Off the Hook

The first few days of school this year have been filled with hectic pacing, meetings, scheduling, paperwork, challenging phone calls, difficult e-mails, and driving. Through the day-to-day reality of working in school districts, tension and anger have been creeping back into my life baring giant yellow teeth and smelly demon breath. I find myself back in old habits and patterns of thought, yet more deeply aware to them and present to them as I feel them inviting me to further release my grip on them.
I'd really like to write this post in a way that will meet everyone's approval so that I can look really good, really wise, really enlightened, really spiritual. It's not gonna happen. The truth is that I do great work of trying to shut certain feelings out of my conscious awareness with active resistance. I'm finding the process of getting the fact that separating from my felt experience of life from the rest of life gets me nowhere to be a really, really, reeeally slow one. Sometimes my feelings are overpowering in their negativity. Other times, I feel overcome with neediness and the longing for someone else to notice what I do. One moment, I'm singing along to David Bowie, the next minute I've flipped off and cursed out someone who's gradually easing their way in front of my car for the fifteenth time that day. In my attempts to grow and learn spiritually, I am sometimes harder on myself than anyone I know. I try to master it and get it right in the same way I used to practice times tables or shooting on goal or pulling off vibrato on the trombone that doesn't sound like a seizing elephant. I rarely let myself off the hook in the way that I do for others, and then I wonder what I am so angry about. I marvel at people who claim not to judge themselves. I figure they're either lying, oblivious, or nuts. I imagine that I would feel blissful if I were one of those lucky souls.

Since I've had an empty house this evening, I've been able to work with the tension and anger I feel around being in a helping profession where I sometimes feel like I'm helping absolutely nobody. How can I be supportive and helpful to others if I treat others as though they were more precious than gold, while discounting and dismissing my own value as a human being in the process? The answer I came up with this evening (like all the other times I've explored this) is that I simply can't. Maybe I can instead treat myself with just a little more kindness with my next thought, with maybe just a touch more compassion. Maybe I can accept that the transition into a new school year after summer vacation, minor as it may be, is still a transition and requires acceptance and surrender.

Plunking myself down in a chair in the living room, I wonder, now what the hell do I do? I glance out the window, where I can see the sun beginning to set over the hills in the distance. The birds are chirping and a cool breeze blows in through the open windows. One cat creeps delicately by my feet and jumps soundlessly into the window; another curls himself up at my feet. As the leaves rustle and the wind chimes ring, I find myself grateful for the beauty around me in the moment. While I'm not exactly happy or energized, a little wisp of peace rises in my heart. For right now, that's plenty good enough.

But I'm On Vacation!

This week is school vacation week, but instead of hanging out on my back porch for hours on end, staring at the water that sometimes trickles off of what The Spouse and I refer to as our 'giant rock,' drinking tea, and reading one of the several books that I'm attempting to make progress on, I have instead found myself contending with job-related legal paperwork that must be dealt with this week, the fact that the bathroom needs cleaning, the kitchen needs cleaning, the floor needs vacuuming, and a few mice have made themselves all too welcome within our home.

While my brain understands that this is just part of life, I can't help but find myself annoyed.

There. I said it.

I stood in the trash can aisle at Target for way too long this afternoon, trying to decide on what cleaning products to buy, as well as whether or not to spend what I felt was a rather steep amount of money on trash cans with lids. I am tired of seeing and smelling the open trash can in the kitchen, I'm sure it's contributing to the mouse issue, and I've wanted one for a long time. I checked the price: $40.00. For a trash can? Sheesh. The New England miser in me came up, thinking about all of the other things I could spend $40.00 on. I found myself debating in the aisle about whether or not to buy the trash can. Would Josh be annoyed about this? Would I be annoyed if I didn't get the trash can? I paced back and forth. I looked for less expensive options, but could not find what I wanted. I sighed. I felt myself grow even more tense and agitated than I already was. I tried hard not to feel that way. I asked myself, rather unkindly, what is your problem? This is just a trash can.

As I lugged the trash can into my shopping cart under the watchful eyes of the nearby security guard, who probably thought I was some kind of lunatic (a person muttering to oneself for ten minutes in the trash can aisle at Target could be disturbing to some), it became clear that my irritation wasn't about the trash can. It couldn't have been, since it's been steadily growing since Saturday night, when I was notified by mail that I had urgent legal matters to attend to for work. The key was in what I thought in response to my own self-inquiry:

But I'm on VACATION! I shouldn't have to deal with this crap! My vacation is ruined!
All of a sudden, everything made sense. Of course I was angry! I kept on telling myself that all the stuff I was doing this week that I didn't really want to be doing was ruining my vacation! Instead of just letting myself be irritated and accept that this was what I had to do, I instead tried to get things done as quickly as possible, to make them all go away and to allow me to get back to what I really wanted to be doing with my time. As often happens for me when life decides to teach me something new about myself and I'm not quite getting it, I found events outside of me conspiring to point me toward my anger. I found myself stuck in traffic, being cut off by other vehicles on the road, in line behind the person paying with all pennies, and the irritation grew as the thought kept cycling around in my head: this is ruining my vacation. I don't want to be doing this.

Once I gave myself permission to feel angry, irritated, and helpless, and fully move into it, I had the freedom to discover what I was thinking that led to the feeling. And once I knew what I was thinking, it was clear that it was my own thinking -- rather than the events happening outside of me, as inconvenient as they were -- that was causing me to act like a cute, fluffy bunny had just stabbed me in the back.

So I've decided to do something called 'dropping the story' or 'reframing.' I stop telling myself that my vacation is ruined, dropping my crappy, anger-inducing story. I decide to shift my focus to the good things coming out of this vacation week: dinner with friends one day, brunch with another friend, bowling, guacamole, chocolate chip cookies, a clean kitchen and bathroom. I tell myself that my vacation has been productive, that I've been able to do a few things I really enjoy, and I still have plenty of time left -- three whole days! -- to hang out on the back porch and watch the water trickle across the rocks. This feels like a better story. It certainly helps me feel less pissed off. And maybe I'm starting to feel like I'm on vacation after all.