Could This Be My Karma?
We all have stuff we need to work on, and mine’s paying attention. Really paying attention when people are talking to me is kind of hard. My mind tries to dart off in a million directions, which makes me impatient with whatever is happening right now. And if it’s a conversation I really don’t want to have, then it’s just that much harder. I can’t tell you how much feedback I’ve gotten in my personal relationship about being present. And it’s fair feedback, because I’m not.
I have this horrible habit of typing while people are talking to me. I’m a fast typist (110 WPM with accuracy), and I’ve been typing since high school, so if someone comes in and starts talking to me I can look up at them, listen to them (OK, with half a brain, not a whole brain), and keep typing whatever it was I was typing at the time of their arrival. My previous assistant actually told me it made her sick to her stomach when I did it. That’s when I knew I had to stop.
Have you tried to be present, really present, all the time? It’s very difficult. I’m in my 40s, not hyper (at least externally), and reasonably socially skilled. Yet when I started trying to be present all the time, it nearly did me in. In fact, it was so reminiscent of my college-day failures at meditation that I nearly threw in the towel. I was acting more present, but I’m not sure I was being any more present. A while ago I stumbled on some CDs by a woman named Pema Chodron, and I finally got a glimpse into what it was I was trying to accomplish.
I studied comparative religions quite seriously when in college, but never before had I properly abstracted the reasons to meditate and the fundamental reasoning behind Buddhism (though I always considered myself a follower of Eastern philosophy — go figure). All of a sudden, in 3 CDs, it became unbelievably clear to me. The whole condition of life is learning to be present right now. And the reason for most of the unsatisfactory conditions of our lives is that we don’t learn to experience the present just for what it is.
When we feel sadness, we want to get rid of it. When we feel anger, we want to get over it. When we feel frightened, we want to get past it. And when we feel impatient, we want to get on with it. But what’s wrong with just feeling sad, or angry, or frightened, or impatient for a bit? The things we do to NOT feel those feelings is what causes so much of our discomfort in life! Feel angry about someone breaking up with us? All we can do is feel worse and worse as we try to figure out ways to get even with them. Feel sad because we’ve lost a good friend? All we can do is feel worse and worse as we feel worthless and guilty over things we should have done better, and then drink ourselves to the point of headache because we don’t want to feel that bad any longer.
The condition of life is one of sometime discomfort, and that the thing we need to do is learn to experience the discomfort, instead of trying to mask it or reject it. If we just let ourselves feel the discomfort and accept it for what it is, we don’t feel compelled to layer on more failures by doing artificial things to mask the discomfort. That way, we learn what needs to be learned from the situation without making additional mistakes. That, by the way, is the original purpose of meditation. If we learn to simply empty our minds of all the “content,” we can learn to be present in the given moment.
So, what does this have to do with work? Just this. There are so many situations we don’t want to deal with at work. An aggravating subordinate, a negative co-worker, an unreasonable boss — above all, relationships define our work experience. But if we’re present — truly present — in each moment, we just accept each interaction for what it is. Sound too zen for you? Well consider this — you have to have those interactions anyway! If you go into them truly accepting them for whatever they are — whether they’re going to be irritating or fine — chances are the interaction will go OK. It’s when we go in resisting, wishing we didn’t have to have them, that things tend to be bad. Either they go bad immediately between you and the other person, or they go bad for hours afterward in your head. Either way, they mess up your day.
So I’m trying to be more present. At home, at work, wherever. It’s scoring me a few extra points at home. And I imagine the people I work with appreciate it too.
(c) 2007. Andrea M. Hill
