I’m struggling with some big problems lately. Life changing problems, with no easy solutions. No solutions, really. That makes me overwhelmed at times. I’ve been learning how to manage my mental health long enough that I know when I’ve spiraled, and I know how to bring myself down from it. But with giant life altering problems, you realize that after the anxiety attack, after the shock of a new piece of news or information, after you’ve calmed yourself down – you still have to deal with the issue itself. And sometimes it is just as big. Sometimes we’re feeling hopeless because someone looked at us funny and we read that as disapproval and we feel rejected by life and society because we haven’t learned to love ourselves. And when we pause and breathe and ground and question what actually happened we realize that we projected conclusions onto the interaction based not fully on what the person did, but on our past experience. And sometimes, we feel hopeless because we have a health problem that nobody knows how to diagnose, or the diagnosis is terminal, or we’ve lost our job, or our husband is leaving us, or we realize that we’re in a relationship that is no longer working and we can’t begin to think how to end it, or we’re about to lose our house or we are debt that isn’t likely to get paid off in decades. Sometimes, after calming down, the whole situation is still there. We didn’t overreact. Is there anything that mindfulness can help with at this point?
Like you, I find it incredibly hard to live in the present moment. I live in the past a little, I live in the future a lot. And when I live in the future, especially when I’m experiencing problems, then I have to live the whole problem at once. My mind has to hold the whole problem at once. Not only the bad news I do have, but also the multiple options of ways to respond to the problem and the hundreds of little variations on the main options. And the consequences. And all the consequences that could be from the various response options. And ALL the ambiguity – the nuances of the situation that I haven’t put into words yet. And the fears of how people may respond to the situation or to my response to the situation. All of that. I hold all of that in my mind, all in the same moment. No wonder I go crazy.
Contrast that with living in the now. I’ve been going through this dragging situation for two years. It’s bad in itself, but I also feel hopeless a lot of the time, because …. I can’t imagine it ever getting resolved. Sometimes I imagine the time when it’s resolved and telling someone that it’s done. And I always cry, anticipating the great relief I imagine I’d feel. But that’s the future again. I have not been miserable every moment of those two years. Yes, there’s a dark cloud that has been hanging over me, especially in the last eight months or so. But I’ve made walking a practice during Covid, and I’ve had many moments of looking at flowers, clouds or cool tree trunks when I felt the simple contentment of connecting with nature. I’ve had times of connection with my kids. Yes, those were the better times, when something distracted me from the problem (although when you’re in the now, it’s not a distraction. Seeing the whole problem, which is future living, is the distraction. Think about it.) There were also times when I was in the problem – like, sitting alone on my bed at night, at the laptop, trying to figure things out. I wasn’t out looking at flowers, or having someone give me love. I was alone in the problem. But when I was in the now, it was survivable.
Think of your favourite cake. I love this chocolate mousse cake from the Asian grocery store. Spongy chocolate bottom, light creamy mousse top. You get the whole cake, not a slice. The whole thing. If you’re not into cake, you get a pizza pie. A whole large pie, just for you.
Take out a fork, and put a bite in your mouth. Taste that first bite.
(I haven’t had sugar for a while, so I feel the satisfaction down to my uterus).
Now contrast having to eat that whole cake in one bite. Someone takes it and pushes it in your mouth, cramming whatever they can into your mouth, and the rest smooshes all over your face, blocking your nose and eyes.
Mindfulness, living in the now, allows us to live life and its problems a laser thin slice at a time. Like a forkful of cake – something that we can manage without compromising our ability to breathe. Let’s say my problem takes five years and costs me $500,000 (it’s a big problem). But I can live that problem in the now moments, where each second is really 1/(60*60*24*365*5) (the number of seconds in five years) of the problem (which is 0.000000006 of the problem). There will be a time when I actually have to write that cheque (ouch!) But I will have time (many seconds of now) to get used to it, to mourn the loss, to grow so that I recognize that money is a proxy for security, not actual security. And when I have to write that cheque I’ll just deal with that piece in that moment. I won’t be dealing with the emotional fall out, with the increased mortgage payment or the loss of my house, with what this means for my retirement plan. These other things will be handled in other moments. One slice at a time. One sliver.
-Nika
