In the Moment

Did you ever look ahead with fear? Did you ever run an inner monologue that goes something like this? OMG I have to be at work early tomorrow and then there's a school meeting at night; I need to get my nails done and rake the leaves by Wednesday because friends are coming over. Or, I can't do it. I have chemo tomorrow and what if it doesn't work and I get all sick and lose my hair and then die anyhow.

That kind of future dread is a part of the human condition and most of us experience it on a regular basis. The other day I became aware of the reverse condition--memory overload. This is when you add up all the bad things that have happened to you over the last few days, weeks, years, or even over a lifetime and conclude that the Big Dude must not like you (or some other such frightening judgment).

Recently, I've been in memory overload. I fell on my hands and knees and injured my knee. Tests show nothing but I have debilitating pain everyday and am forced to walk with a cane or a crutch. On its own, this is difficult but it becomes catastrophic when I surround it with memory overload. I repeatedly think in this sequence: I've had too much to deal with in the last five years--I lost my job, lost my boyfriend, had hip replacement surgery, had a heart attack, and now I can't walk. Really, Big Dude? What terrible karmic retribution is this?

We can get "stuck" in either the future or the past and our minds run their tapes. Most of us are techno-savvy enough to know that when a tape is running in a continuous loop, we need to interrupt it. Turn off the electronic device if nothing else works. In the case of our thoughts, Buddhists would advocate that we stop and take several deep breaths.

Specifically, Pema Chodron, bless her, shows us her struggles with memory overload and futurizing. She suggests three deep breaths several times a day paying attention for that brief time only to the breath. Of all the Buddhist writers, she seems the most human to me. I am comforted by her descriptions of herself flinging a rock after her husband announces he is leaving her for another woman, by her story of being afraid to walk down a certain road because a scary dog lives down that way.

After we breathe and come into awareness, it's nice to be aware that we breathe within a community of humans all of whom share our struggles, all of whom have future dread and memory overload at various times. Each one of us has to stop and breathe on our own; no one can do that for us. Once we do it, however, there is room for awareness that shared breath is not unlike shared Spirit. In the moment, in this moment, we are never alone. Roxie