How Going Deeper Can Lead to a Richer Life

During the COVID pandemic, life changed in many ways for all of us. We are still finding the effects of this scary and totally unusual time in our lives. While most pandemic stories were sad and filled with loss, just as many wonderful, inspiring, and significant stories changed lives and how we look at life. I have a story from that time that has had a major impact on my view of life; it also came with corresponding practical actions. We can then apply the key learning from that story to a question that I have had and continue to grapple with in my life. 'What if the life we are seeking is not somewhere else, but deeper inside the life we already have and are experiencing currently? For me, the pandemic held a great risk, as I have a blood disease that lowers my immune response. We were all hearing stories of people with compromised immune systems dying from the COVID virus. This meant that our family sheltered in place and, when possible, we spent time outside with family and friends. Source: Julia Cameron / Pexels A few months into the COVID pandemic, my partner Teresa and I decided to form a pod of four with another couple, who live near us in the northeastern corner of Connecticut. Within several months of dinner and lively, deep conversations, four to five times a week, we all noticed profound changes in our 20-year relationship. We each noticed changes in ourselves, and we noticed that our relationship as two couples changed. We became more open and trusting, laughed more, and most of all, had deeper, more meaningful discussions on many topics. I started perceiving aspects of our relationship and each person in ways that were very new and different. I found myself more open, inquisitive, interested, accepting, trusting, and most of all, more loving with the 'COVID pod members of northwest Connecticut.' This experience inspired me to dig deeper into how sustained, deeper attention to relationships, questions, experiences, and parts of ourselves reveals more when we are with them a moment longer, instead of rushing on to the next thing or a quick resolution. The four of us were together so often that it created something magical in the group and in each of us. I challenge you to contrast this deepening with the more familiar modern-day experience: finishing or skimming an article or book before absorbing it, reaching for the phone during planned silence, changing subjects when a conversation becomes vulnerable, or looking for the next experience before inhabiting the present one. The essential tension is that we often equate growth with novelty and change. Might it be more likely that the most important things reveal themselves more through the willingness to be present and go deeper? 'To linger a bit longer' than we normally feel comfortable? Here are some other examples: When a conversation approaches vulnerability, we redirect it. When grief begins to surface, we become busy. When a recurring pattern becomes more visible, we tend to explain it away. And lastly, when a relationship beckons us to change, we retreat to the familiar. Many of us are dependent on things like our phone, work, or TV time. From this lens, they are less conscious and move us more horizontally than vertically and deeper in our lives. With the vast amount of information available, we are dependent and we want more; correspondingly, we have fewer opportunities for depth of meaning or deeper conversations. In addition, authentic curiosity and authentic conversation are harder and take more courage and discipline. Decisions are easier when you can make them through a narrower perspective, but danger comes when we make those decisions through the lens of bias; most of the time, we confirm our biases. All of this points to a vastly more transaction-based society where we no longer deepen our thinking or conversations; we push down emotions and push toward quick resolutions. Staying five minutes longer is a simple practice. Choose one conversation, feeling, question, or experience. When you feel the impulse to move on, stay five minutes longer, and ask yourself: What becomes visible only because I stayed and made myself more available to the depth of the moment? The following is a series of questions that we can reconsider in our lives. What if the life that you are seeking is already here and available and you just aren't seeing it? What is the difference and the impact between moving on and going deeper? What would it take for me to stop searching for more and start going deeper? What if I asked one more question even when I felt like I knew the answer? Let me conclude with a tie-back to the story about our friends who we sheltered in place with during the pandemic. Years later, it is even more evident that we transformed our relationship by going deeper and staying longer during that time. Our relationships have been literally transformed, and I am very pleased to say that I am, and we are, staying longer and going deeper with many others in our lives. There is an alternative to always searching outside of ourselves that may lead us to the following. What if we stay and not search for the next thing? By cultivating the practice of deepening, you could find a richer life experience.