I have a monkey brain. It is unruly. It seldom slows down yet alone comes to a rest. I force it daily to do just that. For half my life I have practiced meditation. I have yet to be able to sit for more than a few minutes in a quiet empty presence. This is why I meditate, not because I am “good” at it.
I’m always looking for ways to slow myself down, to get into my body and the moment. Trying to stop my monkey brain from spinning off into anxious rumination or worry or regret. One way I do this is through developing a tool box of mental models and analogies to frame my thoughts. One that has luckily entered my world in the past year (thanks K) is that of a bus driver. As a bus driver we know where we are supposed to be going to and how to get there safely. We are driving towards, say, our values. We are happily navigating the vehicle in the direction of our values. But, we have no control over who our passengers are. Some days lots of nice people with healthy boundaries and ways of being are our passengers. Other days unruly, belligerent (and maybe loud or smelly or foul mouthed) ones get on. This does not change what we are supposed to do and how. We are to safely drive the vessel towards our values.
In extreme cases passengers can make the bus so wild and loud as to threaten the safety of all on board, including the driver. It is our responsibility to take control of the situation and even come to a stop at times to settle the bus down. The metaphor might get a bit stretched here, but you get the idea. We have no control over who gets on the bus but we have a job to do. We need to drive all on board towards our values.
I believe this concept of driving a bus can also be framed where the passengers on the bus are individual components of our own psyche and the driver is our true self or core. This would be more of an internal family systems (IFS) framework. IFS is a really useful model for understanding ourselves, check it out sometime 🙂. But for me, at least at this point in my life, thinking of the passengers as just the thoughts entering my head or external developments in the world around me is more useful. When the world is cruel or my thoughts are injurious to myself or others it doesn’t change my values, my core, my true self. It does not change what my job is or where the bus is heading. It may make for an unpleasant journey but it does not change me (you, us).
Today some really troublesome passengers got on even before I was awake. They even caused me to give up on sleep and just get up to drive the bus. But I compassionately and skillfully headed towards my values. Thankfully they got off later in the morning. Some really nice passengers replaced them for a while. I am all alone right now on the bus. This is often my favorite way to drive.
