Be smart, be stress free, be happy.
In my last post, I mentioned that life is duhkha (suffering). I wanted to explore that a bit here, so here’s why life is duhkha and what we mean by that:
The minute you are born, you start to die, which is a crazy way to start a blog post but it’s the truth. We call it growing up, but it’s a little deeper than that.
Dr.Christiane Northrup has an interesting take about that and ageism (look her up if you want, or read a little about it here). Dr. Northrup adamantly rejects the word “ageism” to describe anyone older than 50 – she prefers “getting older”.
But we will actually go a little further. We tell people (especially women) under 25 that they’re growing older, but we tell people above that age that they’re old or aging, serving as a reminder of their age and all the pressure that comes with it. Those habits have been in our society for many centuries now, so we don’t question them.
The reality is that we don’t age. We’re just constantly changing and having different experiences.
The body changes constantly
Science shows that the body is constantly going through cycles. All our cells and tissues are constantly regenerating – they’re being born and dying constantly. For example, the cells in our stomach only last 5 days before they’re replaced. Red blood cells last 4 months. The surface of our skin is recycled every two weeks, and (my favorite) our skeleton is even replaced every 10 years or so.
I just turned 30, which means that my skeleton when I turned 20 is totally different from the one I have now, which is amazing to me. It’s like having a new body with new beginnings every decade, and it’s our responsibility to take care of that body and do what we can to support its constantly changing state.
We’ll explore that more in my fourth post, where I’ll discuss the relationship between yoga, our body, exercising, and how you don’t have to do physical yoga (asanas) to be spiritual and/or take care of your body. But back to this post, and the constant change that our bodies go through.
If everything that makes us “us” is forever changing, doesn’t that mean that our entire existence is also changing?
As certain as the death of our cells is, the death of our physical body is also inevitable. In fact, that’s the only thing we are totally sure about in this life (that and taxes, per Benjamin Franklin). Although we’re not aware of the changes happening in our bodies, or we try not to think about them and death in general, the experience is still happening, and it shows up in our everyday life.
It shows up when you wake up one day and realize that you can no longer do the things that you used to. It’s when you put on a few pounds; when you can no longer easily do that flip that you used to do in college; or when you have trouble staying up past midnight.
We associate all of that with our age, with “getting old.” We rationalize it and we don’t think about it. But knowing your body and how it works can help you accept these changes and deal with them better, because these “little” things can cause a lot of suffering.
Attachment to material things
Even in our day-to-day interactions with others, things change and it’s just part of life. You finish high school and go up to college and lose touch with the friends that you thought were going to be in your life forever. You move out of your town, city or country and start a new life with new experiences, again, new beginnings. The relationship you once thought was perfect, is no longer gratifying, and you break up with your partner. Online dating becomes boring, and you’re no longer satisfied with being casual, you want the real thing. Or maybe you discover that you don’t. You get married, or maybe you get divorced. You want your dream job or maybe you lose it. Maybe you’re just not satisfied with your job and want something different, to follow your dream. The point is, our experience is constantly changing.
Maybe intellectually we know all of these things, but somehow when the experience is happening, we’re sad, angry, cranky or even depressed. I’m guilty of that too, as I’m still constantly learning.
Mike Dooley, one of my favorite teachers, always says, “you teach what you most need to learn,” and I’m learning too. We suffer because we cling onto materialistic things. We invest in or get attached to that relationship, or job, or even in our health – we spend so much time, trying not to get sick, that we forget to be healthy.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t invest in these things, but it’s helpful to know that sometimes life goes in a direction that we probably don’t want it to. Essentially, our experience will keep changing until the day that it goes through its final physical change, death.
This isn’t meant to sound morbid or to bum you out. On the contrary, I found that having this knowledge makes my life a bit easier. I no longer hold on to unnecessary experience that I know will change.
Knowing your body
The first time I saw that I had a gray hair (literally one gray hair) I freaked out. That month (or longer) I tried so hard to not feel “old.” I went out and partied a lot, and did things that I won’t share here, just to prove to myself that I was still a young “bad boy.”
It was my whole identity, the cute and somehow incredibly smart bad boy. I thought that’s all I was, and the responsibility of being an actual adult and having to make decisions that affect other people freaked me out.
But years later, knowing what I now know – the reality of life – gave me some sort of freedom.
Not so recently, I had an accident getting up from my – now famous – living room floor. The carpet’s very nice, and sometimes I just sleep there. It’s pleasant just being there, lying on the floor, watching tv and being, in a way, one with the floor, being grounded.
But the other day I had some trouble getting up. I consider myself a pretty healthy guy, I’m a runner, I eat clean (though love my sweets) and I exercise pretty much daily. But that day, when I got up I dislocated my shoulder in a sudden, accidental move. Thank god I wasn’t alone and I didn’t need to go to the hospital.
If I’d had that experience few years ago, I would’ve freaked out. I would have associated it with getting old, and would most likely have hated myself and everyone else for the rest of the week.
This time, firstly I didn’t panic because I knew exactly what was wrong with my shoulder and how to fix it, but most importantly, I knew it was ok that my body was feeling that way. I had done some intense workouts that week, and hey, let’s just say it: I’m getting older. Or if we want be a little more spiritual about it, we’ll say that I knew that I was having a different experience than what I’m used to, or that I was feeling what it’s like not to be 25 anymore.
Listening to the present
I taught myself all of this through meditation (this is what this blog is about after all). One meditation technique is to sit and just notice the rising and falling of the breath and/or the changing of the experience of just sitting there and being still.
From doing that experiment of sitting and listening early on in my practice, I noticed that hearing is always happening. There’s no on and off button to it. There are always sounds around, whether or not you’re aware of them.
This is helpful because it makes our experience of listening much better. How many of us, doze off in the middle of a conversation, leaving our body for a second and forgetting to catch something that our friend, or perhaps it’s our boss, has said? Or have gone on a walk and realized that we haven’t noticed the sound of cars honking or the birds singing, and announcing the beginning of summer?
We get so distracted by our everyday life that we forget to live in the present.
Mindfulness and stress
Let’s take that idea a little deeper and connect it to the actual experience of suffering and life. When we wake up in the morning, the experiences, good and bad, that come with being awake will happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Today you might get sick, or have a big phone call with your boss that you’re dreading. Think about the stress that comes with waking up and waiting for that phone call. If you know the relationship between stress and our health, you’ll know that being stressed basically takes us one step closer to death.
Let’s not even talk about the actual experience of being stressed: the sweat, the feelings of unworthiness and irritation. When you’re in that state, something as meaningless as taking the subway becomes stressful. Your heart races, you don’t want to be late, maybe you miss your train or another commuter is rude to you.
Now the thing is, you’ll face stressful situations your entire life. There’s no way around them, and that’s suffering. Fortunately, through mindfulness you can learn the way your brain works.
When you see that certain aspects of life are inevitable, you’ll spend less time worried over the unnecessary and more time focusing on the important. This manifests in different ways like focusing on advancing your career, supporting friends or recovering from breakup and making space for your true love to come into your life.
Planning freely
You spend less time planning. This isn’t to say don’t plan – I map out my day every morning. But I only plan the big stuff, removing from my everyday life the stress caused by disappointments, because guess what? That plan that you had with your friend might not work out, or that person who you planned to see and cleaned up your entire apartment for might not show up.
On my birthday, I had many friends asking me what I’m doing and making plans for me. As much as I appreciate it and know that they mean well, I also know (because of meditation) that most people want you to have the experience that they’re having. It’s human, but can be dangerous.
We get too attached to plans and want things to happen exactly the way we saw them in our heads, that we forget a thought is just a thought that hasn’t happened yet and may never happen. Then when things don’t happen, we get hurt, angry, sad and question our worthiness. We suffer.
Again, I’m not saying to not plan, but just leave a little wiggle room for things to change or turn out slightly differently than you expected.
No one knew we were going to be quarantined. Most of us probably lost tickets for trips that we’d booked in advance.
Personally, I’ve never planned a trip before the week that I’m actually traveling, and sometimes I don’t plan till the same day. But if you can’t afford to do that, get insurance in case the friend that you’re traveling with might not be able to actually make the trip. That’s why we say life is duhkha (suffering).
We all know the implications of happiness in our lives. When you’re happy, you tend to make better decisions, you work better, exercise and eat healthy etc. Be smart, be stress free, be happy. The suffering part is still important, but that’s a post for another day.
In the meantime, I hope you have a very good and stress-free day. Don’t forget to check out the many other resources that we have on the website.
There’s a great Kenny Chesney song that just came out called “Here and now.” Enjoy and maybe have a beer or two. Namaste!
Comments