that made me very upset. At the time, they seemed like the most
important things in the world to me. I was caught in a net of "I want
it now I want it now I want it now." Want-want-want. I-I-I. That net
was woven out of threads made from the insecurities of a new
relationship, the distance between me and my new love, and the ghosts
of things that happened to me in my past.
I behaved like a spoiled brat baby, and in doing so, in one case, I
got something I asked for, but in pretty much every other situation, I
had to learn to let go of my anger about the situations and my own
suffering about them. My suffering and anger were more detrimental to
myself and to the relationship than they were helpful.
I was clearly having some sort of karmic meltdown, and my solution was
to sit down.
Now, a lot of people think meditating is the same as "brooding about
something to convince yourself of the rightness of your position."
They will say, I need to meditate on this, when actually what they end
up doing is going over the situation or argument endlessly in their
minds, formulating their arguments for why they are right (or have
been wronged) like Jack McCoy formulating his closing arguments in a
murder trial.
I did this, too. And every single time, I got myself all worked up,
again and again, over a couple of situations, and I thought, if I
could just *explain* the logic of my position more clearly, if I use
different words, then the other person will see my point of view and
things will be different. We went in circle after circle, chasing our
tails with no solution in sight.
Well, it didn't work, and the situations and people I couldn't
control, well, they were still just the same. And I was still
suffering and angry, running around muttering to myself that it wasn't
*fair*, how come everyone else is getting what they want and I keep
getting the short, shit-covered end of the stick?
Wah, wah, wah.
This was not helpful. I was so angry and suffering so much that I was
miserable (punishing myself) throughout the entire holiday season, I
made someone else miserable (punished him) through the holiday season,
and it certainly didn't do anything to help our long-distance
relationship (punished the relationship). We became tentative about
what subjects were "safe" to discuss, and which were potential
powder-kegs.
This was also not helpful, as the "agree to disagree" subjects turned
into "agree to never again bring it up" subjects. This is how couples
stop communicating and instead build up resentments that eventually
explode into laundry lists of grievances during fights.
The thing I did was, well, I sat down. And took up studying what my
favorite teachers (Cheri Huber, Pema Chodron, Thubten Chodron, Thich
Nhat Hanh, Suzuki Roshi, etc.), had to say. And I started paying
attention. What was coming up for me? What were the physical feelings
arising in me? Who, of all the aspects of my personality, was crying
out for attention? What memories were stirred by this situation? And
contrary to how I behave in my work world, I didn't say, "What action
do I need to take to remedy this situation right now?" Because as my
behavior indicated, and as I discovered in my self-examination,
sometimes the right action is no action. Sometimes the right action is
to sit still and pay attention.
I was fortunate that in many cases, I was trapped on airplanes, where
I had no choice but to sit and practice my breathing and noticing.
After you've finished your magazines and pondered the SkyMall catalog
for the fifth time wondering where you'd put that cute stone gargoyle
in your Brooklyn walkup, trust me, simply sitting and observing your
breath is like a little vacation. I sat in those airplane seats, when
I wasn't reading or sleeping, and paid attention to my breath. When I
noticed a thought or feeling, my training had me say, "thought,
feeling," and touch it lightly and let it pass. When I meditate, I
picture thoughts and feelings like balloons that float by, I notice
them, touch them with my fingertips and they float off in another
direction, out of my sight. In other words, as the Buddhists say, they
arise, and they pass. Always. I repeat, always.
What I learned (or re-learned, as the case may be) is that acceptance,
and the willingness of acceptance, is much more freeing and
joy-inducing than suffering and clinging to my "I was RIGHT and you
were WRONG" arguments.
We are conditioned that this is how to argue -- if I am right, you
must be wrong. We hardly ever look at a situation while we're arguing
and put ourselves in the other person's shoes and then walk a mile in
them. The world would be a better place if we could all be trained to
do this -- walk in someone else's too-tight, waterlogged shoes with no
socks down their gravel road. We almost never say, hmm, maybe we're
both right. Maybe, god forbid, we're both wrong.
If I were an enlightened being, I wouldn't have to keep coming back to
this lesson. Unfortunately, I'm not, so I do. And I have to go back to
sitting down, shutting up, and paying attention, noticing, and letting
things pass.
One hundred percent of the time, I am suffering because of my own mind
(or ego, as the Buddhists name it). Cheri Huber uses a mundane example
to illustrate this: I've lost my favorite mug. A) I'm very upset, it
was my favorite mug, I drink out of it every morning, my kid made it
for me, blah, blah, blah; or B) there is a whole rack of other mugs to
choose from, so I drink from one of those. Either way, the mug is
gone. It's a pretty simple, yet hardly easy, concept that can be
applied to pretty much any situation.
Acceptance is so much easier.
Acceptance does not mean that we are weak, or victims, if we accept
everything that is. This does not mean that we don't fight for, say,
basic human rights when we see inhumane things, or that we don't try
to change the things we can. This doesn't mean that the guy who lost
his leg to an IED in Iraq lays around weeping for his lost leg, and it
doesn't mean that I get pissed and cranky about overcrowded L trains
in the morning. The one-legged soldier gets a prosthetic and learns to
walk and can still lead a productive life, and I let four trains go by
until there's one with enough room for me, and I get to work a little
late. It just means accept what is and do the next thing we need to
do.
In my case, it finally sunk in that the situation wasn't changing, and
I was clinging to the idea that I was right (i.e. Good), he was wrong
(i.e. Bad) and I was also clinging to my pain and suffering because,
in my own mind, I was the heroic, long-suffering victim of his
wrongness. What a good person I must be, to do that! What a saint I
was, to tolerate such injustice!
What an asshole I was.
Since I'm on a virtually Instant Karmic Retribution plan, my own
assholishness was made especially clear to me recently by something
that was a mirror image of what I had done back in November.
BIG mirror, very ugly reflection. Honey, it was worthy of Wilde's
Portrait of Dorian Gray.
In recognition of that, I had to do something that, like most
Americans, I hate to do: I apologized. I didn't say, as our
politicians like to do, "mistakes were made," or "I'm sorry you feel
badly," you know, the standard non-apology apology. I didn't try to
justify or explain away my actions by saying, "well I did this because
you did THAT." (Though I did explain my understanding that MY OWN past
habitual, conditioned reactions to other things had driven my
behavior)
I drank the medicine of humility and yes, I screwed up my face as it
went down, and said, "I did that, and I was wrong, and I'm very, very
sorry, and I will do better next time."
And in saying it, a measure of peace came over me. Because in doing
this, I saw a path out of self-loathing that didn't require
self-aggrandizement. I don't have to bolster my own sense of being one
of God's Special Snowflakes in order to apologize or to be kind to
myself and others.
There was the recognition that my behavior was a result of unskillful
habits of my own mind that I was inflicting on someone else, and the
promise to myself to stay alert, to pay attention when those habitual
thoughts arise, and there was real freedom in acknowledging that I can
break those habits, and choose happiness over suffering. In that, I am
going to try to be kinder to myself, and others.
Cheri says (I know, I quote her a lot) that happiness is not about
getting what we want, but about wanting what we get. This is
acceptance.
Now, the recipient of my apology may very well be saying, that's all
well and good for YOU, because back then you got what YOU wanted, and
I still don't get what I want, so either way, I'm screwed. And
honestly, I don't have an answer to that. I don't know if he feels
retribution or punishment is in order. And I can't control how he
thinks or feels.
I can only be hopeful that he will accept my regret over what
happened, know that I'm sorry I did it, and trust that I will try to
do better. And that he will believe and know that when I talk about
how I'm feeling about something, that he's not required to do any
"fixing," just listen.
(Fixing is also something I do, and I'm trying to stop that, too.)
In apologizing to him, it was kind of like apologizing to the world.
I know that the person, "Aileen," who notices, touches, and releases
is not very interesting, or dramatic, or "passionate and fiery,".
She's quite boring, really. But she's also a hell of a lot nicer to be
around, and can look at herself in the mirror and appreciate what's
there, be more kind to herself, and thus be more kind to others. I'm
not seeing a superstar, but it ain't a monster, either. Just a human,
trying to do better, like everyone else.
I am grateful for this practice.
Gassho.
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