You are so excited to prepare dinner for three of your friends. You’ve planned a menu, gone grocery shopping, and spent several hours slicing and chopping, sauteing and mixing to bring forth a delightful meal. Your guests arrive to share your culinary efforts. They rave about your spinach dip, but as you taste it, you ignore the lovely textures and flavors and only notice that to be perfect, it needs a bit more salt. Your veggie lasagna noodles are incompletely cooked on the edges and are crisp and chewy. The salad, you think, is overdressed. Despite accolades from your friends, you wish you’d done things a little better.
Seems we tend to set unreasonable expectations for how life will unfold. Our minds tend to have “Velcro for the negative, and Teflon for the positive.” That is, we give more attention to negative events than positive ones. Perhaps an evolutionary advantage (best to know where danger is), this mindset risks us missing some lovely things around us. As we are quick to criticize ourselves and find fault in every element of a dinner prepared for friends, we miss and undervalue the overall deliciousness of the meal and minimize the joy of being able to spend time with dear friends.
As our human internal world bumps against the external world of events, sense experiences, and interactions, we tend to categorize these experiences as “pleasant,” “unpleasant,” or “neither pleasant nor unpleasant (neutral).” Termed “vedanā,” or feeling tone, in Buddhist circles, knowing we do this can help maintain steadiness when disappointment arises.
We can bump into “unpleasant” in many different arenas of our life. Mindful awareness of our reactions, and labeling the experience, can help us stay steady. Further, acknowledging there is something that you don’t like makes clear that there can be things happening that you DO like. Awareness helps us not let the “unpleasant” drown out the “pleasant.”
During the COVID pandemic, one morning I set out to do a popular hike, Lake 22 in the North Cascades. I wasn’t the only one finding some solace in the out-of-doors during this challenging time – use of our trail systems increased dramatically. And on this hike I experienced some side effects of this increased usage. First, I saw toilet paper piles along the trail – oh that made me angry, and my judging mind quipped “Mother Nature does not have a cleaning lady!” When I arrived at the lake, I found it placid and quiet. Ah. Just what I like! But after 30 minutes or so, an enthusiastic family arrived (perhaps a birthday party?) with cheers and hoots and hollers that echoed in the cirque. Again, my judging mind rose up, “Be quiet! There are others here!” My experience on this hike was a clashing of feeling tones, and I found myself forcing my idea of “pleasant” onto the others visiting – how arrogant! I let these frustrations color my hike experience. What a relief when my attention returned to the glorious surroundings – the dramatic slope of Mount Pilchuck, a woodpecker nest with babies chirping to be fed, and multiple crashing waterfalls.
I invite you to bring mindfulness to your reactions to the events of your life. Recognize when pleasant exists and enjoy it. Recognize when unpleasant exists and see it for what it is. Try the practice of labeling yucky things as “unpleasant” and see if it helps you gain perspective.
Take good care!
Beth