You think too much, Mary Ann.

I cling to that description of me. Others hung it on me, but I’ve bought into it big time. I’ve also bought into the notion that “thinking too much” is a bad thing and that it’s of the many things about myself I must fix. Besides having a tendency to drive some people away, my seeking explanation can be awfully exhausting. Fruitlessly, I bang my head against the Wall of Knowledge, looking for The Answers. I’ve tried to stop thinking too much. I haven’t been very successful.

I can’t remember the chapter in which Kornfield quoted the Zen proverb: “If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” But I got bugged by that proverb because it seemed to be telling me to “just stop thinking about it” — all the “its” I think about, just stop. You think “too” much, Mary Ann.

And that’s why I’m intrigued by L’s post. I can be relentlessly driven to understand, to find reasons and explanations, to know. I’m not sure that I can ever be still and satisfied with unexplained mysteries, either.  Like hey, here’s something that requires explanation: what is the point of my intelligence if my ability to make sense of my experience doesn’t matter? Why would our ability to sense patterns and relationships evolve into a skill well beyond what we need to (physically) survive if we weren’t meant to use it?

But lately I believe I have started a  new relationship with this all thinking I do.

I realize it’s not the quest for explanation that I must address.  It’s not the ” not knowing” that’s actually causing me to suffer.  It’s the driven and desperate quality of my quest that’s the problem.

Why am I so frantic about it? Therapy has helped me to see it has something to do with a need to feel safe. Could be that the desperateness is not really propelling me toward understanding? Perhaps I am using this desperate quest to run away from something that scares me and feels unsafe. Perhaps it’s not that I really want knowledge at all, perhaps it’s really that I am avoiding something—like boatloads of grief and sadness, maybe?

(I have seen the fleet, and it is mine.)

I haven’t figured it all out. But recently it has been more fruitful for me be curious about the driven and desperate quality of my quest rather than go on the quest itself. I’m examining it closely and peeking under it to see what it has been covering up. It’s spidery and creepy under there, but I think it’s really where I need to go.

Whether I understand or not: “things are just as they are.” I can’t change any circumstance present or past. But I can change my relationship to things “as they are.”  Changing my relationship is an inward journey, not an outward one. It’s a heart case, not a head one. I can see that now, even though I can’t always act on it.  When I can relax into the not knowing, feelings of deep grief and sadness flow over me. Sometimes I think I will drown in their waves.  But when I can relax into those feelings,  welcome them, and not judge them or myself, I feel relief.  This relaxing and doing nothing except to note what’s bubbling up and feel it fully is counter to all my programming.  I am a very old dog learning new tricks, and these tricks don’t come easily, not at all.

But I practice, and I sense my heart growing lighter and a glimmer of an unfamiliar, but oh so welcome, peace.

I felt myself getting all worked up recently during two separate conversations with two different friends about the same essay in the New York Times. The author wrote about a time — two decades into her marriage — when her husband told her, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”  But the piece is not about her personal pain, or about divorce (he doesn’t move out) — it’s about how she didn’t buy into his words and subsequent unreliable behavior, but rather cooly gave him the “distance” he needed  (for six months) while she explained to their kids, ““Daddy’s having a hard time as adults often do.”

I got worked up just now as I re-read the essay several times, and even more now that I am writing about it. Why? Because (and let me steal the words she used to deflect her husband’s hateful words): I don’t buy it.

“How could she remain so cool?” I asked both of my friends.

One friend: “Maybe she’s a Buddhist.”

Me: “Yeah, maybe she’s the Dalai Lama.”

(I think I just scared the other friend with how upset this essay made me. I haven’t heard from him since.)

I have no doubt the writer has studied Buddhism. She writes, “You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to ‘The End of Suffering.’ I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take
responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.”  By writing the essay she wants to help, “People who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their temporary feelings are permanent.”

All good and true words. But in this piece she paints herself as a  living saint, with boundless commitment and patience. Yes, to the “The End of Suffering.”  Yes, to the understanding that all feelings are transient.  But good lord woman, humans commit to “understanding” this all the time—and then they waver, and they suffer, and they act out in destructive ways, and then, with grace, they get back on track—only to waver again. And sometimes they get the urge to just smack their partners! Yikes.

I’m not sure if it’s plain old me or writer me that is so upset by this essay. Since she doesn’t show us any of feelings or struggle, I don’t quite believe her story.  (Surely she cried herself to sleep some nights or wanted to kick the cat. Surely her marriage crisis was not all off-balance hubby and perfectly-balanced wife.)  I don’t think enlightened behavior comes as easily as this writer has made it out to be.  That’s what ticked me off. She made it look easy. Consciously or unconsciously she doesn’t seem to be honest with us—or, I suspect, with herself.

More than being impressed with her self-reported Dalai Lama level of enlightenment, I am suspect. All I know is that every time I declare “I’ve got it now!” and commit to a “non-negotiable understanding with myself”  and “The End of Suffering” and “managed to
exile the voices in my head” (and this has happened numerous times) something comes along to knock me right off my personal pedestal. Whoa, girlie, the universe says. You think you’ve got it, well let’s see how you handle this! Life is pain, suffering.  There is no end to it for most, if not all, of us. And I am much better off, much happier, more in touch, if I don’t expect myself to have perfect knowledge or take perfect action, and if I understand I am always, always, always deluded. On the path, but far from arriving. I relate more to her husband—the one in their relationship who is a mess. And I feel as though she condescends to him from her enlightened pedestal. But maybe (probably) that and the extreme level of my upsetness as I write this says more about me than it does about this article.

Principle #14
If we cling to anger or hatred, we will suffer.
It is possible to respond strongy, wisely, and compassionately without hatred

Unfortunately (for my inner peace) and fortunately (for my development as a human being) I’ve had a fairly good number of opportunities in the last few weeks to practice watching my own tendencies towards anger. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that I rarely get angry anymore, and certainly I am less temperamental than I used to be. But man oh man, anger definitely rises up, and I can still fly of the handle, that’s for sure. In these last few weeks I’ve been able to catch myself doing it. I haven’t necessarily been able to stop myself, but I have some distance, and I can see my anger rising and taking over. At least I can stop before one-sided blame or vengeance takes over. But I know even this more controlled anger isn’t healthy. Forgetting the damage it does to my soul—I could feel anger doing damage to my body.

I allow myself to slip into anger, and I know why.  I express anger, because it’s easier than expressing pain. (That’s something that’s good to know about myself, but also good to know about others. Angry people are people in pain.)

Often, Kornfield will write about a client who needs to “simply feel.”  Ha. So much easier said than done. “Now imagine how you might communicate about your fear and hurt rather than blame,” he says. I get that. The irony here is that I must “communicate” about this with people who are long dead or who are completely incapable of “getting” whatever I have to say. God  has a wonderful sense of humor, eh?

The challenge then, for me, is to not need validation from outside of myself. Good thing it’s called “practice.”