On Breakdowns and Breakthroughs

As we watch the recent floods from Hurricane Irene and start to recall memories of 9/11, I'm thinking about that feeling when the power goes out, or something unexpected and important breaks down, and you have have no choice but to adjust to a new reality until your old one is restored. If it can be.

I definitely see breakdowns as an opportunity--to reboot, to unblock, to be reminded of other ways of assuming, and, if I'm conscious about it, to help me break out of a pattern that is not serving me. Crisis of some sort is often required for real change, even though some systems are so sclerotic (e.g., U.S. politics) that even crises don't appear to work. I'm wondering, though, might breakdowns actually be prerequisites to breakthroughs?

Okay, I ask because even though I've held it together pretty damn well, I've recently been experiencing my own flood of technological and other breakdowns--no kidding, my computer, land line, cell phone, scooter, car and body have all recently blown a gasket of some sort. I'm generally thrilled to say I have finally crossed back over and am now writing this on a brand new iMac. I'm more hesitant to admit that I'm going in tomorrow to be knocked out and cut up and returned home to heal and soon, God- and universe-willing, be softball-swinging even better than before.

So right now I'm trying to make sense of it all by concluding that I've been breaking down so I can continue to break out, that when the power goes out and my phone is dead the next thing I know I am enjoying the company of the too-long-avoided neighbors and planning a block party. Yes. I'm going to conclude that these breakdowns will soon be followed by breakthroughs that even now I have yet to imagine.

"The cocoon of middle age habit"

I'm still thinking about the reactions I got last night at a networking event when I asked for folks who wanted to join in on an impromptu musical jam (There was a stage with sundry instruments ready to go--how could I resist?). Simple questions ("Do you play any musical instrument? Sing a little? Want to join us?") were met with such revulsion, such instant "No Way"s and "You don't want me to"s that you would have thought I was inviting them to commit a heinous crime.

Despite our amazing expansion of personal freedom and choices, I often wonder if the permission we give ourselves to experiment creatively has changed much in the past 100 years. Let me dip into the archive for a little 20th century inspiration still relevant today.

"A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle age habit and convention." ~Aldous Huxley

"This creative power should be kept alive in all people for all their lives. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.
How can we keep it alive? By using it, by letting it out, by giving some time to it. But if we are women we think it is more important to wipe noses and carry doilies than to write or two play the piano. And men spend their lives adding and subtracting and dictating letters when they secretly long to write sonnets and burst into tears at the sunset.
They do not know that this is a fearful sin against themselves. They would be much greater now, more full of light and power, if they had really written the sonnets and played the fiddle and wept over sunsets, as they wanted to." ~Brenda Ueland, "If You Want to Write" (1938)