Crisis Is Choice: New Understanding and Possibilities
The Brink of Upheaval
Have you ever been in a situation faced with an important challenge that felt insurmountable by your usual methods of coping and problem solving? Into every life flows crisis. Every breath rides on the brink of upheaval. Every human beat of a heart holds within it a turning point, a crossroads. A time, when the “old way” or the “comfortable way” or even maybe the “only way” we know, is threatened. Threatened and challenged and possibly found to be unusable. What once was our key to our future has become a useless artifact of a past once perfectly fitted.
Who Holds the Key?
They can take so many forms: You catch your husband cheating on you or you make a vow to stay with someone through thick and thin. You have a week to live or you’re gonna be a new daddy. Or maybe you got fired or ran out of money. What you thought was true is not. What you thought was not, is. These are cataclysmic crisis situations. At these crossroads, we must make a choice. Continue to use old ways and methods that are no longer working? Or, I shudder to speak it, change…our…ways. Ouch, no thanks. Most times I would rather blame outside forces who are conspiring against me than admit that I myself may need a course correction. Hubris will get you every damn time. However, these are sacred, life-altering times these so-called incipient moments of crisis.
Crisis As Opportunity
This week we will crack open our moments of crisis. We will train ourselves to view these moments as opportunities to find new paths we never saw before. Most know about the Chinese word for crisis and how some people say it means “danger” plus “opportunity.” Here are my 2 cents: Wei (危) means “danger.” Ji (机) means “a point of juncture. Danger is easy to grasp. Danger means something that is potentially harmful, risky or not preferred. It is mysterious and requires your full undivided attention if you wish to go unscathed. A juncture is where two things join and generally seems to be risky business. So much can go wrong…or right. Any union can be challenging and fraught with difficulties. When two become one and that one is, at the same time, a product of what came before, and yet, at the same time, new and altogether itself!
Welcome the New
What two things are coming together in the Chinese idea of crisis? That’s right, you and your new way of dealing with your life! You and a new way of thinking. You and a revised method of living. Loving your life again and in new ways never fathomed before. This is a crisis on a monumental level. Your olds ways have admittedly failed. But not all of you has failed. Just certain ideas and behaviors have betrayed our true futures. A new method can be learned and applied. It will be dangerous and difficult. However, if we “refuse to let a good crisis go to waste” as Winston Churchill quipped once, we will reap the inevitable boons. We may even learn, like an ancient master, to (dare I say?) welcome crisis. Welcoming crisis? Audacity! Yes. Believe this. Points of juncture are inherently dangerous. They are also inherently rewarding.
Crisis Is a Blessing
There is an image in Zen Buddhism involving yanas. A yana is a vehicle. A way to get from one place of understanding to another place of understanding. You find yourself on an unhappy shore in a land of confusion and sorrow. You see across the water, a new land! A land of clarity and joy. You must get there. But how? You construct a yana. In this case, a boat. With tremendous effort, you row yourself to the other shore and find yourself on the beaches of your desired goal. Clarity and joy abound. You walk off into this new world…carrying your boat on your back. Food for thought: Crisis is derived from a Greek word which is spelled krisis. It means “decision.” That is what a crisis forces, a choice. Crisis is a blessing. It opens your mind up to new understandings and new possibilities to explore.
