I have recently decided to challenge myself in a very concrete way. I am on a mission to make it until lunch without judging. I am determined to wake up one day and get all the way to my midday meal without having judged anything or anyone up until that point in the day. I am determined to not judge myself, my family or friends, my own personal “boogeymen”, customer support of any sort, or any other real or imagined entity until I have at least eaten lunch. I’ve been trying this for a month or so now and have never even come close. I nearly made it through the first ten minutes of consciousness today. Today was a pretty typical day.
I might as well list some personal mea culpas right up front just to get them out of the way. A locus of stumbling blocks for me are always found in transitioning from the world of (largely anxious) dreamland to our so-called real world. Most days I emerge from some weird David Lynch-like dream feeling anxious or at least uneasy. What is my existential dread with forgetting my high school locker combination anyway? I wonder if it was 49-42-32 as I dreamt last night! As I clumsily enter the day I sometimes fall into pit traps related to the disconnect between how a typical person lives their life (for example my wife) and how someone chronically anxious does (everything has its own unique place). The knife block that holds our knives is a great example. Every knife has its own slot. There are not any labels, but I know where the chef knife “belongs” and it is definitely not where the santoku knife goes. At least that is how my brain works for now. But, if I don’t catch myself I am prone to think less than kind thoughts about my wife who “obviously” put it in the wrong slot.
Doesn’t she respect me? Doesn’t she know how upset that makes me? Doesn’t she know how ultra special and omniscient I am, even if I rely on her reading my mind to know this? What the hell am I doing? Who do I think I am? Do I think that the world should adopt my often unhealthy ways of being and believing? Wouldn’t I rather change this about myself rather than change that about my lovely kind life partner, the mother of my lovely kind only child? Don’t I care enough for my wife to not wish upon her my default way of moving through the world? I won’t even address the orientation of each knife in each slot (think how a right-handed hypervigilant chef would most efficiently pull a knife from the block so as to make a cut).
There is so much here to unpack, entitlement, hubris, fear, intolerance, dualistic-thinking, myths about self and our “infinite time” here on Earth! If I somehow dodge the numerous invisible landmines littering the pre-coffeetime landscape I am still generally doomed once I decide to read the morning headlines or my emails that arrive overnight. Forget about calling a single customer service phone number for any reason or dare I say….getting behind the wheel. Driving is when I am most vulnerable. I can be such an ugly person in the car. I have been working on this part of my life very consciously for years. I now regularly deploy one of my many tools from my life toolbox when I am in this dangerland. I listen to soothing music, generally classical. It is really the only time I listen to classical music but it takes the world down a couple notches. I insist when I am sitting in traffic to look around, noticing the trees or graffiti or blackberry bushes. What a lovely land we live in here in the Pacific Northwest, why am I always in such a hurry to get through it?
Even though I fail and fail again, I am starting to forgive myself more readily. I know that I am trying, and that this is a good fight to take up. I know that I am doing it for myself as much as for the numerous others out there. I’ve never really thought about it…what will I do if someday I get all the way (dare I dream) to bedtime having traversed this world without judgment for one day? Will I even notice? Could I someday (gulp) go for two in a row?
