What My Damaged Eye Teaches Me About Practicing Peacefulness

Practicing peacefulness is the theme I’ve been invited to write about. Ironically, at this moment, when I sit down to write about peacefulness, I am feeling the opposite of peaceful.

My mind has already visited a hundred places this morning, and none of those places feel like the kind of metaphorical peaceful garden I would like to have permanent residence in. I’ve been cycling through anxiety, frustration, discouragement, and self-doubt – almost everything other than peace.

Three weeks ago, my life became suddenly chaotic and unpredictable. I had flown across the country to help move my daughter from one city to another, and, while I was driving the U-Haul van on a busy highway, realized that I was going blind in one eye. I was diagnosed with a severely detached and torn retina and had to fly quickly home to have two emergency surgeries.

This morning, I’m having to reckon with the possibility that there is likely permanent damage in that eye. Plus, there is an increased risk that the same may happen in the other eye. I will probably never see the world as clearly as I once did. I don’t know what that means for my future, but I do know that my mind has a way of catastrophizing and amplifying every problem in my life simultaneously until everything feels like it’s falling apart.

So today, as I sit down at my computer to contemplate the practice of peace, I am doing so from a very human and humble perspective, inviting myself as much as you, the reader, into a reflection of what it means to practice peace in times of disruption.

What will I do in this moment to practice peace? Firstly, I will remind myself that the practice of peace is more about developing the skills to return to peace than it is about living in peace. None of us can take up permanent residence in that metaphorical peaceful garden – life throws us too many challenges. Instead, we practice in order to bring our bodies, souls, and nervous systems back into a state of equilibrium each time there is a disruption. If we are faithful to the practice, we may find it takes us less and less time to return to peace.

Secondly, I won’t chase away or shame myself for those emotions and thoughts that aren’t peaceful. I will greet them with mindfulness, noticing them come and then letting them go. I will be tender with myself instead of treating myself unkindly for simply being human. I will remember the impermanence of thoughts and feelings and won’t let myself get stuck in them.

Thirdly, I will return to the tried-and-true practices that have helped me return to peace in the past. I will write about it in my journal and try to make meaning of the experience I’m having. I will head out to the woods and sit quietly among the trees and the moss. I will reach out to a friend who knows how to hold space for me when I am struggling. I will write a gratitude list and reflect on the ways that I’ve felt loved and supported during this challenging time.

In this way, I will do what I spend a lot of time teaching other people to do – I will hold space for myself, with tenderness and grace.

When I look at my computer screen through both of my eyes – the one that still sees clearly and the one that is distorted – I can’t focus on the words on the page. The good eye becomes handicapped by the distortion of the damaged eye. Only when I close the damaged eye can I focus well enough with the good eye to write this.

That feels like a fitting metaphor for the ways in which we hold space for ourselves when we are trying to return to peace. When a disruption happens, there is a part of the brain that becomes like the damaged eye, distorting everything with its tendency to spiral into fear and stories of catastrophe. This part of the brain hijacks the nervous system and handicaps the other parts of the brain and the body. The parts of the brain that engage in higher level thinking (the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) cannot function well when the world is distorted by the catastrophizing part (the amygdala).

To see more clearly, and make our way back to peace, we develop practices that, in essence, allow us to “close the damaged eye” and rely on the eye that can still see clearly. We practice self-regulation, co-regulation, and eco-regulation (in relationship with the natural world) which helps to soothe the activated amygdala and nervous system. We practice gratitude which helps us see the world through a less catastrophizing lens. We engage in conversations with people who help to soothe us and open new perspectives.

In time, when the damaged eye has had time to heal and we are, once more, at peace, we open that eye again and we learn to adapt to whatever the disruption has left behind in its wake.