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| Kanji for bitter or suffering |
The person you were yesterday is dead!
This is
an idea I try to keep in the back of my mind on a regular basis. This is especially true for those of us who hold
on to things and worry over them like a dog worries over its bone. This simple idea has allowed me to, by and
large, let go of the things I can’t control or at least the things I’ve
done/said in the past that I can’t change now.
It’s a concept I’ve brought up occasionally but with the recent changes
in my professional life it’s a concept I’ve had to embrace a little more
closely. We all do things or make
mistakes we can’t undo completely. We’ve
all had those ‘if only I had done that’ moments as we’re driving home and some
of us worry over the consequences of those words/actions just a little
bit. (or in my case, quite a lot) Those
moments are when the idea of who I was being dead comes into play.
This
concept stems from the Buddhist teaching that ‘Life is suffering’. I always wondered how relatively happy
looking Buddhists could walk through life thinking that it sucked due to all of
their suffering. I read some books and
looked into it a bit and discovered that it’s not life that suffers but rather
it’s our view on life that makes it suffer.
So, as we drive home and worry over what we coulda/shoulda/woulda said
to the jerk-off we just dealt with at the office we are in effect
suffering. Suffering sucks. I hate doing it. Actually, I hate worrying too. It’s an energy suck. It’s a time suck and it is very rarely
productive. I had a supervisor once who
used to worry through every little issue we might deal with on a given
day/event. Having a propensity for the
same thought process often times we would end up ‘brainstorming’ just how
messed up things could get. We’d get
ourselves in a tizzy and become tired and irritated and depressed over how
helpless we were. We were
suffering. The day of the ‘issue’ would
arrive and all the things we thought would happen actually wouldn’t and often
times the day would turn out ok but our stress levels would be through the
roof. We’d spent days, weeks, and
sometimes months worrying. We suffered.
But
back on track…..
If who
I was yesterday is dead and I can’t change that person then why am I
worrying? We need to continue forward
with our lives. If we don’t like what
that dead person did yesterday then don’t do it again today. If we spend our time trying to correct what
he/she did yesterday we are wasting the precious time we’ve been given
today. I’m not necessarily saying we
should ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die’ because that idea
supports more of wasting the time we have rather I am advocating caring a
little less about what happened and what is to come and concentrate on the here
and the now. I can spend my day beating myself
up for not riding, writing, being a better father/husband yesterday or last
week…….or…..I can simply accept that those things happened and be Better
today. I think, and have tested it out on myself, if
we concentrate on being Better today those ‘If only’ moments become less and
less. The idea leads us to being able to
have a moment between stimulus and response.
Living in the here and now with the conscience idea that what we do NOW
matters, makes us slow down and react
with less emotion/passion.
This idea can be even more powerful
when you realize who you were when you started reading this doesn’t exist
anymore.
That person is dead as well. We are constantly moving forward, wasting the
time we have worrying about who we were even five minutes ago seems pointless
to me. Acknowledge and move on.
Taking
it a step further; if the person we were a minute ago is dead….then the person
we are to become has not been born yet.
Living fully in the now and being Better now will lead to the birth of a
better person every minute. Expecting
the future you to be better but not doing anything to make that happen will
lead to suffering as well. Expectation
leads to disappointment. Expecting the
negative to be a positive, expecting a Monday to be a Tuesday will lead one to
more disappointment. So we must let go
of the dead person behind us, not worry about the unborn you yet to be fully
realized and embrace the moment right now.
I’m writing. This leads to a blog post which leads me to
contentment. Yesterday I rode because I
woke up and that’s what I knew I needed to do.
Because I did what was right for me at that moment I look back on that
dead me and am content that I did what I wanted to do when I had the
opportunity to do it.
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| Japanese Kanji for Peace which is what we get when we end our suffering |
So, how
does one go about avoiding this ‘suffering’?
To a certain extent I’m not sure we fully can, we are after all humans
and humans worry. When I discovered the
idea through my reading and research it was a ah-ha moment (also a decent 80’s
band) but it also took me a lot more soul searching to keep the idea alive and
in play within my life. At first the
idea spent a lot of time on the bench.
It’d raise its hand occasionally trying to get my attention and I’d
ignore it. One day after a particularly
frustrating series of events at work and a couple of weeks off to soul search I
put it in the game and it’s been playing center field ever since. I’ll forget about it once in a while and the
idea might go through a slump or two and my life de-volves into a lose/lose
scenarios but it doesn’t seem to last as long and I am able to put the bad
stuff behind me quicker now. It’s come
to the fore front once again recently because of my current job posting which
is very new to me and I’m stumbling here and there a bit. I’m catching myself for the most part but
this concept has helped me to get up each time, brush myself off and get back
in the batter’s box again. Hope it helps
for you as well.
