How Can Being Stuck Improve Your Intuition?
This Sunday, I rode my bike aimlessly through Berlin for the entire day. I was looking for something — a spirited feeling I accidentally met the day before from being out and about after an early doctor’s appointment. It was a feeling of lightness and spontaneity; of possibility just waiting for me to encounter it. It was the feeling that anything I chose to do with the rest of that day would be easily magical. I was high on it the way a Berliner at Berghain.
Enticed by the potential of a second day borne on this breeze, I tried to make it happen again. Psych! It didn’t work at all. Though I flung myself toward places where this breeze should have been easy to pick up, I was disappointed at every turn. At the Sunday Neuköln Fleamarket, I wanted to buy lavender oil from a vendor. He preferred to give all his attention to a woman in a long red dress with fiery curls fawning over his products (but coyly hinting she had no money) than to speak to me who had cash in hand. Shaking this off, I pushed myself to ride (my bicycle — no scooters for me without a German driver’s license!) through the vast green of the Tiergarten, believing that some grassy patch would invite me to set down and receive the inspiration I was waiting for. All I found were lawns fully occupied by people I didn’t want to be close to. I paid for an overpriced and undersized ice cream and felt ridiculous that I finished it before I even found a place to sit down.
Last try: bring it home by coasting along the Landwehr canal where all the punk swans make the rough banks feel like a techno fairy tale. Again nothing but waves of hipsters, hazy under clouds of tobacco and weed. I was falling flat on my face for the complete lack of uplift today. I resigned to just have a comforting bowl of ramen at Cocolo across the canal.
Nice try. Closed on Sunday. (What?)
By this point, I realized that this was actually the theme of the day: Chasing a feeling I had the day before, and repeatedly being disappointed at not getting it. I was doing everything I thought would help, but I simply couldn’t manifest the ease of spirit that came so unbidden yesterday. Instead, I realized that I’d just been living in my mind the entire day, thinking, figuring, strategizing about how to recreate the feeling of yesterday. I barely enjoyed any of the day.
That night, Geremia offered me the idea of “Tempo di bonaccia” — a time of waiting for the wind. Not to be confused with “Tempo di foccacia” — a time of waiting for the bread.
Tempo di bonaccia was what sailors of times past all experienced — from hours to days of waiting for the sails to catch a gust on the water. The image fit perfectly to the day I had. Not that I often look to nautical wisdom for what I am challenged by in my millennial life, but I found myself wondering: How did the sailors back then deal with this? How did they stay sane through the uncertainty of not knowing how long this time of not going anywhere would last?
How did they know if they should just follow the next breeze going in any direction, so long as there was some movement? How did they bear the burden of all their accumulating thoughts while simply waiting? After all, it’s probably the thinking that kills you more than anything.
And in the meanwhile, what did they do to pass the time?
Thinking back on the limited water lore I’ve read, I suppose that they kept their hands busy, so their minds could be calm. They crafted, exercised, played, wrote, knotted, roped, wove, cleaned, and repaired. And in those times, they would’ve had the chance to really develop skill in this other occupation. How many woodcarvers were born while waiting for the wind on the seas? And could it even have been a relief when the wind died down after a long sail so that one could rest from the duties at hand to pursue a craft? Could it be sometimes, that we might even be thankful for Tempo di bonaccia, if we can see it for what it is?
What if instead of thinking that there’s something wrong about not going anywhere when you think you should be crossing the finish line (every day, if possible — that’s what our impatient millennial hearts want), maybe getting stuck without a breeze is as natural as the ebb and flow of the waves. Could it be that sometimes the rhythms of things may seem unpredictable on the surface, but are well-governed by their own internal pace?
Wanting to get out of Tempo di bonaccia is wanting to change the weather. And unless you’re a really good rain dancer, probably the most peaceful way through is to just accept it and let it be for as long as it’s going to be. Or make a sacrifice to the ocean gods (See: How to Alter Weather with a Human Sacrifice).
But for real. There’s nothing to figure out about being dead in the water — the weather has its own inclement, and there’s no reason for it except what we assign to it ourselves.
Tempo di bonaccia is the perfect time to observe what we’re projecting onto the world — to observe the working patterns of the mind, and what it throws outward that show us what’s going on inward. Waiting for something to happen is a time to simply observe what the mind tries to do to make things fit into the narratives it carries. It gives the chance to be aware of our favourite storylines — the default directions that carry us along when we’re not looking.
How do you know if you are in Tempo di bonaccia? When you don’t feel a clear direction to things. When it’s hard to make decisions. When it feels hard to make things happen. When it feels not quite right, or easy to put things out into the world. When you notice yourself trying a lot — trying to do the ‘best’ thing. Trying to make it make sense. Trying to seek things or people to help you clarify what’s happening. When it’s just not clicking. When you feel disconnected from the world because you see others on their tracks, propelled by their personal winds, but you are sat still, a pocket of incomprehensible stillness.
Resting in the water is not a bad thing, just like the rhythm of the waves, the days and nights, and the seasons are not a bad thing. It only seems like a bad thing when we are effortfully straining to make it different from what it is.
Tempo di bonaccia is like the intermission that life provides when we’re not supposed to make the next part of the story happen, but use the time to rest, reflect, take care of some immediate needs, like going to the bathroom, getting a drink and a snack, and having a short and breezy chat with friends. Why struggle against an intermission? When there is an intermission, let yourself do intermission things. The show is only as long as your life, and if we’re to make it through, there had better be plenty of breaks. What’s the rush? Where are we going anyways, and couldn’t it be more healthy, and full of wonder and spontaneity if we allowed ourselves to look around from time to time instead of constantly straight ahead?
So how do we enjoy Tempo di bonaccia? Stop trying. Stop trying to make things happen. Stop trying to think yourself into the right way to do things; stop analyzing what the best way to spend your time is. Stop trying to find the reason why things are not happening as you want. Stop thinking that there is a way out of this seeming stillness. Stop thinking that you just need to figure it out. Stop pushing to make things happen.
There is nothing to force. It is a time of Yin; of receptivity. It is a time to allow the answers to take a while to reach you as soft voices on the wind. It is a time of deep listening and trusting so that the quiet voice of intuition can surface from the roiling ocean of the mind. Listen gently. Don’t listen with the ear of the mind — the 24-hour news station chatterbox, which sits in the front of the brain and prefers to interrogate, and force things to fit into shapes it understands. But listen with lightness, and let things very, very softly into yourself. Let things enter, instead of pushing things out. Use the time to rest. Inevitably, there will be the perception of a breeze, and perhaps with only a whisper of a message. It may seem frivolous. It may seem pointless. It may seem ridiculous. Just rest, and listen.
Tempo di bonaccia may feel like you have decisions to make, but that you lack information to do so. There may seem to be a piece missing before you feel able to close the circuit. You may not even know what the missing piece looks like, but you know you’ll know it when you see it.
How to better receive the message when it comes? Engage the hands and body to free the mind. Do crafts. Make Art. Clean the house. Do things that don’t require thinking, and figuring out. Do things that don’t require “progress” or a specific outcome. Just play. No trying. Trust that the right thing will do its own worn to find its way to you, as you are patiently waiting for it.
