She’s the woman who’s worked in a bookstore for twenty years. She knows the best old books by heart and the best new books by instinct. She’ll help you find the perfect book for the man you think you may be falling in love with, the friend you think may need some help with her crazy boss, or the grandfather who hasn’t cracked a book in years. She encourages young readers and inspires old ones. She’s a matchmaker who surrounds herself with books, but has yet to finish her own.
She compares her writing to others (though always to the masters and never the students). She compares her work to Shakespeare and Woolf, Cheever and Munro. She reminds herself that even these writers had their doubts and false starts. Encouraged by this, she commits herself to a daily writing schedule. It goes well the first day, slightly less well on the second. By the fifth day she’s fighting the urge to clean the toilet, water the silk plants, organize her pens—anything to keep her from the appointed task of writing.
Her writing is realized in fits and starts, if at all. But the dream of writing remains and haunts the corners of her life like the ghost of an old, unrequited love.
There are as many variations on this theme as there are people to live them. Maybe it’s the same pounds we gain and lose over and over again. Or the job we mean to leave if only the money weren’t so good. Or the relative in the nursing home we plan to visit soon, but never today.
Certainly, there are pursuits—personal and professional, romantic and artistic—we deliberately and wisely tuck safely away into the categories of “what might have been” or “the one that got away.”
But for those, like the bookseller, who keep returning to an essential part of themselves they can neither entirely give up nor completely give in to, the question comes down to this: How long can you put yourself off before you stop believing you’ll ever show up?
In her book, A Poetry Handbook, the poet Mary Oliver likens the relationship between poet and poem to a courtship.
“The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem—the heat of a star, as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say—exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself—soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.
Why should it? It can wait. It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, this wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live?”
While Oliver is writing specifically about poetry and the creative process, the analogy of courtship is applicable to anything we both desire and avoid. In time, “this wild silky part of ourselves” withers from neglect and broken promises.
If you don’t want that to happen, (and really, it shouldn’t), it’s good to get as familiar as possible with what you truly, deeply want to do with your time here. Don’t let yourself be overly swayed by the things you do well. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it’s good for you to do it.
The next big question to ask is this: Would you rather be the midwife of someone else’s dreams or the birthmother of your own?
For most of us, there’s the desire (and often, the responsibility) to be both. A balance between the two is probably best, but in reality, most of us are a little (or a lot) lopsided. Both roles are meaningful and life-giving, but only you can know if doing one to the near exclusion of the other is silencing a part of you that yearns both to speak and to be heard.
The Bookseller's Dilemma is this: How much will you regret that silence?
Monday, July 14, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Lifesizing: Finding Your Perfect Fit
My friend is wrestling with the size of her life. She wouldn’t put it in those terms, at least not now, at the height of her struggle.
What it feels like now is simply relentless pressure: the pressure of too many deadlines on too many projects with too little breathing room in between. She’d be the first to tell you that she willingly signed on for the work. But that was back when the size of her work fit the size of her life, back before the siren song of big, bigger, almost-famous called her name.
“Whenever we engage in a project, we perceive that project as being something out there in the world, something outside ourselves,” writes Sarah Susanka, in her book, The Not So Big Life (Random House, 2008). Susanka, an architect and social visionary, knows something about scale. Her first book, The Not So Big House and its “build better, not bigger” philosophy, brought a fresh perspective to homebuilding, returning homes—and the to-do lists of their owners—to a human scale.
“When our to-do list is running us instead of serving as a management aid, it’s a flag that we’ve lost sight of the inspiration and vision behind what we’re doing. Although it seems that the point lies in the successful completion of the project, in fact the only reason for doing it is to be fully engaged in the experience, so that we can learn more about who we truly are.”
My friend gets this point. Most of us do, at least on a gut level. But like most of us, a part of my friend also thinks it’s possible, and desirable, to do more, faster, bigger and better. And to do it all—like Ginger Rogers famously danced—backwards and in high heels.
It’s not just a female thing, despite the heels. It’s a cultural imperative, or at the very least, an American imperative. Highly driven, we can approach much of our lives like line items on a ledger sheet. Busily checking off the things we’ve finished or poising our pencil to check off the next thing to tackle, we barely have time to notice where we actually are in the present. Even on vacation, we can still be on the clock.
Letting Go of To-Go
Another friend traveling through Italy on vacation with his son stopped at a café for an espresso. The people ahead of him, an American couple, had just placed their order. They asked for their coffee in to-go cups.
The barista scratched his head and asked kindly, but incredulously,
“What’s wrong with your life that you don’t have enough time to sit and have a coffee with the people you love?”
It’s a good question, one that has as many variations as we have ways of avoiding it. But there it is, asking us anyway.
Resizing the Sea
“I can’t touch bottom!” is something we often yell when we’re first learning how to swim. The shock of losing terra firma to wide water can be daunting. Having finally mastered movement in the vertical position on land, we now have to learn how to move forward horizontally in water. We master swimming when we learn that no matter how deep the water, we’re still just swimming on its surface, surrendering a vertical striving for a horizontal ease, giving up a bit of our gravity to become more buoyant.
This is a good thing to remember when we have the sense, as my friend does now, of being in over our heads. And while it’s true that we have to risk the water to learn how to swim, a lot of us do end up swimming with the sharks or worse, becoming one of them. That adrenaline rush can be deliciously addictive. It can also kill you—or at least kill enough of your taste for life that you’ll take it all in a to-go cup. .
Swimming against the sea current of a super-sized life is a hard habit to break and can feel a little dull for the ego part of us that really does want to be famous, adored and special, whatever the cost. But when the momentum of our lives starts to bury the meaning, it’s time for a sea change, time to find the river, the lake or the pond that restores our life to a just-right scale, that sweet spot between exhilaration and exhaustion.
As it turns out, size really does matter. Just not in the way we’ve been taught to think that it does.
So if you’re struggling with the size or pacing of your life, keep in mind that:
Multi-tasking is a myth.
Nobody actually does ten things at once, they just obsess about ten things simultaneously, which makes getting one thing done completely, and well, less likely. Do one thing on purpose, and then another, and then another.
The person who dies with the most toys is still dead.
And the toys end up at an estate sale or a junk yard. Buy less, play more.
Pay attention to when you feel on track with yourself.
Notice what you’re doing—or not doing—that makes you feel energized without feeling overloaded. Make space in your life to do those things more often.
You don’t have to be Oprah to give big.
The ripple effect of even the smallest act of kindness is immeasurable. Make the effort.
The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, Sarah Susanka, Random House, 2008. Available through local booksellers or online at http://www.amazon.com/
Sarah Susanka's online community at http://www.notsobig.com/
What it feels like now is simply relentless pressure: the pressure of too many deadlines on too many projects with too little breathing room in between. She’d be the first to tell you that she willingly signed on for the work. But that was back when the size of her work fit the size of her life, back before the siren song of big, bigger, almost-famous called her name.
“Whenever we engage in a project, we perceive that project as being something out there in the world, something outside ourselves,” writes Sarah Susanka, in her book, The Not So Big Life (Random House, 2008). Susanka, an architect and social visionary, knows something about scale. Her first book, The Not So Big House and its “build better, not bigger” philosophy, brought a fresh perspective to homebuilding, returning homes—and the to-do lists of their owners—to a human scale.
“When our to-do list is running us instead of serving as a management aid, it’s a flag that we’ve lost sight of the inspiration and vision behind what we’re doing. Although it seems that the point lies in the successful completion of the project, in fact the only reason for doing it is to be fully engaged in the experience, so that we can learn more about who we truly are.”
My friend gets this point. Most of us do, at least on a gut level. But like most of us, a part of my friend also thinks it’s possible, and desirable, to do more, faster, bigger and better. And to do it all—like Ginger Rogers famously danced—backwards and in high heels.
It’s not just a female thing, despite the heels. It’s a cultural imperative, or at the very least, an American imperative. Highly driven, we can approach much of our lives like line items on a ledger sheet. Busily checking off the things we’ve finished or poising our pencil to check off the next thing to tackle, we barely have time to notice where we actually are in the present. Even on vacation, we can still be on the clock.
Letting Go of To-Go
Another friend traveling through Italy on vacation with his son stopped at a café for an espresso. The people ahead of him, an American couple, had just placed their order. They asked for their coffee in to-go cups.
The barista scratched his head and asked kindly, but incredulously,
“What’s wrong with your life that you don’t have enough time to sit and have a coffee with the people you love?”
It’s a good question, one that has as many variations as we have ways of avoiding it. But there it is, asking us anyway.
Resizing the Sea
“I can’t touch bottom!” is something we often yell when we’re first learning how to swim. The shock of losing terra firma to wide water can be daunting. Having finally mastered movement in the vertical position on land, we now have to learn how to move forward horizontally in water. We master swimming when we learn that no matter how deep the water, we’re still just swimming on its surface, surrendering a vertical striving for a horizontal ease, giving up a bit of our gravity to become more buoyant.
This is a good thing to remember when we have the sense, as my friend does now, of being in over our heads. And while it’s true that we have to risk the water to learn how to swim, a lot of us do end up swimming with the sharks or worse, becoming one of them. That adrenaline rush can be deliciously addictive. It can also kill you—or at least kill enough of your taste for life that you’ll take it all in a to-go cup. .
Swimming against the sea current of a super-sized life is a hard habit to break and can feel a little dull for the ego part of us that really does want to be famous, adored and special, whatever the cost. But when the momentum of our lives starts to bury the meaning, it’s time for a sea change, time to find the river, the lake or the pond that restores our life to a just-right scale, that sweet spot between exhilaration and exhaustion.
As it turns out, size really does matter. Just not in the way we’ve been taught to think that it does.
So if you’re struggling with the size or pacing of your life, keep in mind that:
Multi-tasking is a myth.
Nobody actually does ten things at once, they just obsess about ten things simultaneously, which makes getting one thing done completely, and well, less likely. Do one thing on purpose, and then another, and then another.
The person who dies with the most toys is still dead.
And the toys end up at an estate sale or a junk yard. Buy less, play more.
Pay attention to when you feel on track with yourself.
Notice what you’re doing—or not doing—that makes you feel energized without feeling overloaded. Make space in your life to do those things more often.
You don’t have to be Oprah to give big.
The ripple effect of even the smallest act of kindness is immeasurable. Make the effort.
####
To learn more on this topic, check out the following resources:The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, Sarah Susanka, Random House, 2008. Available through local booksellers or online at http://www.amazon.com/
Sarah Susanka's online community at http://www.notsobig.com/
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Care for the Caregiver
“You’re a caregiver,” my friend says to me. “You love taking care of things.”
It’s said not simply as an observation, but also, as a compliment.
And it’s true. I like seeing projects, people, animals and gardens nurtured, tended and well-fed. I thrive on being part of the thriving of life.
And yet, because I’ve spent a substantial chunk of the past four years caring for ill family members while trying to maintain my own sense of self and purpose, I don’t take my friend’s observation as a compliment. I take is as a scratchy label on the collar of my shirt or a way-too-tight pair of shoes. More than anything, I take it as a warning.
Caregiver burnout is the high cost of caring exclusively for others. The operative word here is exclusively, because the people left out of the nurture equation are often the caregivers themselves. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by default, oftentimes by a bit of both.
This breed of burnout is rampant, particularly for those sandwiched between older and younger generations both needing care, sometimes, both needing diapers. For people who like to nurture, it’s an easy role to fall into and a difficult one to get out of, even when you really, really want to get out.
But if you care deeply about the thriving of life, you have to include yourself in that dynamic. It’s a slippery kind of balancing act. Slippery, but essential.
A life lived entirely for others can remain personally unclaimed. A life lived entirely for the self can quickly narrow into the overly precious. Either way, we paint ourselves into a corner. And we can wait, sometimes years, for the paint to dry before stepping out into the room again, out into the life that lies beyond that dry corner.
Leaving the corner means learning that we’re no good to others if we’re not good, genuinely good, to ourselves. And the reverse is equally true. It's easy to say when there’s no crisis, but hard to practice when the storm sets in.
What I’ve learned from the storm is that life—all its ups, downs and sideways—is best taken moment-by-moment. Not flinging ourselves out into the wild wories of the future, or scratching the old itch of the past, but just being here, in this moment, of this day.
“Take a deep breath,” my mother used to tell me, whenever I hit a bump in my childhood road.
It’s still good advice, though I think most adults usually need about 10 deep breaths before things start to regain some ease. We’ve got more to huff and puff about now than when we used training wheels. So, if you should you find yourself in the role of caregiver someday (and the odds are, you will), remember to take those ten deep breaths. And remember too that:
* Even at it’s most challenging, life is more than illness, disaster and loss. Get some joy in your life and be open to finding it in small things and unexpected ways.
* Your own health matters as much as the health of those you’re caring for. Get some rest. The world won’t come to an end if you take a cat nap, but your world might come to greater calm.
* Other people aren’t mind readers. If you need help, ask for it. And keep asking until you get it.
* If someone you love is going through a life-threatening illness, understand that your own life has changed dramatically too. Don't demand, or expect, things to be "normal," or perfect, including yourself.
* After the storm passes, give yourself time to regroup before diving back into your old routines. Give the lessons you’ve learned time to take root and grow. You may find that what you want to give and receive from life has changed. Listen to that calling.
* The best gift you can give to yourself or others is to practice presence in the present. Remember, it’s possible, even from a hospital window, to see the stars.
It’s said not simply as an observation, but also, as a compliment.
And it’s true. I like seeing projects, people, animals and gardens nurtured, tended and well-fed. I thrive on being part of the thriving of life.
And yet, because I’ve spent a substantial chunk of the past four years caring for ill family members while trying to maintain my own sense of self and purpose, I don’t take my friend’s observation as a compliment. I take is as a scratchy label on the collar of my shirt or a way-too-tight pair of shoes. More than anything, I take it as a warning.
Caregiver burnout is the high cost of caring exclusively for others. The operative word here is exclusively, because the people left out of the nurture equation are often the caregivers themselves. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by default, oftentimes by a bit of both.
This breed of burnout is rampant, particularly for those sandwiched between older and younger generations both needing care, sometimes, both needing diapers. For people who like to nurture, it’s an easy role to fall into and a difficult one to get out of, even when you really, really want to get out.
But if you care deeply about the thriving of life, you have to include yourself in that dynamic. It’s a slippery kind of balancing act. Slippery, but essential.
A life lived entirely for others can remain personally unclaimed. A life lived entirely for the self can quickly narrow into the overly precious. Either way, we paint ourselves into a corner. And we can wait, sometimes years, for the paint to dry before stepping out into the room again, out into the life that lies beyond that dry corner.
Leaving the corner means learning that we’re no good to others if we’re not good, genuinely good, to ourselves. And the reverse is equally true. It's easy to say when there’s no crisis, but hard to practice when the storm sets in.
What I’ve learned from the storm is that life—all its ups, downs and sideways—is best taken moment-by-moment. Not flinging ourselves out into the wild wories of the future, or scratching the old itch of the past, but just being here, in this moment, of this day.
“Take a deep breath,” my mother used to tell me, whenever I hit a bump in my childhood road.
It’s still good advice, though I think most adults usually need about 10 deep breaths before things start to regain some ease. We’ve got more to huff and puff about now than when we used training wheels. So, if you should you find yourself in the role of caregiver someday (and the odds are, you will), remember to take those ten deep breaths. And remember too that:
* Even at it’s most challenging, life is more than illness, disaster and loss. Get some joy in your life and be open to finding it in small things and unexpected ways.
* Your own health matters as much as the health of those you’re caring for. Get some rest. The world won’t come to an end if you take a cat nap, but your world might come to greater calm.
* Other people aren’t mind readers. If you need help, ask for it. And keep asking until you get it.
* If someone you love is going through a life-threatening illness, understand that your own life has changed dramatically too. Don't demand, or expect, things to be "normal," or perfect, including yourself.
* After the storm passes, give yourself time to regroup before diving back into your old routines. Give the lessons you’ve learned time to take root and grow. You may find that what you want to give and receive from life has changed. Listen to that calling.
* The best gift you can give to yourself or others is to practice presence in the present. Remember, it’s possible, even from a hospital window, to see the stars.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Power of Saying No
On almost a daily basis we’re called to say yes. The affirmative power of that single word is potent, carrying within it the seed of all possibilities. Yes ushers in new beginnings, fresh hopes, second chances and lifelong loyalties. We’re called to say yes by the deepest, truest things within us—our creativity, our desire for connection, our love of life and our willingness to help others.
But we’re also called to say yes by our sense of guilt, or out of habit, or because we’re addicted to adrenaline and novelty. Or because we believe that people won’t like us, or will think we’re not nice (or special or heroic or The Good One), if we say no. While yes can absolutely be the best answer, it can also be the worst. The first trick is in learning what’s calling you.
Listen to Your Heart—and Your Heartburn
If you agree to do things that you continually put off, dread or need antacids to slog through, stop and listen to what your resistance—and your body—is trying to tell you. Does the thought of what you’ve said yes to fill you with resentment, anger or anxiety? Are those feelings knotting up your neck, churning up your stomach or pumping up your blood pressure? If so, ask yourself if you really want to do the things you agree to do. If the answer is a genuine yes, discover how to do those things in a way that supports your own well being. If the answer is no, trying saying it more often.
No Isn’t Always a Negative
There are old pursuits that become dead ends, jobs that can suck you dry, and addictions that can swallow you whole. There are people in the world who are waiting for you to do everything so that they can continue to do nothing. There are people in the world who are counting on your silent acquiescence so they can continue to do harm. There are people who, as James Taylor sang, “will take your soul if you let them. But don’t you let them.” Sometimes the most powerfully positive thing you can say is no.
You Don’t Get a Gold Star for Being a Martyr
“Nobody else can do it.”
“I’m the only one they trust.”
“It’s easier if I just do it myself.”
Sound familiar? If you think you are the only one who can properly finish a report, make a sandwich or take your mother to the doctor you’re probably wrong. To check that theory out, try letting someone else do it—or a portion of it—just once. Then honestly examine how you feel about it. Is it a relief to you or a disappointment? Do you feel less needed, less important, less special? Did the person who took over for you do it as well or better than you? Are you mad about that or elated? Whatever your feelings, know this: someday you’ll be gone and someone else will go ahead and make the sandwich. The world pretty much depends on it. So while you’re futzing today, be sure to eat one.
Run Slower
“Each man should strive to learn before he dies, what he is running to, and from, and why,” wrote James Thurber. In order to actually do that, we have to occasionally run slower, jog intermittently, stop to rest, take a sip of water and admire the view. Life is full of to and from, away and back, yes and no. Be sure to catch the view from all of them.
Bite the Bullet (Gently)
Face it. Not everything we say yes to is thrilling and we can’t always say no. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t particularly want to do. It’s part of being a grownup. There are an endless number of tasks and their details—repetitive, tedious and grimy—that go into building and sharing a life. The lotus springs from the mud. And so can you.
But we’re also called to say yes by our sense of guilt, or out of habit, or because we’re addicted to adrenaline and novelty. Or because we believe that people won’t like us, or will think we’re not nice (or special or heroic or The Good One), if we say no. While yes can absolutely be the best answer, it can also be the worst. The first trick is in learning what’s calling you.
Listen to Your Heart—and Your Heartburn
If you agree to do things that you continually put off, dread or need antacids to slog through, stop and listen to what your resistance—and your body—is trying to tell you. Does the thought of what you’ve said yes to fill you with resentment, anger or anxiety? Are those feelings knotting up your neck, churning up your stomach or pumping up your blood pressure? If so, ask yourself if you really want to do the things you agree to do. If the answer is a genuine yes, discover how to do those things in a way that supports your own well being. If the answer is no, trying saying it more often.
No Isn’t Always a Negative
There are old pursuits that become dead ends, jobs that can suck you dry, and addictions that can swallow you whole. There are people in the world who are waiting for you to do everything so that they can continue to do nothing. There are people in the world who are counting on your silent acquiescence so they can continue to do harm. There are people who, as James Taylor sang, “will take your soul if you let them. But don’t you let them.” Sometimes the most powerfully positive thing you can say is no.
You Don’t Get a Gold Star for Being a Martyr
“Nobody else can do it.”
“I’m the only one they trust.”
“It’s easier if I just do it myself.”
Sound familiar? If you think you are the only one who can properly finish a report, make a sandwich or take your mother to the doctor you’re probably wrong. To check that theory out, try letting someone else do it—or a portion of it—just once. Then honestly examine how you feel about it. Is it a relief to you or a disappointment? Do you feel less needed, less important, less special? Did the person who took over for you do it as well or better than you? Are you mad about that or elated? Whatever your feelings, know this: someday you’ll be gone and someone else will go ahead and make the sandwich. The world pretty much depends on it. So while you’re futzing today, be sure to eat one.
Run Slower
“Each man should strive to learn before he dies, what he is running to, and from, and why,” wrote James Thurber. In order to actually do that, we have to occasionally run slower, jog intermittently, stop to rest, take a sip of water and admire the view. Life is full of to and from, away and back, yes and no. Be sure to catch the view from all of them.
Bite the Bullet (Gently)
Face it. Not everything we say yes to is thrilling and we can’t always say no. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t particularly want to do. It’s part of being a grownup. There are an endless number of tasks and their details—repetitive, tedious and grimy—that go into building and sharing a life. The lotus springs from the mud. And so can you.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Meditation and the Multi-Tasker
I’m sitting on the floor with my eyes closed in a roomful of semi strangers imagining that I’m a mountain. Well, at least that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m actually wondering if there’s enough peanut butter left at home for a sandwich later, if I put my socks on wrong side out and why my left foot is tingling. Oh, and yes, imagining that I am a mountain, solid and strong.
This flittering of thoughts is normal, our instructor tells us, and if the mind wanders one hundred times, we bring it back, gently, one hundred times, anchoring ourselves in the present moment with our breath. It’s part of the process of becoming mindfully aware. One of the first things I’m becoming aware of is all the endless chatter going on in my head.
Maybe it’s the multi-tasker in me, the part that wants to do more and more, faster and faster and sometimes all at once. This makes for a whole lot of chatter. The tricky thing is not to get too attached to the chatter, to watch the thoughts, feelings and sensations drift through my mind without wanting to lasso a bunch of them and bring them home for dinner.
This is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, an eight week meditation program based on the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. I signed up for the class in hopes of finding an inlet of calm after a four-year sea of loss, grief and mega stress (both the good kind and the bad). I needed a way out from under that didn’t require a white-robed guru. Jon Kabat-Zinn fit the bill perfectly.
Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and former director of its Stress Reduction Clinic, Kabat-Zinn has devoted his professional life to bringing the principles of mindfulness meditation into the mainstream of Western medicine. He has worked with chronic pain sufferers, cardiac and cancer patients, stressed out executives and prison inmates. Hundreds of medical centers and clinics use his mindfulness meditation model and teachers trained in his program are available worldwide. Mine is one of them.
Her name is Carey Charyk and she’s a wonderful blend of high energy and deep calm. Like a master fly fisherman, she casts us long, graceful lines of new ideas, then reels us back in before we get too far downstream. She laughs easily and often, and often at herself, making it easier for the rest of us to do the same.
“I suck at this,” one of my classmates says, recounting her struggles with last week’s homework. There’s lots of homework in this class—reading, short writing assignments, visualization exercises (like the mountain) and yoga. But the bulk of the homework consists of sitting quietly, becoming aware of our breathing without trying to manipulate it, and using the breath as a touchstone for becoming an impartial observer of the present moment. Some days, advanced physics would be easier.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to set aside time in the day to be with oneself in such a deliberate and non-doing way. And the times it seems hardest to fit it in—a million things to do and only a few hours to do them, a dozen people needing you and only one of you to go around—is the time it’s needed most.
That’s just one of the paradoxes of this practice. Another is how such a quiet, seemingly small shift can make such a subtle, enormously powerful difference in the way we attune to life. Like pretty much everything else that’s worthwhile, mindfulness meditation takes time, commitment and patience to work its way through to our bones. But as my classmates and I progress through the course, we each come to our own version of the same conclusion: What we’re doing isn’t about escape, it’s about presence. It’s about showing up for what Kabat-Zinn describes as “the full catastrophe” of life. And like life, meditation itself isn’t static.
In fact, as Kabat-Zinn writes in his book, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness, “meditation practice can be fraught with thought and worry and desire, and every other mental state and affliction known to frequent human beings. It is not the content of our experience that is important. What is important is our ability to be aware of that content, and even more, of the factors that drive its unfolding and the ways in which those factors either liberate us or imprison us, moment by moment and year in, year out.”
For me, the problems and challenges I face today are the same as the day I signed up for class. But the state of mind that I bring to those circumstances is different. Instead of reacting automatically, as I have year after year, I’m responding mindfully, moment by moment. Not always, or even at this point, consistently, but enough to make a difference, enough to make me want to continue to practice: Enough to give me glimpses of becoming more completely and compassionately myself in this moment, and the next, and the next.
Sometimes all I can think about is the peanut butter sandwich, the socks, the endless parade of mind chatter. But sometimes, I can see that mountain so clearly, its base fully grounded, its peak bathed in sun or rain or flowers or fog, that for a moment, I am that mountain, solid and strong.
For more information on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction check out the following resources:
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Delta Books, 1990.
Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Hyperion, 2005
These and other books by Jon Kabat-Zinn are available through http://www.amazon.com/ and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/.
A series of meditation Kabat-Zinn’s CD’s are available at http://www.mindfulnesstapes.com/index.html.
Two free downloadable and printable articles by Kabat-Zinn—one on beginning or deepening a meditation practice and the other on bringing mindfulness practice into your daily life— are available at http://www.oprah.com/presents/2007/spa/well/well_meditate.jhtml.
Carey Chilton Charyk, RN, MA at http://www.awarecare.net (Pacific Northwest)
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