Not too long ago, July 17, I wrote a post titled “re-storying for compassion.” The whole idea there was to subvert the mean little stories I tell myself when I get frustrated with others by imagining just one other story that might be true. Instead of “she is a giant jerk,” maybe “she is stressed out because her baby is sick.” That way I don’t ruin my own day and react [perhaps] unfairly to someone else, thereby increasing my potential for compassion for myself and others. It fit with an idea I’ve held for such a long, long time — our little stories, the templates we rely on to make sense of an ambiguous world.
Of course it works to the degree I’m willing to allow it to work. If the woman at the grocery store does indeed seem to think she’s the only one who matters, and acts snotty and rude when I ask her to move her cart enough for me to get by, it becomes mighty hard to hang on to my alternative explanation. Oh, I can hear me now: Yeah, right, maybe she’s just glad to get out of the house because she’s been taking care of a sick child, but she still doesn’t have to be such a jerk. Jerk. I’d already realized that this is a flaw in my alternate-explanation strategy, but still found the effort valuable.
But a bigger issue has occurred to me, and it comes via meditation and studying Pema and listening to a number of dharma talks. One problem, one big source of our own suffering, is the story we tell ourselves—the constant stream of stories we tell ourselves. A thing happens, it is its own thing, but the story we tell ourselves about it takes on a life of its own. Perhaps a friend was supposed to call at 4, and by bedtime she hasn’t called or contacted you in any way, and she doesn’t pick up when you call. That is the thing.
- Maybe you tell yourself a story of worry: “OH, I’ll bet something terrible happened to her, she has been having a hard time lately and she’s been kind of scatterbrained, and what if she got in a car accident?”
- Or maybe you tell yourself a story of abandonment: “Yeah, she’s been kind of cool to me lately, and she seems to be spending more time with her other friends, I’ll bet she’s tired of me and doesn’t really want to be my friend any more.”
Both of those stories have the power to make you very unhappy, and maybe they even keep you awake through the night, twirling them around and around. You might even be responding to the same tiny clues for both stories — her mood has been quieter, a little removed. But there you are, off to the races in your head, and everything that’s happening has nothing to do with reality.
One important consequence of meditation is strengthening the ability to be with what is, what is actually happening, and not running off into thoughts that take you into the imagined future, or into a version of the past. And as much as I liked my idea of telling a different story, it is still just a story. It is all made up, it’s all in my own head, and it takes me out of and away from the moment I have to live.
So the moment: Severe aggravation, acid dripping into my stomach, mouth tightening, shoulders clenching aggravation. There she is, her shopping cart parked squarely in the middle of the aisle so no one can get around, and she is not paying the slightest bit of attention. That’s what is. The mission for me is not to make up a different reality but to confront my own nastiness, my own disruption. The cart is. She is. I am enraged — what is that about? Am I really in so much a rush that asking her to move her cart is worth such inner drama? I get to practice something in that moment, I get to learn something, and I get to learn it from her. I breathe, I lower my shoulders, I pause. One second, that’s all it takes, really. My inner flailing, my inner snarl, my agitation, it all gets to take a damn break.
I never thought I would be considering retiring my ‘little stories’ idea; it has been so useful to me in so many ways, and I’ve held the concept for decades. But things change, I change, and it’s time to open my hand and let this one drift away.
Have a wonderful Monday, everyone. xoxo
