Don't Take Your Thoughts So Seriously!

Also inside: the great secret of meditation

I’m not big on political conventions.  So, as an alternative, here’s an update from my neurotic mind. As you’ll see, the subjects are closely related.

1.

In some ways, I’m the worst meditator in the world.

Supposedly, if you meditate enough, or are just naturally enlightened or whatever, you won’t be swayed that much by external events.  At the extreme edge of this view is the Theravadan Buddhist conception of enlightenment, in which the arahant, or enlightened one, is equanimous as to pleasure and pain, even existence and non-existence.  But there are more moderate versions of this too, like the popular notion that meditation helps us to ‘de-stress’: bad stuff can happen, but you’ll be calm enough to handle it.

I guess.

I’m writing to you this week from vacation.  I’m on Fire Island with my family and friends, and it’s mostly lovely.  Our first two days here, though, were cold and wet, with distant Hurricane Ernesto dumping rain on us and stirring up waves so large that the entire beach was engulfed at high tide.  And then, miraculously, the sun came out and we had a glorious beach day, ice cream day, friend-hangout day, and flying-a-kite-with-my-daughter day.  (All in one day.)

It’s been remarkable to watch my thoughts and emotions bounce around like ping-pong balls in a Lotto machine.

For those first two days, I wasn’t just a little down about the weather; I was drowning in  negativity.  I was cursing my luck, regretting paying so much money to take a weather-dependent vacation, comparing our terrible weather to the great weather last week, and on and on and on.  From there my mind fell into my inner critic’s Greatest Hits: somehow it was my fault that this all happened, because I suck and should’ve, well, I don’t know what I should have done but something but I clearly have made the wrong choices in life.  And then, for variety, my body and heart would sink into anxiety about my husband’s health challenges, or my daughter’s future, or the news.  I had nightmares. 

And today?  Bliss, relaxation, contentment, gratitude, joy.  My life choices are fine.  Thoughts which I was quite certain about yesterday are now a distant memory.  Things are basically fine.  

It’s ridiculous. The world yanks me up and down like a yo-yo – and, to state the obvious, bad weather on a vacation is hardly a significant life event.  This is the least of anyone’s troubles, and yet it was enough to send me down swirling toilets of self-shaming.  I am the anti-Buddha. 

Not a self-portrait