It wasn’t about repetition
Today’s Be With Mansi wasn’t about repetition, even though that was our theme.
It was about interruption.
Bodies interrupting identity. Pain interrupting productivity. Aging interrupting illusion. Caregiving interrupting control. Stillness interrupting momentum.
We went around the room.
One person is navigating a new diagnosis and learning, through a book and a one-minute exercise, that their brain has been cycling between pain and the anticipation of pain — on repeat, all day, without them realizing it. They said when they painted it was the only time they didn’t feel pain … like remembering who they used to be before their body changed the conversation.
One person fell and fractured two bones. They spent time in a rehab hospital, in a wheelchair, relearning the things they’d always taken for granted. A nurse cornered them and, in her own way, told them the universe was trying to get their attention. They almost pushed back. They’re glad they didn’t. It took them three hours to get ready this morning just to be here. They said it felt important enough.
One person is a caregiver to their father. Their days don’t have a predictable shape anymore. They told us their repetition right now isn’t the same thing every day — it’s just any amount of time, even ten minutes, to honor what they need.
One person said what I think everyone was feeling: there is an underlying exhaustion that no amount of sleep fixes. It’s the exhaustion of continuing to show up for a life that keeps ending things you thought would stay. And every time, the answer — so far — has been yes. Keep going.
One person reminded us that sometimes it’s really shitty. And that amidst the brokenness, two ducks spend an afternoon in a little hot tub, and we’re mesmerized. There’s beauty there.
One person came for the first time. They thought it would be an art demo. It wasn’t. They stayed anyway because they needed to be seen.
Repetition is just the surface pattern. The deeper truth is that life keeps interrupting the story we thought we were living. And my role — if I have one — is to hold people inside those interruptions without rushing them back to normal.
There was a through-line across every share: I don’t recognize my life right now... but I’m still here.
Through memory lapses, caregiving, fractured bodies, chronic pain, emotional exhaustion, loss, fear — and yet we all showed up. That’s devotion to continuing anyway.
I shared my own. The ER visit two weeks ago. My hand falling off the steering wheel. The neurologist who’s ordered more than just some basic tests. The first thought being: what do I do if my hands don’t work?
I’m a maker. That question goes to the center of everything.
And then I made something. In the last five minutes of being together.
I’ll cut this up and turn it into tokens for the Ripple Station™ outside by my mailbox which has felt neglected in the last two weeks that I haven’t painted.
Whatever was within arm’s reach. I finger-painted with fluorescent red and yellow on watercolor paper. Someone tore paper — just tore it, slowly, while listening — and found it the most calming thing they’d done all week. Someone made watercolor circles and watched them bleed into each other. Someone pulled out supplies they hadn’t touched in months.
Nobody made anything remarkable. And it was ok. They weren’t supposed to. That’s not why we gathered. That’s really not the point of these Zoom calls.
This room isn’t a workshop. I’ll go so far as saying it isn’t even a community, not in the way that word gets used.
It’s closer to a living organism of shared witnessing. People don’t perform insight here. We simply share our truth.
We arrive mid-process, we contradict ourselves, we ask questions without answers, we cry without resolution, we make things without outcome.
I said in the call today that we carry on because we hope something will be different.
But it’s not that something will be different. It’s that we become someone slightly different by staying.
That’s the real repetition.
માનસી
