Stuck 🎋

Bamboo is bendy, but what if your situation isn't?

Bamboo Well

One day, I was stuck in the tiniest tree well of Bamboo while skiing in Japan. Now, if you know, you know. If you don’t know…read on:

If you ever make your introductions to a baby bamboo tree well, it’s the fastest way to humility by way of humiliation. They look adorable, but are deadly. Bamboo have a thin trunk with thin long leaves branching out and so in the fluffy Japanese snow create little forest trap zones, funnelling loose snow at the bottom that never settles in on itself. If you get too close and fall, you are trapped with the bottom constantly falling out under you. It’s a horrible feeling.

My particular specimen was only chest high (the bamboo, not the well, that would have been impressive) a dainty little thing, and as I wiggled and huffed beneath it trying to get a grip with my skis on it’s smooth trunk it seemed to look down at me and...mock me?

What we do when we get stuck

How we get stuck varies, sometimes it’s an abrupt awakening like skiing into a bamboo, or having an epiphany and recognising we are in the wrong job, marriage or indeed, train cart. Mostly, it will be a mix of these two particular versions of hell.

Once we notice we’re stuck we go through a set of responses. First, there’s the shock absorbance directly after impact. These reactions are visceral and an attempt at life affirmation. Deep breaths, frantic assessment of escape routes, maybe a scream or swearing, sometimes a swell of panic.

Then we do the attempted escape. A frantic wriggle and hustle. The mental acrobatics and physical work of applying to different jobs with no timely results, reworking the budget to see if you could afford to live alone again, googling “can bamboo actually laugh at me?”. This is accompanied by the steady hum of trying to analyse the error: “How did I get here? Why am I so stupid? What exactly did I misunderstand?”

Sinking deeper

If you’ve ever actually gotten stuck in snow you’ll know the more frantically you try and wriggle your way out the deeper you burry yourself.

Now, you notice you’re sinking deeper, cue the self-help books and the wellness gurus who tell you to “reframe the problem”!

Aka: “years ago you would have been happy to be stuck in this position” - “gratitude makes hope sustainable” - “you’re not stuck, you’re being planted”, and my favourite: “just manifest”. 🙄

And sure, these help alleviate the pain of stuck-ness for a minute or two, but the moment that goddamn bamboo leaf tickles your face again and you can’t brush it away BECAUSE you’re ACTUALLY stuck, the reframing efforts just expose themselves as what they are: an illusion. Albeit a comforting one, yet still, unequivocally, an illusion.

The unfairness of the systems come crashing over you, and all but reconfirm that indeed, you are not just stuck, but to an extent, helpless.

Now, the real work begins.

Realities

You can’t forgo trying to escape the sticky situation, since trying is what lets you know if you’re actually stuck. There are no shortcuts here, unless you are a professional victim and just collapse into someone else carrying your responsibility, but that’s a story for another time.

If trying to help yourself by wriggling and reframing hasn’t (yet) or cannot work because of immovable realities, like power structures, dependants, age, economic circumstance, timing, etc. you have three options:

1) Settle in for the long haul. Endurance. Remind yourself of the stamina you have, the fortitude it already to took to get to where you got stuck in the first place.

Even the bamboo tree well isn’t immune to spring. The snow will melt, your tenacity will pay off.

“I don’t have that kind of time, I’ll starve or freeze to to death” you say.

If that is correct, you now must:

2) Ask and hope for help to arrive. Don’t let pride get in the way. Because I mean actual help. Not a career coach who’ll give you supervisory recommendations, or a relationship influencer who tells you to “just love yourself”.

Ask and hope for someone with a shovel who’ll help dig you out. A ski patroller who’s a part-time arborist. A social worker who can help you work the system. A friend who will let you stay on their couch. Someone in the dirt next to you. Sweating, struggling, swearing down in the dumps with you. Wielding a threatening saw over the bamboo or whatever traps you, if he won’t release you.

If help doesn’t physically arrive after you’ve asked for it, which is also a very real possibility, all you’re left with is with option 3.

3) Make peace with the fact, that yes, you may never become unstuck. What will life look like of you never do?

Is it a life still worth living?

This will prime you for deep, honest, acceptance, and in that, maybe you’ll even look up and notice that the bamboo is kinda pretty in the dawn light. So your senses open and you look around in peace, which in turn will make you more likely to recognise help and opportunity.

In time, one of the three things will happen:

The snow will melt and you’ll naturally become unstuck.

You never become unstuck, but you’ll be at peace.

Or, maybe, in that peace, you’ll be able to see someone materialise on the horizon holding a shovel.

Godspeed my friends.

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