There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
Month: January 2011
Good days and bad days
Níl aon suáilce gan a duáilce féin. Irish Proverb
Acceptance of life’s up and down’s may be a wiser way to start the New Year and may reflect the wisdom worked out over the centuries in some of the religious and wisdom traditions. However, it does not mean that it is easy to do. The fact that we are continually surprised and upset by changes in our life is testimony to the resilience of our belief in – and wish for – something unchanging and permanent. We want things to last, to stay as they are, as indeed sometimes they should. Therefore, every time we have an experience that brings us face to face with the reality of impermanence, such as when someone moves away, a friendship ends or we lose something we care about, we suffer, sometimes deeply. It is a reminder that it is in the nature of the human heart to form attachments, and of the flip side of being fully involved in life. However, when we come to really understand that things are not guaranteed to remain the same, or that people are not always consistent , it frees us from always reading what happened as a story about us. It also saves us from defaulting to the usual pattern of interpretation that we use, such as that we are to blame or that we did not try hard enough.
It would seem that some awareness of the impossibility of holding onto things exactly as we would like to has been around since time began. Different cultures have tried to understand it in different ways. We can see this in the Irish proverb quoted at the start of the post. The Ancient Greeks tried to understand it by blaming the gods. As we can see in this extract from the Iliad, they believed that humans received either a mixture of up’s and down’s, good and evil, or received suffering, but never received pure good times that lasted forever: On the floor of Jove’s palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.
Three simple steps towards a more balanced New Year: 1
The first step seems the most evident: Each day set aside at least 5 – 10 minutes just for yourself, to do nothing.
As I have written before, finding quiet time isn’t a luxury; it’s essential for protecting your health.
So sometime each day just sit in silence. Go somewhere where you don’t feel pressured to do anything. There is no need to make it complicated, or to think of it as a sacred ritual. Maybe just sit with a cup of tea or coffee in the morning, before the work day starts. Become aware of your breathing. Become relaxed in the stillness. When your mind wanders, just come back to the awareness of your breathing. Let go of doing for a few minutes. Be good to yourself.
Lost
Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.
Vaclav Havel
Loneliness at New Year.
Everyone is encouraged to welcome the New Year with a lot of outward energy, seeking to create an identity characterized by us being jolly and looking forward enthusiastically, incarnating confidence and determination. This is the dominant portrayal on the news channels. And yet there is a paradox, because at the same time, studies show that New Year’s Eve and the days around it are the periods when people feel lowest about themselves. It may be simply that the gap between what they imagine others feel like, and what they actually feel, makes them feel worse about themselves. But I think it has deeper roots and maybe one of the reasons that people make such an effort around New Years is to cover up a sense of unease deep down inside which they do not know how to work with.
This unease appears in our lives as a underlying sense of not being fully at home, an inner dissatisfaction, a restlessness in the heart. It is described in different ways in different psychological, philosophical and wisdom writings. However, I will simply call it here “loneliness”. Normally in our lives, we work hard to cover this loneliness up by activity and the things we do as we seek recognition and success. We like to be involved in a work which is seen by others as valuable and worthwhile. We like to be kept busy. However, it comes more to the surface when we have a break from our usual activities, when we cannot perform or when our imagination lets us down. And because we do not like this feeling and are not sure how to work with it, we try to distract ourselves from it, only to notice that it comes back quickly.
Most people instinctively think that this loneliness is a bad sign and wish to move away from it. And that is how many self-help and psychological approaches would advise. We are encouraged to see if we can find the roots of it, to trace it back to the faults of others and in that way gain some sort of mastery over it. Mindfulness takes a different approach, and it can be a great relief to hear that. Mindfulness is based on the understanding that there is a loneliness or deep restlessness at the heart of life, and that is just the way things are. It does not mean there is anything wrong with our life, or with us, just because we feel it. It manifests itself as unease and boredom, anxiety and sometimes depression. One of the liberations in mindfulness comes from the fact that it says that life is unsatisfactory, and that everyone is dissatisfied with their life in some way to a greater or lesser extent and that is just the way it is. We do not have to turn this fact into a judgement about ourselves.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it proposes a different response than trying to run away from or fix this fundamental loneliness. It is not through distracting ourselves or fixing ourselves with numerous resolutions. It starts by encouraging us to stop fighting with our loneliness so that we can actually start coming to a real understanding of the dynamics that lead to happiness or the lack of it. In other words, we work at transforming our instinctive distaste for the unsatisfactory nature of life, moving in the direction of accepting it, and in this way we fundamentally change our relationship with ourselves, and with everyone else. The underlying unsatisactory nature of life can never be eliminated; however, how we experience it can be transformed. It does not have to be threatening of fearful, once we learn to be with it and not rushing to get away from it.
I believe that loneliness is something essential to human nature; it can only be covered over, it can never actually go away. Loneliness is part of being human, because there is nothing in existence that can completely fulfill the needs of the human heart.
Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence. The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him who can tolerate its sweet pain.
Jean Vanier, Becoming Human
Wherever
Wherever we are
we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine,
the presence of each other
and the wonder of our breathing.
Thich Nhat Hahn
Mindfulbalance 