Though the moment has passed I find myself wanting To hold on
To cling to the sweetness I thought we had more time But you were gone as quickly As the earth’s pull Takes the waves away Deep in the night When all is quiet I see you there Just out of reach The condition of humanity An ebb and flow Joyful and filled with insanity
~poem by Katrina Paquin
One of the concepts in Buddhism that resonated with me early on was that of impermanence. I would go so far as to say that this is something that drives us mad as a human race. We cling to what we have or who we are and try with everything we have to grasp what has already been lost or is on it's way out of our lives. A huge part of finding serenity in our lives is accepting this impermanence. It’s unsettling to think that this is all we can really do about it. We can’t bring back yesterday. We can’t control things to stay in the state of what we perceive to be perfection. In fact, coming to terms with the fact that nothing is permanent will only serve as a fuel to enjoy the next moment all the more deeply. Precious memories are tucked away within our minds; but this never seems to be quite the same as the sensory pleasure of the moment itself. Where is the one place on this earth that you feel you could have stayed forever? Who is the one person that you wish could have been by yourself for all of eternity? Like is one big impeccable trade off isn’t it. You may notice that if you had stayed in that place, there would be other beautiful places that you would have missed out on. If you had never left that person's side, there are experiences that may have eluded you for this time around. A well respected Buddhist nun (and one of my most treasures teachers) Pema Chödrön, teaches in the book Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change that it is not the impermanence itself that causes us to suffer so much when we lose something. It is the act of clinging to that which is impermanent that drives us mad. This ultimately keeps us from experiencing the fullness of life and what it means to really be alive. Pema states that “the discomfort associated with groundlessness, with the fundamental ambiguity of being human, comes from our attachment to wanting things to be a certain way”. This groundlessness can lead to a whole host of negative emotions. I wrote a blog post a long while ago which talked about the beauty of accepting change. I find myself coming back to this practice again and again. We’re going through a major career transition and relocation. As we embark on this major life change, I find myself struggling to accept that there will be so much that I will have to release, even though there is so much to gain. This has happened each and every time we have relocated. We seem to forge ahead dragging our feet because so much is going to change and then find that we are only content once we have had a chance to settle in. What a complicated thing the human mind can be.
Speaking of transition, this is yet another time in our lives when this clinging can surface. We tend to cling to a fixed notion of our identity during these phases of life. In Buddhism, this is referred to as ego clinging. It is so hard to give up the masks that we wear. Why it is so hard for some people to go home and enjoy the next phase of their lives when they’ve finally had an opportunity to retire? They don’t want to face the discomfort of having to re-invent themselves. I know, I faced this myself as I had to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer well enough to continue in my military career. Later in life, I am fully expecting (or hoping anyhow lol) that I will become an empty-nester. This is another area of life in which we find it difficult to move from one phase to another. Can you think of a time in your life when you felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath you and you felt as though you had no idea who you were without this part of your life?
In order to find more peace and a sense of calm amongst this sense of loss, here are the practices that I’ve incorporated into my life which I feel can help a great deal.
1. Breathing exercises: There are simple, yet effective breathing exercises that you can do to see yourself through that discomfort. When you sign up for the Finding Serenity newsletter, you receive a link to a video I’ve created for this purpose.
2. Meditation: This is another one of my preferred methods of stepping away from that clinging and trying to accept a moment or situation for what it is. It has the benefit of chipping away at that fixed identity and we begin to see ourselves for what we really are, without our many hats and roles that we play. If we practice often enough, we start to realize that joy is present without clinging to our external notions of it.
3. Find a distraction: Oh how easy it is to sit and ruminate when we want things to be different than they really are. It’s easy very much easier said than done but the more we focus on the “problem”, the more power it has over us. There is no doubt that there are real problems that need real fixing. There are real reasons to grieve and to feel pain. But I’m talking about those times when we are suffering because things just aren’t the way that we want them to be. My kids are really good at finding reasons to not be happy with the way things are. I could just say “that’s life” and often, that’s the best answer that I have. But what works best for them besides sitting them down for deep breaths, is a distraction. We really don’t change that much as we get older and this works great. This isolation as a result of COVID-19 is probably one of the best examples that I can think of to practice what I’m referring to here. Instead of waking up each morning and wishing that things were different. Get outside for a walk. Enjoy a Facebook group happy hour with friends. Do what you can do to enjoy your life.
4. Gratitude: The situation that we’re facing right now in quarantine brings me to my next point. In a previous post, Choose LOVE, I eluded to this concept. Gratitude is another one of my automatic go-to methods these days for stopping myself from indulging the ANTS (automatic negative thoughts). This is otherwise known as focus on the positive. Instead of thinking about what I don’t have, I focus on what I do have. Has there really been another time in history when we would have been able to keep in touch with our friends, family and even continue a great deal of our work to earn a living from afar like we can now? And what about all of the benefits that the decrease in traffic is having on our planet. Be on the lookout for the automatic negative thought spiral and see if you can catch it.
5. Embrace the change/lean into it: This could also be referred to as embrace the suck. This is something that I heard more than once in my military career. At the end of the day, if you can’t do anything to change the circumstances and the clinging is definitely not going to change anything to allow you to go back in time, lean into the discomfort. The only way out of these painful situations, particularly if we don’t want them to haunt us later, is through. Talk to a friend about it. Journal about it. Allow yourself some time to be pissed off and cranky about it. But then that’s it, Let that Shit Go! Take the next step on the path.
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