Let (A Little) Go

I think that when we consider undertaking a new philosophy or approach, we always jump to the extreme case to see if it will pan out in the long run. If we’re contemplating going keto, we immediately think “but what if I’m at my best friend’s wedding — would I eat the cake??”. If we are pondering lowering out carbon footprint, we think “but if my family member were dying across the continent, would I fly to them?”. And similarly, when we think about becoming Buddhist and letting go of all attachments, we think “so am I meant to not love my children? Am I meant to let go of my parents? Should I not be sad if my cat dies?”

This technique is “optimising for the corner case”: we plan our lives around situations that will barely ever happen, if they even happen at all. We fail to take moderate action, because of fear of what our technique would look like at the extremes. This is a logical fallacy: plan for the typical case. What happens at the edges doesn’t really matter that much in the long run!

So rather than thinking about what letting go of attachment looks like in the extremes, think about what it looks like in the norms. What does letting go look like while driving to work? While making breakfast? While playing with your child? While talking to your spouse? Maybe you need to let go of expectations for your teenager (let go of the expectation that they will be organised, for instance). Maybe you need to let go of your expectations for your ageing parents. Maybe you need to let go of your expectations for yourself! You can’t be perfect. Let go of the image of yourself as a superhero. Just let go of that tiny thing, a million times a day.

The upside here is that letting go of these normal clingings will mean you’re in better emotional shape when the weird situations come up. If you have not been berating your teenager for being airy fairy for the last few months, they may be more present and supportive if your parent dies. If you have not been beating yourself up about not being perfect, you may be more able to handle it if something happens to your child that you need full mental presence to deal with. These micro-clingings (fury at others over not making a light, or getting cut off in the Starbucks line up, or fury at ourselves for forgetting things, or cutting someone else off in traffic (stupid! stupid!)) are exhausting! You need energy to deal with difficulties — but you won’t have it if you’ve clung to tiny injuries.

So let go of the little, normal things. Start local. Don’t worry about the edges – they will work out fine.

Maintain Balance

Recently I was able to attend a talk by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. He’s the leader of the Tergar International Buddhism community. It was a lovely talk. And he took some questions! Someone asked how we can manage to find meditative space in the midst of our insanely busy lives. The recommendation was to meditate in little moments in between the insane times. Just got a kid to bed? Take a deep breath, and really feel that breath. Just about to eat? Another breath. Just whenever you have a moment, feel that moment.

The beauty was that what the Rinpoche described as meditation was so simple! He said “just be aware of your breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.”. But what’s awareness? That sounds intense. So he held up his hand and said “do you see my hand?”. Everyone in the audience of course enthusiastically said “YES!”. And he said “That’s awareness”. Just seeing the hand. Not thinking about the hand. Just seeing that it’s there.

So the recommendation for moment to moment meditation was just remembering that you’re breathing at all, a few times throughout the day.

I’ve been doing this for the last week or so since the talk, and while yes, it’s true, it’s not very long, and the placebo effect of having gone to a lovely talk might still be going strong, I am going to claim that it’s making a difference! What I’ve noticed is that sometimes I will feel like I’m careening out of control, and that if I just really experience a single breath (or two, if there’s time – there often isn’t) I can kind of regain equilibrium.

This practice is helping me realise that typically I am really quite off balance! Like someone stuck in one of those illusion rooms, unable to figure out which way is actually up. When I was in one of those, after hanging onto the railing for a while for dear life, I remember closing my eyes (because they were totally deceiving me), and just feeling for the balance in my body. I was then able to figure out what up was, and make my way to the door – rebalancing every couple of steps.

I wonder if life is a little like one of those rooms. My kids tip the room; my work tips the room; my sense of obligation to friends and colleagues tip the room. I feel like I’m constantly off balance, trusting my eyes rather than my body. Sometimes the room seems very tipped indeed! To the point where I feel like I’m standing on the ceiling!

But the down is always down, and up is always up. And maybe we all have the capacity to tell which is which if we just breathe for a moment.

You Have to Laugh

“Someday you will look back at this and laugh”

I usually don’t enjoy hearing that. These words are usually said to me while I’m in a pit of despair, or frenzy, or am in a customs lineup with one child slumping along and the other running up the down escalator. My response: No I fucking won’t, and I’m absolutely not fucking laughing right fucking now!

But I will! And I do! After apologising to the kids for swearing at them, I can move on (it sometimes takes a year or so) to laughing at how completely shit a situation I was in.

So why can I laugh now but not then? For me, it absolutely comes down to fear. Fear that the situation will never end, or that we will not, in some meaningful way, survive it. Maybe I will be stuck in that customs line up forever. Or maybe my back will give out from carrying my flailing child and I will have permanent damage to my spine that I will need to live with for the rest of my natural life! Who knows what could happen? My need for escape becomes the greatest force in the world! I would mow down people to get out of there. And it’s certainly no laughing matter!

But then once none of those catastrophic things have happened, and I have, indeed, escaped the situation, then I can look back and laugh. After all the fear has dissipated, the need for escape has been satisfied, then I can laugh. Then I can look back and say “hahaha, that was SO SHITTY!”. Because the shitty situation can’t hurt me or contain me any more!

But could the shitty situation ever hurt me? And was I really as trapped as I felt? Was I really going to actually die in that customs line up? There are only a couple of people in the world who truly have been trapped in airports. And surely, with some rest and advil, my back would eventually get better. And even if it didn’t, at least I wasn’t going to be at the customs line up any more! Maybe I could convalesce at home! It is unlikely anyone has been arrested for having a misbehaving toddler going through immigration, so it’s more likely that I’d be home than in prison. Why was I afraid? What’s the point of adding fear and claustrophobic panic to an already shitty situation? I mean, yes, I can see that I was utterly fucking exhausted. But surely, stoking the flames of resentment, competition, and indignation, were only making me even more exhausted! By using my mind to constantly compare what was happening with what I wish were happening, I was using up my last little bits of energy for actually getting through the situation!

A goal might be to try to reduce the amount of time between “having the shitty experience” and “looking back at it and laughing” incrementally, until finally, maybe, you’re able to look back and laugh when you’re right in it!

A good training wheels experience for this might be trying to play with my 3 year old. And when I say “play” I mean “play his way”. His way is SOOOOOOOO boring! It involves very precise movements of cars, and repetitions of specific phrases. For as long as you can hold out. For me, this is usually 5 minutes. At the 3 minute mark I’m already looking for an out. Panic is setting in. My brain is melting. I NEED ESCAPE! Playing with him is way harder than meditating. I actually sometimes try to have an out of body experience while doing it. And that’s just to get me to minute 7. I think that if I can conquer that experience — of really staying in the moment for … I don’t know … 10 minutes? 20?? I can do anything. I can endure anything. And maybe the key to being in that moment is just looking back at it, while still in it, and laughing.