In an effort to discover more inner peace, I’ve been practicing living in the moment. Artsy, right?
One thing that particularly resonates with me about this practice is the idea that we are not our thoughts. That our feelings are going to bubble and flow and change and spike and fall and be dramatic and be irrational. And we are not those things. We can notice them, watch them flow in and out of our experiences, but we don’t need to identify with them so that we become them, become wrapped up with them.
So I’ve been doing some noticing, rather than reacting, rather than becoming engrossed in feelings, or in feelings about feelings. This is all the very long way of saying that along with all this noticing, which has actually been remarkably relaxing and freeing in some instances, I sometimes notice things that suck.
I noticed this morning, for example, that I instantly felt defensive, closed off, and irritable feelings when I walked into the office. Like clockwork. Each person’s voice grated on me more than the person before them, each task before me more mundane than the one before it. It has been everything I can do this morning not to become furious at almost every request, every noise, a disgusting cubicle-mate slurping her coffee in what could be described as one of the most offensive sounds ever, an asshole attorney being a total prick, an idiotic bimbo of an office-manager asking me yet another idiotic bimbonic question. Everything.
I’ve been railing against these feelings for a long time, disappointed in myself for not being able to control or quiet them, resentful of my job and the people who work here for being even fractionally responsible, if that, and desperately wondering if it’s just me, if I’m just being totally unreasonable and unmanageable. (Probably.)
Letting go into it all, though, instead of railing against it, and accepting myself at THIS moment, in THIS state, is scary and sort of wonderful all at once. I wish I didn’t feel so unhappy here, but I cannot continue to be mad that I am. I am. I just am. I don’t like it here. I can’t relate to the people, I don’t want to be like them, and I don’t like to be around them. Many of them are perfectly nice. A lot of them have values and priorities that make me cringe.
So instead of just sitting here railing against it all, I will simply breathe and accept that I don’t like it. And that that’s completely my right. I have to leave it soon. I have to have a schedule that is my own. I have to surround myself with people who don’t make me want to put my head into a wall. The freedom that comes with accepting my feelings, observing them, and letting them morph and change as they will actually makes this moment - and this place and these people - a little bit more bearable. For now.
