When you were little, do you remember your parents telling you it was time to get out of the water because your lips were blue? Now that I’m a parent, I see my kids shivering uncontrollably and do the same thing. But the funny thing is, as a kid, I never remember feeling cold in the water. In fact, I see kids playing in cold lakes, streams, or oceans all the time. But not many adults.
Now I do that thing where I stand right on the edge and contemplate the various impulses surging through me. It’s going to be shockingly cold. My kids are having fun. Maybe I’ll just dip my toe in. Jeez that’s cold. Why would I put myself through that? I just need to rip off the band-aid.
Once I do that for a few minutes, my kids will inevitably start splashing me, I’ll emit a very high-pitched shriek, and proceed to either run away or cannonball into the water and pummel them.
My point is this: when you’re little, you don’t carry the negative associations that we build up over time, the opinions or preferences borne of experience, the fears that color your experience, or worse, prevent you from having experiences.
Of course, for really good evolutionary reasons, we can’t just ignore dangerous situations or the fear they breed. That keeps us alive. But it can also keep us from fully living our lives.
As you may know, my entire family is moving to Slovakia in about a week. My wife and I are approaching the whole experience with excitement and a fair degree of trepidation. My kids, on the other hand, are full-on excited, and haven’t betrayed a hint of fear.
And this is what mindfulness can teach us -- to approach our life with child-like eyes, unclouded by the associations that shade our pure experience. To see events simply for what they are, and not to slather layers of dread or anticipation or relief over them. It’s what Shunryu Suzuki calls “beginner’s mind” -- the capacity to live in a state of revelation -- letting the world reveal itself without imposing our own values on it.
So when we board that plane to Slovakia, we’ll feel some anxiety, of course, but it is simply that -- a feeling of anxiety. We don’t need to attach visions of doom that spiral into a worst case scenario of wolves attacking us from the Carpathian mountains. It can be, simply, getting on a plane to Slovakia and feeling some anxiety. And if we can remain open to that experience, and not let it overwhelm us, we’ll very likely feel all kinds of other things as well -- excitement, discovery, physical discomfort for the long flight, gratitude for the person in front of my daughter who doesn’t seem to notice his seat getting knocked. And that, in turn, might open us up to noticing all kinds of little things. Like the flight attendant who offers us an extra stroopwaffle. Or the woman behind us who’s making faces at my daughter, engaging her in play. Or the feeling of cold carpet under my feet, or how we can watch sunset and sunrise on the same flight.
In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, an author born in Prague, very close to where we’ll be living: “If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches...perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.”
Fresh eyes, unclouded mind, encountering the world. Yes, some situations will be unpleasant. But we don’t have to let that unpleasantness define us. It can just be something unpleasant, along with all the other somethings that fill our experience. And by letting it exist in the world, without dressing or drama, it makes room for all the marvelous things that unfold with it.
This guided practice will get you on your way. It’s inspired in part by the writings of Jack Kornfield.
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