Lying awake this morning, from about 5 onwards, I tried to practise mindfulness; to acknowledge my thoughts as they came up, and then let them go, rather than engaging with them and following where they led. I think I’m getting better. Yes, that is a judgemental thing to say, but sometimes you can’t avoid making judgements, making comparisons. Trying to avoid thinking in terms of ‘this is better/worse than that’ ties you up in knots and gets frustrating.
Suzee said something about happiness being a gift, and there is a tendency these days for it to be seen as something you have to ‘do’, that some people are better at than others, an achievement, another goal to strive for. Am I being unduly cynical here? Oh, almost certainly, cynicism is what I do, after all! Except that, I am cycnical and hopelessly romantic, all at the same time, but that’s another issue.
I finished reading Jon Kabbat Zinn, ‘Wherever you go, there you are’ last night. I say ‘finished’, but I will probably go back to the beginning and start it again. I got it for Christmas, and I’ve been reading it on and off, around other things, I haven’t tried to sit down and read it from start to finish.
He was talking about acknowledging your feelings, not trying to suppress or deny or ignore them, including the negative ones, like pain, fear, depression, loneliness, anxiety, anger. This is what I do (you may have noticed!). I think it helps.
There is a school of thought that says dwelling on those feelings leads to brooding on them and drags you further down, and maybe that has happened to me in the past. But lately I seem better at bouncing back than I used to be. I can write out my feelings as I did on Sunday, but then work my way through them and move on. It’s not always easy to see how this can be done, it’s not always easy to see the path, but I keep trying. Humour helps, of course. Sometimes the only thing I have to laugh at is myself, but if I can do that, at least that is something positive. This can come over as self-deprecation or self... what’s the word I’m looking for? ‘Putting myself down’ I guess. Some people (who ARE these mythical ‘some people’ I keep referring to?) don’t seem to like this, I have been criticised for it in the past, for being unduly negative about myself, but it’s my way of coping, or one of them, it’s my way of lightening the atmosphere. And it works. Well, it’s not a panacea, obviously, because I can’t always get access to it, sometimes things are too bleak and I can’t actually find the way to it. But when I can, it helps.
So, I am learning, perhaps, I’m getting ‘better’, if I can use another judgemental, comparative, relative term. All that I have learned, all I’ve been told, or gleaned, or noticed from observation, in decades of self-study and reading and counselling, it’s all there somewhere, it percolates through my consciousness at times and bubbles up into these morning ramblings.