Here’s a couple of ideas I’ve been playing around with for the past month or so, for me they’ve been really helpful to return to, I thought I’d share them with you.
Here goes nothing,
Everything gets old
This is an idea I’ve touched on briefly in a recent post when I described the dissatisfaction many feel when facing less than ideal surf. The idea being: everything which at once excites becomes normal; that thing you’ve been looking forward to, it will get old, mundane, or boring in some fashion. The thing which you attribute high expectations will likely disappoint.
When traveling on vacation to a foreign land, where you spend your nights on the coast, with immaculate views of the sea, and too many rooms in your Airbnb to count. You have a pool all to oneself, a beach within ant’s walking distance, and your in a place where one is treated to crystal clear sunny skies, all day, everyday.
“For god’s sake it’s actually warm,” you might say aloud. How wonderful.
How wonderful… right? Exactly as one would have imagined it, having viewed several pictures online; pictures of of a balcony overlooking the sea, with a hammock, a palm tree lined coast, and a small coffee table -which filled you with a sense of belonging. “The perfect space to enjoy the sunrise with a warm freshly brewed companion,” you may have thought. “Goodbye my problems; hello good times.”
Then, you arrive. No more fantasizing, no more waiting, it’s finally time to enjoy your life. You might even let out a big sigh as your back hits that hammock for the very first time. Proclaiming to oneself, “what a great feeling this is, I hope this lasts forever…”
Soon however, the hammock begins to feel uncomfortable. For some reason your back keeps getting tense. You move around to find a new comfortable position for yourself, and go through this process a few times, only to find further discomfort in each new position. Soon you’re up and standing on that balcony you pictured in you mind for months; there you are standing tall gazing across a magical sea. You may of been upset for a moment, but how about that sea huh?
For a couple days you may be able to ride the joy you felt on the balcony as you consume the various exotic foods, go from place to place, and take pictures of all the sights you see. You might even start to believe this joy is yours to possess and sustain. You are seeing the world through the rose colored glasses of the seeker; always looking for something new to do or see, always searching for the next relaxing moment by the pool, or majestic sunset to capture eloquently with one’s iPhone.
Then, out of seemingly nowhere, the high dies off. Just as your ears popped upon your flight’s descent to your destination, your whole world seems to have popped. In becoming acclimated to your surroundings, you have settled back into yourself. Your bubble of vacation pleasure is gone, not because your environment has changed at all, rather it’s because you changed. Who you really are finally caught up to who you were pretending to be.
That meeting you’ve been putting off for weeks, the one you went on vacation to avoid, it comes to mind like a record stuck on repeat. Not to mention your girlfriend, “she can’t decide what to eat, she won’t listen to me, and she just keeps on complaining,”
Then there’s the food, “the price of a taco is what?! $8 for one taco?!” you openly remark with aggression.
“Everywhere I go everything is overpriced, everyone’s just trying to get something out of me.”
“Not to mention the bugs, fuck the bugs, the bugs are everywhere and there’s nothing I can do. They just won’t leave me alone, no matter how much spray I lather on, it’s just fucked.”
Boom. Bubble bursted. Suddenly there you are: in a foreign land, with every reason in the world to be over the moon with joy and gratitude, but you’re not; the excitement has fizzled out and pain has taken its place.
To paraphrase the phenomenal author Alain de Botton, you’ve traveled to a foreign land and forgotten that despite being somewhere new, you haven’t changed a bit. In your suitcase you might of packed some swim trunks, a variety of Hawaiian shirts, some underwear, your toothbrush, and lots of sunscreen. However, you also packed something else without even knowing it, something you might of desperately tried to leave behind.
You brought yourself.
This phenomenon cannot solely be attributed to travel, however. It happens everyday: when you finally get that raise you’ve been working toward, take that trip to the Caribbean, buy that new car, or finally get to have a drink after a long day of work. Reducing this phenomenon to a single phrase, you think “when I get this, then I’ll be happy.” Then you pursue on and on and on; sooner or later you’ll need another raise, something else to buy, or another drink to soothe your restless your great, and powerful monkey mind.
Everything gets old.
To bridge this with a parallel concept, it’s said the Buddha once proclaimed to his devotees a simple yet noble truth of existence: life is suffering. This would become the principle teaching of Buddhism and is an often polarizing statement which has both repulsed and resonated with thousands of people across the world for centuries.
In reference to “everything gets old,“ never has such a statement rung so true, and while many may feel hard done by the prophetic nature of the Buddha’s words, if you choose to see what these words can mean, perhaps they can serve as insightful and indispensable wisdom.
To reframe from sounding preachy, as though I know something you the reader do not, I want to first say that this is something which works for me, and r he solution I have found can be boiled down to a simple principle methodology. Firstly, when encountering dissatisfaction, it’s best to let it be, before you go blaming your wife or buying a corvette you can’t afford. In letting it be, you allow the feeling space to unfold without making it real as I just mentioned. With enough patience and self compassion, the feeling will likely reveal something worth knowing about oneself. That or the feeling will simply dissolve altogether as it probably wasn’t worth the energy in the first place.
When you have an urge to buy a new car, take a vacation to the tropics, or eat an entire cake, do yourself a favor and notice what you are doing. Ask yourself, “how am I doing, why might I feel this way?” Play with your urges, dig deep and feel the drive to change your situation, feel the discomfort of being where you are.
Perhaps you’re bored of driving a shitty Subaru because your friends drive nice trucks. Maybe you’re tired of day to day life and desire a get-a-way to get away from it all. Maybe you’re sick of having salad for dinner every night and want some mouth pleasure for yourself for once. Seek an understanding, and feel the discomfort in and rejection of your present situation.
In doing so, an opportunity arises for you to see what you’ve been avoiding, to reconcile with such and reconnect to what it is you really want.
As Ram Dass would say,
Be here now.
Allow the feelings of dissatisfaction to unfold before you, and see how the mind can transform them into something wonderful.
Perhaps it’s time to consider why you feel the need to look cool in that new convertible, why you need to get away from your life, and why you need to go so far to indulge your tastebuds.
Maybe have just a bite of cake. Consider that it might be time to pursue a different means of acquiring the precious green rectangle, maybe one you actually enjoy. You might just need to reorient your entire locus of self esteem, and then not buy a truck to just impress your friends and get attention (what Greta Thunburg calls “small dick energy”).
No matter the relative truth, in sinking further into oneself, the possibility arises to learn what one truly wants of life; to see with clarity rather than through the distorted, rose colored glasses.
Let the snow globe of your desires settle, for desire that is born from peace is much different than desire born from agitation, conflict, pain.
You could say it’s the simple act of letting the love in, despite all the resistance, and seeing where it takes you when you do.
(Did I just paraphrase Buddhism?)
“The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.” - Cory Muscara
Being a novice doesn’t have to suck; failing over and over again doesn’t have to feel like slowly burning alive, it can actually be fun.
During my latest surf trip to Puerto Rico, this was one thing I noticed just about everyday while watching endless amounts of people try their best to learn how to surf.
These individuals: kids, teens, young adults, moms and dads alike, who had likely never set foot on a surfboard before, or if so had very little experience, were attempting to learn the art of standing on water. The scene delivered a glimpse into my past as a beginner, and offered a lesson which transcends one’s age and, despite being a perfect lesson for beginners, experience level.
When I was younger I too had to stand up on a 9 foot soft-top log, and learn the ways of gliding across water, I too had to learn the “pop up,” and master a certain balance and stance. Most importantly, however, I too had to fall. Not just once, but over and over and over again, something which never really seems goes away.
Learning something new can be, and typically is, challenging to a frustrating extent. Most know conceptually that learning entails failing over and over again, but that doesn’t seem to make it any better, so how could it ever be fun?
Well, while watching the students of surfing attempt to stand up on a board for the first time, something became very apparent to me. No matter the result of their rides, whether they fell off their board in cartoonish fashion, or nose dived straight into the sea, upon resurfacing from their failure, they almost always had huge smiles cemented on their faces.
Observing this I wondered, “how could these people enjoy failing so much? How could they smile so proudly despite the clear utter lack of competence?” It occurred to me while watching these newborn surfers that the issue at hand had nothing to do with failing or being incompetent, in actuality, but rather with the approach one takes to failing, and ultimately to learning.
Being a novice doesn’t have to suck, and failing can be a good thing. In fact, failing even feel good to an extent. Of course, and in all fairness, failing will likely never feel as good as succeeding, but it most certainly doesn’t have to disheartening or discouragingly frustrating.
Every time the feeling of frustration arises, it’s an opportunity to revisit the reason why you’re trying something new in the first place. Doing so can offer a truly rejuvenating connection to the work of learning, and give you a playful motivation to continue on. It is an opportunity to try something different, test a new methodology, and deepen one’s understanding of their activity, as well as their appreciation, love of such.
Even before the failing begins, try to picture yourself doing so; imagine yourself failing over and over again at whatever it is you’re doing. If you feel yourself getting worked up, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate your expectations. Accepting that failure is a very likely reality and pushing forward with confidence despite it, this is where true joy arises from.
Those surfers I was talking about, they were enthusiastic beginners who knew from the get-go that falling off was a not only a guarantee, but a reoccurring one at that, and their expectations were well oriented as a result. Falling down became an instrumental part of the process of learning to surf, and it gave them a reason to try thing differently, to experiment. Most importantly falling down became a reason to smile.
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More to come,
Hare Krishna