Your To Be List

A couple of weeks ago, my children and I were visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Ohio.  In the afternoon of our second day, my two daughters and I decided we would go for a walk.  As we wandered the unfamiliar landscape we passed house after house with garages.  One-car garages. Two-car garages.  It may not seem like such a big deal, except that in our neighborhood, there are no garages.  Everyone parks in their driveway or on the street.  So these architectural appendages presented a strange sort of curiosity for my girls.

After a couple of blocks, my oldest daughter wondered aloud: "A lot of these houses have cars parked in the driveway just outside the garage.  So why isn't the car parked in the garage?" I began to list the possibilities for her: there could be another car in the garage.  Or maybe a workshop.  Or maybe storage.  Could be a ping-pong table. But the bottom line is: we don't know.  We can guess what's behind any of those doors, but when it comes right down to it, we have no idea.  And chances are that if we made a guess, we'd be wrong.

If you don't know what's in someone's garage, how can you know what's in their heart?The only way to really find out would be to ask.  To go right up to the front door and say, "Listen, I'm very curious to know what's in your garage." 

My daughter told me that would be a very odd thing to ask.

Yes. It would, I admitted.  You would need to be friends with them first.  They would need to trust you.  They would have to invite you in.  They'd need to know that you meant them no harm.  That you didn't aim to steal something you had no business touching.  Your curiosity would need to be genuine.  You might want to know if they needed help in their garage. Unpacking or sorting or cleaning out dark corners.

So, if you don't know what's in someone's garage, how in the world can you know what's in their heart?  

We cannot approach the heart of another with brazen certainty.  We can only approach them with genuine curiosity and perhaps even a compassionate desire to help.  We may help them find something that is missing.  We may help them uncover something they forgot was there.  

I was recently listening to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh in which he said that there is nothing more simple or mundane than a speck of dust.  We think we know very well what a speck of dust is.  It couldn't be more obvious.  But scientists can not really unravel what exactly is in a speck of dust. First, we cannot be sure upon observance where the dust came from.  And even a speck of dust is constituted of atoms, protons, and electrons. In fact, the deeper you look into a speck of dust, the more mysterious it becomes. So, if we can't truly know what a speck of dust is, how can we know a whole human being.  There is something essentially mysterious, something essentially unknowable about everything we think we know.

I am not saying that you need to make friends with every person you meet and become their confidant.  I do not think that we need to go peeking into the dark recesses of every human heart we encounter.  Not every question requires an answer.  Sometimes our curiosity can lead should lead us to the one very clear understanding of which we can be certain: We don't really know.

You may think you know the heart of the person who cuts you off in traffic.  The cashier who won't make eye contact with you.  The neighbor who yells at her children.  The teacher who is overly critical of his students.  You may think you know these people very well.

But do you know what's in their garage? 

"So, how was your day?"

It's a question my husband James and I have asked of one another every evening for seventeen years.  I am sure it is a question that's asked millions of times every day.  Spouses and partners ask one another as they cook their evening meals.  Friends check in with each other.  Parents ask their kids when they are grabbing a snack at the end of the school day.

Water flowing? That went right!And here's what I am guessing.  90% of the time, the answer to that question is what went wrong that day.  Things like: "Traffic was horrible."  "My client wouldn't return my emails."  "You wouldn't believe the line in the grocery store." "The check didn't arrive in the mail like they promised."

But why?  Of the thousands of things that happen in a day, why do we always let these small irritations become the events that define how our day went? 

I really think it's because when things are going well – when the traffic is moving, the client is returning emails, we move right to the front of the line at the grocery store, the copy machine is cranking out copies, and the check arrives at the appointed time – when life is flowing just as it should we tend not to notice.  We are in a state of flow and nothing in our body alerts us to flow.  But as soon as something goes wrong, we feel the jolt of the machinery grinding to a halt.   And it really does have that sense of physical sensation.  When things go wrong, from the trivial to the traumatic, we can feel it in our bodies.  The tension, the tightness in the chest, the vague feelings of nausea – these all set up a mind body connection that make these moments memorable.  So when our friends, our spouses, or our family members ask us how the day went, the first think that occurs to us is what went wrong.  It's not that these events were the most important moments in our day, it's just that they the things our bodies have told us to remember.

And the cure? Take note of what's flowing.  Make a conscious practice of when things go right and tune into the much more subtle sensations of flow.  I'm not talking about feelings of deep pleasure (which have a similar way of establishing a mind-body connection), I am talking about feelings of just-fine-as-they-are.  Take mental note of when things go right by literally saying to yourself, "That went right."  When you uncap a pen and the ink flows: That went right.  When you turn the key in the ignition in the car and it starts: That went right.  When you wake up without a fever: That went right.  When you turn on the tap and water flows out: That went right.  Tune in to the sensations of ease that accompany "That went right." They are much more subtle that chest pain and nausea, but they are there (in fact one of the reasons meditation is such a wonderful tool is that we learn to identify feelings of ease and flow while we are in repose so that we can identify them during the day while we are active!)

For every one thing that goes wrong, there are hundreds  that go right.  When we don't take note of them, we are missing out on the greater portion of our lives.

Now, granted, if someone asks you how your day went and you report, "My pen worked and my car started and water came out of the tap and I didn't have the slightest fever," they may look at you like you are a bit crazy.

So you might try saying, "My day went very well."

And you'll mean it.

We all have the experience with being afflicted by the ravages of consuming emotions: Guilt.  Envy.  Bitterness.  Worry.  Despair.  These are the emotions that feed on the goodness of our hearts, bit by bit taking from the heart's abundant energy.  These emotions eat away at us, but they are never satisfied.  Never nourished.  Whatever energy they take from us, they always want more.  And they give nothing in return.

We can open the door to our hearts and welcome Life's imperfection and unpredictability with confidence and joyWe can look at these emotions as parasitic pests.  We can try and push these emotions away.  We can try to deny them.  We can try to lock them away in the recesses of our hearts where they will never see the light of day.  But in our desperate hours, they will come knocking.  And if we do not know how to take care of them, they will eat away at us until we feel we have no goodness left inside.

So how do we take care of these emotions?  By showing them the patience and understanding that we would a misguided friend.   The friend who, no matter how hard they try to help us, always ends up making matters worse.  We can have compassion for them.  We can show them understanding.

You see, all of these emotions want the best for us.  They want us to be happy.  They want us to be free.  And if we understand their intentions, we can thank them for their trouble and send them on their way.

To our misguided friend, Guilt, we might say:  "Hello Guilt.  Thank you for showing up.  I know you want me to be a better person.  You believe that if I were a more perfect human being, I would be spared any unhappiness.  But Guilt, there is no such thing as a perfect human being.   I can be happy and imperfect.  So thank you for your concern, but I am happy just as I am: an imperfect being who tries their best."

To our hungry friend, Envy, we could say: "Hello Envy.  Yes.  I see that other people who have more than me appear to be happy.  But I do not think that happiness dwells in material possessions.  How can that be?  Happiness is something I can create within myself.  And by the way, I am not so sure that the people you believe to be happier than me are really deeply happy.   I am sure they have similar problems to me.  Maybe even larger.  Anyway, there is no such thing as perfect happiness.  So no material thing can grant me perfect happiness. 

To our tired friend, Bitterness, we might say, "Hello Bitterness.  I know you are trying to protect me from disappointment by telling me that life is hard.  Of course it makes sense.  If I expect everyone and everything to let me down, how can I possibly be disappointed when they do?  If I am bitter, I'll no longer feel the sting of disappointment.  But I will also stop feeling the delight of being surprised.  I'll stop feeling the joy of amazement.  I am certain that I will be disappointed.  That's okay.  I would rather feel occasional disappointment than feeling nothing at all. 

To our overly vigilant friend, Worry, we could offer, "Hello Worry.  I see that you are concerned that I might experience pain.  So you are trying to warn me that pain is coming to get me.  But don't you see, Worry, that pain is a part of life?  You can't prevent it.  Your incessant warnings are not keeping me safe.  You are actually creating pain by constantly needling me with your stories about the terrible things that might happen.  Worry, you want me to be free from suffering, but your torment is the thing that is causing me suffering.  I do not need your help right now, thank you for trying though.  I know you want me to be safe and happy."

And finally, to our friend, Despair  -- the most powerful of these emotions, the one most convincing in their loud insistence that life is meaningless and there is no point in trying, we might gently tell it, "Despair, I see that you want me to stop investing my vital energy into my life. You must truly know how inherently precious that energy is. You have spoken at length with Worry and Bitterness,  and you have concluded that no matter what I do, it will amount to nothing.  You don't want me to spend my time and energy on Life if Life gives me nothing in return.  But don't you see Despair, Life is always offering me kindnesses.  Life is always offering me beauty. You say these don't matter.  You say these are too small to compensate me for my trouble.  You say that the gift of a smile or a drifting cloud or a kind word will never be enough to sustain me.  But you are wrong, Despair.  These are gifts of infinite importance.  I wish you could see that."

We can smile to these emotions.  We can offer them the solace of understanding.  After all, they are stronger than they are.  We are wiser.  We can see the error of their thinking.  And we can say, "No thank you" to their overzealous and misguided attempts to protect us from Life itself.  We have the ability to accept Life, in its unpredictability and in its imperfection.  We can do this with strength and with confidence.  We can open our hearts to the unpredictability and the imperfection.  We can welcome it.  Yes, we will be certain to experience pain.  But we will also certainly experience great joy.