A Busy Mind Attempts to Settle Down
It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write anything. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I’ve definitely physically sat down in my chair at my desk with the intention of typing words, several times over the last several months. My almost always active, working mind would feed me a steady stream of ideas – which I even wrote down or put in a note on my phone to revisit later, like the recovering-but-still-hyper-organized-former-grad-student that I am – until the very second that I put my butt in that chair and opened my laptop. Then, crickets. Silence from the peanut gallery, and from the main gallery and all the galleries in between. It’s not that the ideas disappeared, because they’re still written on notes and stuck to the corkboard above my desk in full view of my “workspace” – which is really a tiny corner of my tiny living room, not that I’m complaining; my apartment is nicer than most. The flow of ability to articulate those ideas – the inspiration – has just been barely a trickle lately, like the drought ravaging the Western U.S. outside my door has decided to take up residence in my mind. Well, today, the river is flowing! Let’s see where it leads.
(Note to Self: Drink more water).
Over the holidays, at a very low point on my own version of the mental health roller coaster that we all ride, I started meditating every morning and every evening. The first thing I want to say is that it helps. It helps because it’s a dedicated, prescribed time for stillness and quiet in a noisy, over-stimulating world. This practice started out as something like 4 minutes in the morning and 37 seconds at night because that was about all I could tolerate before I “needed” to move on to the next thing, either my day or going to sleep. The nighttime one is still short, usually 5-10 minutes, because it’s mostly to settle my mind and set my body on the path to sleep. And yes, I am happy to report that my sleep has improved. Yesterday, my morning meditation was 28 minutes, a new world record I’m almost totally sure. It felt like FOREVER, and also felt like no time at all. And even though I don’t live a high-paced, gogogogogoburnoutgetsicksortofrecovergogogogo kind of life, scheduled stillness helps me do a few things that are important.
First, it gives me time and space to check in with myself by asking two things: What am I feeling physically? What am I feeling emotionally? So often in my past, my emotions would sneak up on me, catch me off balance, and I would wonder where they came from and what the actual fuck? I was totally unprepared for the ups and downs of my own roller coaster ride even though it’s MY RIDE; it’s like I was on Space Mountain for the 423rd time but was always wearing earplugs and had never opened my eyes or bothered to time anything. I used to judge the shit out of myself for being “moody” or “unhappy,” while simultaneously losing the ability to be grateful or to have perspective. I was living a fairly mindless existence and for me that showed up as a lack of emotional resilience combined with an occasional but stunning lack of ability to regulate myself.
I want to at this point say clearly that I didn’t all of a sudden gain emotional regulation ability, perspective, resilience skills, and self-compassion in December 2020 when I sat for 4 minutes in front of my little altar in the corner of my bedroom. There was no epiphany. If meditation is going to bring one, I’m still waiting. Rather, I’ve done therapy, I have a strong spiritual practice, and I’ve done a lot of school. I was raised by highly intuitive, compassionate, generous parents. I spend a lot of time out in nature, usually by myself. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, hurt others and been hurt, and have had to forgive and ask for forgiveness. I had the stunningly good luck/obviously not just luck of being taught and advised by one of the foremost mindfulness teachers that the world of sport psychology has to offer AND to be mentored by someone who showed me directly the function of forgiveness and patience (in addition to what it really means to be present with someone, where they are, and let go of all of what I thought was true) when I was in grad school. I’ve thought “it would probably be good for me to meditate” at least 1,384 times over the last 6 years or so. And still, it took a historically low emotional point for me to make a change, because sometimes that’s how true motivation works.
What meditation has started to help with is to bring together all the things that I’ve learned in a scheduled, consistent time for just being – and being ok – with myself. Or, at least that’s my hope. I know that my meditation practice has been helping because I feel different, and I’ve noticed that my life is a little different. My priorities are a little different, and I seem to have learned and grown in ways that I couldn’t quite manage before. Or, it might just be that 2020 was such a weird, bad, good, challenging, opportunity of a year that I still haven’t had time to integrate everything and so my meditation time is just for that. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels mostly like it’s just me in a struggle with my mind, begging or pleading with it to slow the fuck down, sometimes threatening it, sometimes trying to be the authoritative coach or teacher. Usually I just try to do what Dr. B taught me at BU, and come back to my breath or visualize…but how many times can I really do that in a half hour (world record!). At least one more time, I guess. Like I said, there haven’t been any moments of epiphany or cathartic realization, just occasional moments of peace or flow that keep me coming back.
Most teachers of mindfulness will agree that it is fundamentally about non-judgmental awareness of our experience in a given moment. For me, that’s only useful if the awareness – coupled with other emotional and psychological skills (hello, therapy!) – also helps me understand WHY my experience has been or is that way, and even more so what action can I take based on that understanding to either enhance or change my experience and by extension improve my life a little bit at a time. Mindfulness is not just walking around aware; it is a continual process of consciously, intentionally, compassionately, actively engaging with my life as often as I can in an effort to learn and grow. The fundamental goal of non-judgmental self-awareness is also useful because it gives me a chance to practice a little self-compassion, which is necessary for growth. This is another thing with which my ongoing foray into meditation has helped me.
The working definition of self-compassion tells us that it has three main components: Self-Kindness, Mindfulness, and Common Humanity (thanks to Chris Germer and Kristin Neff for their work in this field). Looking at that, it’s easy to see why self-compassion is so hard for human beings these days. We live in a world centered – at least what we’re shown unless we really go looking for other things – around acts that are either mindless or intentionally unkind. We are a living, breathing, probably-only-a-few-steps-from-eating-brains zombie apocalypse, so engrossed in scrolling Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and Tinder and the New York Times and whatever else that we literally disengage from the person sitting in the living room with us that is our literal family member. We do this in my family. My grounded, spiritual, deeply connected family that love each other for real and legitimately enjoy each other’s company have also been known to all sit in the same living room scrolling their phones. Families that scroll together roll together.
In many of our societies, we define things through opposition and domination, including our relationships to each other. We scrap and claw and fight – and also innovate and create – based on socially-determined notions of worth and value, which in turn are based on some very silly ideas, including that failing is BAD and you’re BAD if you fail at anything. Trophies, accolades, being “better” than everyone else, and so many fucking dollars you could do the swim portion of an Ironman in an ocean full of them are our measures of success, and there’s no room for being kind or being collaborative if you want to win that race. Worst of all is that the division and externalization of worth makes us feel like we have to do it alone because it’s the only way to make sure that we’re winning instead of being a weakling that needs help. So instead of self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity, we have isolation and competition and division and meanness…and I’m only talking about my own self when I was a competitive athlete. I was so hard on myself and so afraid of making mistakes that I would literally lose sleep – after a win! After winning a state championship! – over the things that I didn’t do “right” or well, the mistakes I made, the disappointment that I undoubtedly was to others and definitely was to myself.
This self-criticism and comparison to others plagued me throughout my time as a player, and in retrospect, I can say that I didn’t have the most emotionally healthy relationship with basketball. I was unflinchingly, brutally hard on myself, and while it drove me to get in the best shape of my life – I was 6’5” and couldn’t jump over a piece of paper when I graduated high school, and before I tore my ACL at 27 I could almost get my elbow onto the rim and have had the very rare pleasures of both catching and finishing a one-handed alley-oop (with my left hand!) and of dunking on someone through contact – I was an asshole to play with sometimes because I took myself so seriously and expected everyone else to have the same “standards” that I did. When they weren’t playing up to these arbitrary standards, which often involved busting their asses on defense and giving me the ball on offense because I needed to prove that I was the best player on the court, I could be…well, not fun to play with, I think. If I hadn’t been good at basketball, none of my teammates would have tolerated me; it’s amazing where skill and dedication will get you even when you can be real Class-A jerk.
As a coach, I did better with my players, because even without the education in sport psych and youth development that I later undertook, I understood on some level some of the things that kids need in order to thrive in a sport environment. I put my heart and soul and a lot of time into coaching and learned a lot, and I did a lot of good as a coach with the information and maturity that I had, if you were my athlete. If you were a referee…well, let’s just say that I have been red-carded and ejected from a meaningless one-sided blowout of a high school water polo game that we were winning, and almost came to physical blows with the head of the state referee’s association at a state tournament (behind closed doors, thank God). Even if I still believe that I was fundamentally in the right, I am not proud of those moments – except the dunking on that guy, because THIS IS MY HOUSE – but I also don’t beat myself up for them anymore, nor do I lose sleep over the mistakes that I still make all the time because I am, after all, only human just like you and all the rest of us.
The time that I spend in the morning and at night in stillness and (at least external) silence is an opportunity to give myself a break and orient towards what I can do to be just a tiny bit better than I was yesterday. To remind myself that other people are so busy worrying about themselves that they can’t possibly have time to give a shit about some inconsequential mistake that I made… and if they actually do think that’s the best way to spend their precious time and energy, I should have compassion for them because how miserable must it be to worry so much about the things you can’t control? Which brings me to another thing that meditation does for me: I mentioned that I tend towards compulsive hyper-organization. I am this way because in some ways I am undeniably my mother’s child. Also, cleanliness and orderliness help me feel calm and secure. My dad makes fun of me for organizing my closet by color, which for the record I only did once just to see how it looked (it looked awesome). Since beginning my daily stillness practice, though, I have let go of some of the things that I held such a tight grip on before. My schedule, my pictures of “how things are” or “how things should look” in my life, relationships, work, and down-time. I’m easier on myself, on others, and I even leave dishes in the sink OVERNIGHT sometimes. I know, transformation is possible.
What’s interesting and of course not at all surprising is that as I relax my grip a little bit, I’m more able to identify and hold onto what’s actually important and meaningful to me and to let go of what isn’t. I’m letting go of my perfectionism, which means I work out a little less but also that I don’t psychologically abuse myself about it or think less of myself for not having the body of a 25 year-old olympian or even the fitness of a younger version of myself. And despite the fewer workouts, I’m still in pretty great shape (thank you, construction work) and also more comfortable around people because I’m less image-concerned and more comfortable in myself. I’m learning to be happier with who I am and more interested in what I can offer the world from a place of self-belief and ease than what the world owes me.
Most importantly, I’m less susceptible to getting blindsided by my own emotions. I’m riding Space Mountain with my eyes and ears open now, so I’m able to anticipate what’s coming a little better and adapt to it (note: I’ve never actually been to Space Mountain because I prefer actual mountains with many fewer people on them). Ironically – or not – my emotions are generally closer to the surface than they used to be, but I’m less volatile and more able to go with the flow. I’m gentler with my family and less likely to take things out on them most of the time, or to “get cranky” as my mom sometimes says. An innocuous example: I’ve always gotten a little emotional during movies, but I would keep it to myself because I don’t like crying in public, even if the public is just my sister and I lounging on a huge couch; now I might shed actual tears, but I’m not crying you’re crying so it’s ok. Probably the biggest gift of this whole process of becoming more self-compassionate (mindful, kinder, connected) is that I have learned to take myself a little less seriously, which means I can laugh at myself, which means I’m less self-conscious and more likely to have fun…and you see the positive emotional spiral starting.
I’m not saying that everyone should meditate. I don’t even believe in the word “should” anymore for most things. Like, I maybe “should” not physically assault someone even if they really deserve it, fair enough. But isn’t it more productive and growth-oriented to say that I could refrain from assaulting someone or that I can in fact refrain from beating someone up and have so far managed to do so (because I’m a big softie, but still)? It’s not a directive, it’s a choice. Just like everyone could meditate or everyone can meditate, and they could learn something about themselves, like how to become aware of their emotions and maybe get some help before they hurt someone. Maybe meditation isn’t their avenue for that, but hopefully they can find theirs should they so choose. Could and can are an exercise in free will, and free will is both the greatest gift and most powerful responsibility that we have as human beings. For me, the application of it is a more interesting and complex and fulfilling way of living my life. Sometimes I do a good job of it, and sometimes not so much. I’d say I’m doing more good than harm, so that’s a start.
Taking time each day to just be – even if it’s most often a swim against the current of my thoughts, trying to reach a rock in the stream to sit on and watch them float by, or an eddy upstream where I can just float in the (I suspect) blissful quiet of an empty mind – is helping me understand what it means to be alive. And, as my meditation endurance grows and I’m able to swim for longer, the likelihood of reaching that sanctuary shore within myself grows with it. I’ll let you know when I get there…except I won’t, because I won’t be thinking about you or swimming or anything. The promise of that is why I meditate.
Originally published on May 6, 2021