Cuando mis hijos aún eran niños, yo y tu tío solíamos pensar “una vez que esto o aquello suceda entonces estaremos bien”. Ahora, más de dos décadas después, mirando atrás, pienso que esos momentos eran de echo los más bonitos. No sé que esperábamos. Los problemas, subidas y bajadas, siempre estarán ahí, pero muchas veces se nos olvida apreciar lo que sí hay.
Tía
Hoy, cuando veo tantos cambios sucediendo en nuestro día a día y al escuchar a varios de mis amigos adultos mayores cuando comparten su sentir al ver como poco a poco su cuerpo, su memoria, sus amigos y sus facultades dejan de estar ahí, intento recordar las palabras de mi tía.
En sus palabras leo que en la vida siempre habrá problemas, tropiezos, pérdidas, cosas que no son lo que deseabas, lo que planeabas. Que el aceptar que esto es parte de lo que te regala la vida haría esos momentos menos dolorosos y más dulces y fructíferos.
Mucho del sufrimiento en el ser humano surge cuando las expectativas difieren de lo que es, entonces, por lo menos al entender que la vida incluye desazones y que esto es algo que le pasa a todos*, al menos se evitaría el dolor que proviene de las expectativas no cumplidas. No sólo eso. Cuando sucedan, el saber que no soy sólo yo, mi error, mi infortunio o un castigo divino, nos dará mucha más confianza, fuerza y dulzura con uno mismo para sobreponernos. La vida no se trata de tener una mano con puros ases, sino más bien, qué vas haciendo conforme con lo que las cartas de la vida te van dando.
Llegaremos a tiempo (Rosana)
* mínimo nos sucederá que nuestro cuerpo envejezca en el caso de que seas afortunado y algo no te suceda antes.
When my children were kids, your uncle and I used to say, “when X or Y happens, then all will be good”. Today, more than two decades after, when I look back to that moment, I see that those experiences were actually some of the most beautiful moments of my life. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Problems, ups and downs, they will always be there, but what we may forget is to appreciate the other things that we actually have.
Aunt
Today, when I see so many things changing in our day to day life and also, when I listen to several of my elderly friends share how they feel as they see how their body, memory, friends and mind slowly vanish, I try to remember my aunt’s words.
Her words tell me, life will always have problems, loss, mistakes, outcomes different from what you expected, from what you planned, from what you hoped. But, understanding that this is what being alive gifts, would make those situations less painful, more sweet and fruitful.
Much of human suffering comes when expectations are different than what actually is. Given this, if one understood that life includes mishaps, which will happen to everyone*, at least one would avoid the pain that comes from unmet expectations. Not only this, knowing that we are not the only person to whom this happens would give us more hope, understanding, self-care and strength to overcome what may. Life is not about getting a hand of five aces, instead, is about what you keep doing with the cards you keep being handed.
We live in a time where we feel deprived: don’t earn enough, don’t sleep enough, don’t have enough. The feeling of lack surrounds us, when at the same time, so many of us have more than ever before. Why can unhappiness coexist with levels of consumption higher than ever before? Maybe, the reason is that we are trying to solve a problem with the wrong tool.
One of the core models of our times used to explain and to try to improve human well-being is utility. That ever-increasing function in economics which depicts that the way to increase one’s satisfaction comes from the more goods a person consumes and less time a person works. The thing is, focusing on acquiring more things to feel better just doesn’t work, as many civilizations have found through time.
On the contrary, one of the core findings of Buddhism is that watering greed or attachment/clinging is one of the main causes of suffering, causes of an unsatisfactory life. Similarly, opposite to what a utility function assumes, empirical research finds that satisfying work is one of the cornerstones to happiness.
The fact that we may be surprised when finding that higher levels of consumption don’t imply happier people points to the need of an updated model to guide our understanding of the optimal way for a human to improve their well-being.
Esta historia la escuché de niña y durante varios periodos de mi vida el recordarla me ayudó a siempre sentirme acompañada. Hoy, con motivo de Navidad, se las comparto:
Una noche tuve un sueño…Soñé que estaba caminando por la playa con el Señor y a través del cielo, pasaban escenas de mi vida. Por cada escena que pasaba, percibí que quedaban dos pares de pisadas en la arena: unas eran las mías y las otras del Señor. Cuando la última escena pasó ante nosotros miré hacia atrás, hacia las pisadas en la arena y noté que muchas veces en el camino de mi vida quedaban sólo un par de pisadas en la arena.
Noté también que eso sucedía en los momentos más difíciles de mi vida. Eso realmente me perturbó y pregunté entonces al Señor: “Señor, cuando decidí seguirte tú me dijiste que andarías conmigo, a lo largo del camino, pero mirando atrás, durante los peores momentos de mi vida, encuentro sólo un par de pisadas. No comprendo porqué me abandonaste en las horas en que yo más te necesitaba”.
Entonces, el Señor, clavando en mi su mirada infinita me contestó: “Hijo mío, yo te he amado siempre y jamás te abandonaría en los momentos más difíciles. Cuando viste en la arena sólo un par de pisadas fue justamente allí donde te llevaba en mis brazos”. – Autor Desconocido
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
– “A key step that can help us begin to settle ourselves when we are profoundly unsettled is to come home, to ourselves, in this moment, whatever is happening…When we bring our mind back to our body we come home. We could consider this state as our true home. This home inside of us is a home no one can take away from us, and it cannot be damaged and destroyed. No matter what happens around us, if we can find this home inside of us, we are always safe.” (Kaira Jewel Lingo)
-Be aware of how negative feelings manifest themselves in our body. When I feel anger arising, my body tenses up and my heart starts racing. (Plum Village)
– Bringing mind home to body. [If my fear is not calming down], “I bring my mind home to my body. I know that whatever is in my mind it is also manifested in somewhere in my body in some way. So, I bring my mind home to my body, and I do a body scan… When I find a strong physical sensation, I think `That’s my anger’ and I breath with this physical sensation.” (Sister Jina)
– Awareness of our breathing. As you breath you can say: Breathing in, I am aware anger is present in me now. Breathing out, I smile to my anger.
– “For this, start with little cares to train yourself with slight irritations and annoyances and prepare your self to remain calm when challenges increase.” (Pema Chodron)
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor E. Frankl
Calmdown before acting:
-Go for a walk
-“Practice to honor the feelings, it means simply recognizing them, with no judgement if possible. Then I realize that they are parts of myself. I allow them to come and go while following my breath, and not to see them as `things that need to be fixed’. This helps me to cultivate compassion and understanding for myself.” (Plum Village)
-“Practice walkingmeditation in nature. I walk slowly, feeling the earth directly beneath my feet (barefoot if possible!) and feel the strength of the earth enter me.(You may like to watch a short video on how to practice walking meditation here.)” (Plum Village)
-“When the urge arises in the mind To feelings of… wrathful hate, Do not act! Be silent, do not speak! And like a log of wood be sure to stay.” (Shantideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra)
– “Try to find the roots of your anger but do not do or say anything before you do this. ‘We return to our breathing and mindful walking, acknowledge that we’re angry and then look deeply.'”(Plum Village)
Don’t water the seed of anger:
-“At this point, it’s important we don’t start thinking about the story again because it brings back the anger.” To help with this practice walking meditation or watering the seeds of happiness. (Sister Jina)
-“We need to break the contact with the source that triggered our anger. Don’t stay in contact with that incident. Don’t keep thinking, ‘Why did this person say that? What was she trying to do? So mean!’ We keep on ruminating this thought over and over. This is how we keep watering the seed of anger. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this kind of rumination, when we turn something over and over in our mind. After five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, or half an hour of doing that, our anger has grown enormously. We’ve been watering it the whole time. It is like shooting the second arrow. We have been shot by an arrow when someone said those words that hurt us. But then we keep repeating and reliving that incident; it’s like shooting ourselves with another arrow, and maybe another and another and another. The second arrow is not twice as painful; it’s a hundred times more painful than the first. So stop watering the seed, break the contact, and turn away. Turn away from the source that brought up your anger.” (Sister Jina)
Water positive seeds:
-Make a list of the sources of joy in your life. As the seed of joy is water, joyful thoughts arise and we are happy. (Sister Jina)
-“Make a phone call to the one who I appreciate very much, because I know that being in touch or close to him or her, he or she will water the seeds of faith and beauty in me.” (Plum Village)
Which one to do?
“[T]he practice is for each of us to become aware of what is the best way for us to change the CD. Is it to bring up another thought, to think of something pleasant or beautiful? Or is it to go back to the body? Or to go for a walk, which is going back to the body, nourishing other things and getting different input through different sense organs. Change the CD.” (Sister Jina)
Look deeply:
-“After recognizing and calming our feelings, we later need to spend time to look deeply into their roots so as be able to truly understand their causes. The roots of our suffering may lie for example in our childhood, or in a bad experience we went through in the past, in addition to the recent event that triggered the difficult emotion. When we understand the roots of our suffering, the transformation and healing already beings.” (Plum Village)
-“Often, the roots of our anger can be found in ourselves. We may have wrong perceptions. Somebody said something, and we think they said it to hurt us. But maybe they were unskillful; they may not have wanted to hurt us. They may not even have known that what they were going to say would hurt us.” (Sister Jina)
-“Ask yourself, `Is there any truth in what they say?’ If your answer is maybe a little bit, ask `What is the root of my action that our friend gave some feedback about; where does it come from?'” (Sister Jina)
Mindful Communication:
-If someone says something that touches and waters our seed of anger. Say would you please support me by not watering my seed of anger? I am happy to hear what you have to tell me, but could you find another way of telling me this? Maybe one can start by saying “It’s my perception that … (Sister Jina)
-Use specific examples. Clarifying exactly what’s making you angry and using specific examples of things that upset you when in the conversation. (Martha Beck)
-Avoid moralizing saying that things like they are Wrong and you are Right. Try instead stating what you observed, how this makes you feel, which of your needs is not being met given this, and what would you like them to do differently. (Martha Beck)
