Debatable Insights #11-20
Meditations for ordinary people
Your daughter asks you to sit in her room while she reads her books and then tucks herself in and smiles at you as she sinks into sleep knowing that she is safe with you on the floor. There is nothing more you need to do today. No problem to solve. No treasure to find. Just this bright jewel.
You cannot make a decision. You feel the tension in your body of being pulled in different directions by imaginary straps, but the choice is simple. Show compassion, to everyone and everything. Do not get in the car with anger and discrimination. They will speed off if you give them a wave. Do not be fooled by the cloudy weather. It is only here for a short while to help you appreciate the light that is always shining. When you feel the straps tighten again, pressing against your chest and face, look for their genesis—with compassion—and you will find that no one is holding the other end. They will go slack, and you can can step from that moment into this one.
Through substance and activity, you try to numb your pain. You try to make yourself busy so that you are not bored. You seek distraction, and you wonder why you feel so unsettled. Your body yearns to return to a state of emptiness, yet there is a much simpler path than the labyrinth you have constructed. Notice your need for productivity. Notice the itch to search for solutions, an endless merry-go-round of new problems bubbling to the surface. Can you be still and watch them float away into emptiness?
One of the keys to life is distinguishing between work that needs to be done and work that doesn’t. Other people test you with this. They tell you that you need to buy this product or acquire this new habit or take on this new hustle. However, when you are seeing clearly, you realize that all of this extra work does not need to be done. So much of it is boosting your ego, masking your fear that you are an inadequate failure. It’s like all of the unnecessary supplements you take. How are these helping when they become extra work? For the promise of optimization you sell your freedom, moment by moment. Don’t miss this pill or else...what? You will run a step slower? You will die 2 days sooner? The dishes need to be done. That is a part of keeping a clean house. The body needs exercise. That is required to have a strong heart. You must contribute to your community because your survival depends upon reciprocity. It’s when we take more than what is needed and call it necessary that we run into trouble.
You feel this rage well up inside of you like a balloon filling too fast with air. A part of you wants it to pop because the sound of it and the violence of it makes you salivate as if you were a child seeing a popsicle on a hot day. If you aren’t paying attention, you will ride this wave until it crashes, until the balloon bursts and you are left with the tattered remnants of your composure. However, with practice, you will learn that your anger is an inherited artifact that you do not need to pass on. It’s a wave that you can let rise and fall. You can feel the rage welling, the balloon filling, and see that it’s presence is proof that peace exists for you in this very moment.
You don’t want to have the difficult conversation. There is a loop playing over and over in your head—it has been for months—of how the confrontation might go. Even though you are victorious in all of your fantasized episodes, you won’t commit to trial by fire, perhaps because that would be the end of your secret sitcom. And yet you know in your bones that difficult conversations are the currency of growth. If you are not willing to put your ego on the table and go all in, you cannot live.
You wake in the night with heartburn. It is too painful to sleep. You do some panicked yoga in bed, trying to escape the feeling of a hot belt wrapping around your abdomen. But you cannot escape it or forbid it. You can get out of bed. You can take medicine. You can sit still. You are not a baby anymore. You can treat this pain with your attention. You can let this burn wash you clean of your spoils.
How do you move the needle? You move it closer to center. You recognize when it has become misaligned, and you correct it. It is not a game of push push push. It is a practice of concentration. Are you observant? Or are you too distracted to see that the needle is drifting askew? How likely it is to wake up and find yourself off the tracks. And how wonderful it is to know the way back.
There is that thought again, the one about the man who has wronged you, and the other about that terrible mistake you made, and the other about how no one appreciates you, and the one about the project you should be working on, and the thing you should buy that will really make a difference, and that damn man and how you will never amount to anything in this world. Again and again you notice that these thoughts arise again and again. In seeing these loops, you remember the old cassette player. To quiet the noise, you need only to hear it in the first place, and press pause. To return to that magic moment that slipped your attention, pause, rewind, play. If you really listen to the tape, rather than leaving it forgetfully in the deck, soon enough, you will have heard all you need to hear.
You hear your son cry out in the morning as you try to write. You feel the twinge of frustration, that he would choose now. Of course, it is now. Of course, you cannot have this space to yourself. It does not belong to you. One day, not long from now, you will be sitting at a desk, typing in an empty room, your children far off where you cannot hear their voices or see their faces recognize you. The grass will continue to dance in the wind, and you will understand that you cannot hunker down on either side of it. You can only let it be, and be with it, and get your son, and give him all of your attention.