“I like the idea of having compassion for the different parts of myself and my experience, feeling different on different days and accepting each of those days as they come. In practice, though …”
I live with a chronic health condition, and I’ve only ever made a provisional kind of peace with that aspect of my experience. I think that’s why the concept of inner hospitality, or welcoming my experiences rather than fighting them, has so fascinated me.
I first encountered the idea of inner hospitality in the writings of Christine Valters Paintner at the Abbey of the Arts. The idea took hold of my imagination, especially in connection with health-related challenges. And so, it felt meaningful to get to reflect on inner hospitality this past summer in Abbey of the Arts’ “Monk in the World” guest blog series. I don’t often write about my health, but reflecting on it with the community where I first encountered the concept of inner hospitality felt right. Now, it’s also feeling right to pause from my blog’s attention to fiction and creative writing this year in order to share my reflection on inner hospitality here. How we feel makes a difference, after all. It impacts one’s thinking, creating, functioning–everything.
How we feel is worth writing and talking about. And so, I share.
Read on for “Inner Hospitality on Those Different Days.”
Inner Hospitality on Those Different Days
My friend stopped his bike on the trail in front of me, sniffed the air, and asked, “Do you smell it?”
“What?”
“The animal smell.”
I breathed in. Nothing.
“It’s that gamey scent,” he tried again. “You don’t smell it?”
Was it a bad smell? An unwashed body smell? I had no idea. “What’s ‘gamey’ mean?”
“It smells … different.”
I shook my head, not smelling anything unusual. We scanned the trees but saw nothing. Eventually, we rode on.
It didn’t really bother me that I couldn’t smell the “gamey” scent my friend did. Not having the most sensitive nose, I knew I didn’t smell everything my friends smelled. In fact, I didn’t experience quite a few things as my friends experienced them.
With a chronic health condition, my body does things differently. It means me having different experiences compared to my friends. It also means me having different experiences compared to myself from one day to the next. I never quite know how I’ll feel. It’s a reason I’ve found the idea of “inner hospitality” so challenging. Theoretically, I like the idea of having compassion for the different parts of myself and my experience, feeling different on different days and accepting each of those days as they come. In practice, though, I’ve dreaded my bad days as much as I’d dread becoming the source of a bad, “gamey” kind of smell, myself.
Of all things, learning to mountain bike reminded me of this, showing me how little I’d accepted certain parts of my experience. It humbled me.
Many days I enjoyed those bike rides through the woods. I gained control of my bike, managed more obstacles, and kept up better with my friends. I noticed deer nibbling at underbrush, an eagle who’d sit on a birch branch over the river, and once even a baby racoon hanging from a tree. I enjoyed those bike rides immensely.
But other days felt different. My body’s response times slowed. My depth perception shifted, too. Rather than build up speed, as I consistently tried to do, I had to slow down. I had to focus even more intentionally on safety. Sometimes, if my coordination suffered too much, I stayed home from the bike trail altogether.
Staying home felt hard to do. Part of how I’d managed my condition over the years was to pursue normal activities as much as possible regardless of how I felt. I’d often functioned well enough, ignoring (and hiding) how I felt whenever I could.
Until the mountain bike trail. Until the activity that wouldn’t let me to push through “different” days as if they didn’t exist. Some days I had to admit I didn’t feel well and change my plans. To the practices of balancing my body with the bike and strategizing pedal strokes around obstacles, I added the practice of acknowledging my vulnerability to myself and to others. It’s a level of self-acceptance that I’m still developing. And yet, the idea of inner hospitality, of practicing gentleness and compassion will all aspects of my experience, has felt like a truly helpful frame.
As have the bike trails.
My body is not, after all, the only source of “difference” cropping up along those trails. Sometimes fallen leaves obscure surfaces. Sometimes broken branches block paths. Black snakes may drape their long bodies across the dirt to lay in the sun. And I’ve noticed other mountain bikers tending not to treat these trail variations as anything like a bad smell wafting along the breeze. On the contrary.
I’ve seen fellow mountain bikers relish navigating different trail conditions. Snapping pictures, they post on social media about how they’ve handled things. They tell one another stories in the trail parking lot. They compare how different bike suspension levels and tire designs handle variations on the trail. It’s as if tackling these differences brings them a fascinating challenge.
Obstacles, constraints, any number of “different” conditions—whether they arrive on bike trails, with unusual and “gamey” scents, or inside my own body—I don’t need to wrinkle my nose at them. I’ve been realizing this. The source of the differences is life, and I want to approach life, even the most humbling parts, with a little more fascination and compassion than frustration.
I do think my perspective is getting there, however slowly.
I remember one of those “different” days when I paused from an especially slow-paced bike ride. I needed the pause. Fatigue had hit me hard. However, sipping from my water bottle, my attention shifted beyond myself. I became aware of smelling something … odd.
Only when I glanced around did I see it: a buck. I’d never encountered one so close before. He had a huge body on an entirely different scale than the slender does I usually saw. This massive creature with its curving antlers stared at me.
I stared back. It crossed my mind to grab my camera, but then the buck loped away through the trees while I only stood there, still too stunned to move.
I’d just learned what a “gamey” smell meant, and it didn’t smell bad. Just musky, woodsy, distinctive. And different though the day had felt, I wouldn’t have traded it for a “normal” day. I’d have missed too much.
Callie J. Smith 