More than anything else, we need to release this dangerous and damaging idea about the way our life “should” be going and what “should” be happening to us. We must see through this notion that our life is inherently different from all other lives and therefore, protected from pain. And, that we are somehow entitled to a life that is without big bumps.article continues after advertisement

To wish for a smooth and easy life, without great hardship, is natural and healthy, but to be tortured and feel punished by the fact that our life is like other lives, with its share of suffering and struggle, is to force ourselves to suffer senselessly and more than necessary. Human life includes hardship. You are human. You do the math. 

So too, releasing our grip on the handlebars involves acceptance. This bump, this boulder, dragon, wildfire, or crevasse in our path, is not something we can control; it’s bigger than us. What it’s doing here, why the universe put it in our path, we don’t know and may never know. This involves that most profound step we call surrender. When we truly surrender to the fact that we cannot wish, work, buy, pray, seduce, or strategize this challenge away, that it’s here whether we want it or not, then, we are on our way to a smoother ride and a different sort of serenity.  

Simultaneously, relaxing in the face of difficulty includes considering the possibility that there might something for us to learn from this bumpy path. While this broken pavement is a huge and scary obstacle now, perhaps something in all this turbulence can serve us later and help us grow. Perhaps something in all this difficulty and pain will help us be of service to others in some way at some time. While we can’t yet know what good might come from all this, staying open to this possibility, even when it seems unthinkable, can help us relax and roll with more ease. article continues after advertisement

As you roll through your life and encounter the bumps that every life contains, contemplate what it might mean to loosen your grip on the handlebars, to stop bracing against the ride. Ask yourself what that would look like in your own life. See if there’s a way to let go of the fight with reality, even when you absolutely despise your reality. Consider whether there’s anywhere or any way to relax with and within the reality that’s here, for now.

What’s certain is that when we brace against the challenges of life, fight with reality, reject our human vulnerability, rigidify our body and mind … when we do it that way, we strain other muscles, break other bones, and ultimately, we suffer, more than we have to. Counterintuitively, when we give ourselves the gift of relaxation, of softness, and acceptance; when we roll with not against our situation, we offer ourselves the smoothest ride possible on an inherently bumpy road. Strength and toughness are great skills, but it’s our ability to relax and roll when life gets hard that ultimately determines our resilience and wellbeing.

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Neuroplasticity, neural networks, neurotransmitters, neurochemicals, neural cortexes, synaptic reactions, the amygdala, the cerebral cortex, bi-naural beats, brain waves… these are the words we now hear when discussing life.  Science has officially kidnapped the human experience.

A few examples: neuroscience has now proven that meditation leads to increased gray matter in the brain, and thus to better learning and memory.  Also, that meditation increases the part of the brain that produces feelings of love, compassion and forgiveness.  Love, on the other hand, has been scientifically shown to produce the hormone dopamine, which creates pleasure, and also stimulate norepinephrine, which raises blood pressure and heart rate. In addition, love lowers serotonin, the chemical associated with feeling in control, and thus we now know that instability and anxiety are neurologically induced by love.  In another laboratory, scientists demonstrated that courage is created when the prefrontal region called the subgenual cingulate cortex is activated, thereby dampening bodily-related responses to fear.  Name the experience, we can now prove that it exists biologically, how it exists and why it exists.

I have been meditating for many years.  I know, from my own experience, that the practice makes me feel more compassionate, spacious, grounded and present.  I’ve also fallen in love.  I know that love makes me feel happy, and also short of breath at times.  I know that when I am courageous, I feel willing to face my fear, proud, and also connected to a sense of personal growth.  I don’t need neuroscience to tell me that any of this is happening, my own experience tells me what is inarguably true.

Truth be told, we don’t need our own personal experience or felt senses any longer, we have science to tell us what we are experiencing, and to confirm that it is real and believable.  We don’t need to know God any longer, science itself is our new God.

Why suddenly do we need to prove or demonstrate that what we are living is really happening, and explainable, rational, concrete.  Why do we now need neuroscience to validate that what we are subjectively experiencing is actually objectively occurring?  Do we believe that by knowing what love looks like in the brain, how our brain responds to love, we will be able to recreate it?

Our increasing deference and dependence on science is in part a result of our ever-deepening relationship with technology.  In the digital age, our attention is perpetually focused externally, at a device and what that device provides, and rarely if ever turned inward, into ourselves.  That which we value and are interested in is now located somewhere outside us, but no longer within us.  Our own personal experience, internal truth, is no longer something we consider important, worthy or even reliable.  The tether into our own felt sense, intuition, and deep knowledge has been cut.

Furthermore, in the process of figuring out the science of our experience, intellectualizing and objectifying the subjective and emotional world, we are relinquishing supremely important and joyful parts of being human.  To name a few: mystery, wonder, awe, humbleness of the sort that comes from not knowing how and why life works—the unfathomability of living this human experience.

This summer I watched a breath-taking sunset with someone who educated me on the neuroscience of beauty, and how we determine it, just as the sky was fading into a shocking pink and shimmering lavender.  What I really wanted in that moment was to be breathless, and feel beauty—not hear about its synaptic reactions.  For me, the fact that there is a sky, one that turns pink and lavender, that pink and lavender exist, and that there’s an “I” who gets to see all of it—is plenty.

I personally love mystery; I love knowing that I don’t know everything, that there is something larger than me in play.  I love the sense of surrender that comes in accepting my smallness in the vastness.  With technology however, has come a need to know everything, to break life down into knowable and provable facts.  But sadly, the knowing about life can hinder and even replace the experience of living it.  Cracking the code on life, knowing that an experience is happening, and why, is a paltry substitute for living it directly and experiencing it for ourselves.

Fact is, there’s nothing wrong with understanding neuroscience and how it relates to life—it’s fascinating and wonderful.  And it’s not about burying one’s head in the sand and avoiding knowledge.  The problems arise however, when we:

1.  Start believing that we need to prove how and why our experience is happening in order to trust and know that it is happening.

2. Defer to science and award it with authority, over and in place of our own experience, heart and gut.

3. Substitute our knowledge about the experience for the (felt) experience itself.

In addition, when science proves the existence of an experience, say, that love generates dopamine, which then brings pleasure, it is also suggesting that the experience is the same for everyone.  But this is false.  We all experience love, pleasure, and every other emotion differently.  By suggesting that our experience is just a scientific event, just cause and effect, we are robbing ourselves of the exquisite subtlety of our own experience, and denying what makes us special as individual human beings.  While the chemicals released might be similar for each person living a particular experience, how we live it, which is so much more than chemicals, is what makes the experience meaningful, and is part of what makes us who we are.

Something remarkable and indescribable happens when we investigate and marinate in our own truth—what the body knows.  And even more remarkable, when we value and trust that truth, prove-able or not, to be our guide.

Our own experience is our greatest teacher and source of wisdom.  Don’t turn away from what is for you just because science tells you it has the answers, your answers.  Don’t turn away from your own knowing in deference to a magnetic resonance image.

Right now, ask yourself, What are you experiencing? What does your body know?  What is true for you? Turn your attention back inside yourself, into your own unique experience.  Remember that you already hold the answers to what is real and true—for you.

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