Could it be that we’re so harried, so unhappy, so stressed because we’ve forgotten the simple pleasure and discipline of being up to one thing at a time?When we’re committed to being always on, always connected, always responsive – and to reacting to every email, phone call, tweet, facebook posting, news report – how can we expect to lose ourselves, completely, in something that’s both fulfilling and of value?Everything is interrupting everything else, all the time. And we keep it this way - make it this way - because we think we like it. It makes us feel important.And perhaps most significantly, it saves us from having to feel, really feel, anything in particular.The consequence? The successful numbing of both our anxiety and our joy.
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You're not separate from the world.Put another way, you're always being brought about by -
I write here often about the inner critic because it has been the cause of so much struggle and difficulty since I was very small. In writing I discover new angles and new waysof responding. I hope it will be of help also to some of you who are reading.For years I did not want to hear anything that others had to say about me, whether praise or criticism, loving or ill-intended. It was all pretty much the same to me - a wounding reminder of my own constant self-judgement. Such harshness in my inner world led me to take on inner self-numbing as a serious project. The comments of others, however offered, simply reconnected me with what I was working so strenuously to avoid.I extended this project into the outer world too, of course, trying not to draw too much attention to myself. I'd stay out of the limelight when I could. And I developed a reputation for shyness and quietness, for not being too much trouble to anyone, for looking ok, for being humble and self-effacing: all powerful supports for the inner numbing to which I was so committed.At the time, I doubt I would have understood any of this as something I was actively doing. But such is the power of the critic, it can shape a life from the inside out, and for that reason I think it's a topic of enormous importance.It was only in my mid-thirties, when a teacher of mine was generous enough to tell me how self-critical he found me, that I began to see that I had a critic at all. Until then I'd thought it self-evident that the world was made up of exactingly high standards that I could never reach and populated by others who knew my many failings even before I discovered them myself. It had never occurred to me that my hyper-vigilance for criticism, inside and outside, was just one possible way to live an adult life.The foundational, liberating move was to identify the critic as an entity in its own right - a part of me - and to see that the harshness it generated was not life itself. In this way the critic became something I have rather than something that invisibly has me. And having it opened up the possibility of cultivating a new relationship with it.I learned how to see the critic as an attacking force and, gradually, how necessary it is to defend against its attack. Reasoning with it (a familiar habit for me) or otherwise engaging with it does not help, because the critic is insatiable. It has higher standards in all domains of life than I can ever reach. Whatever I do it's on the immediate lookout for what else is undone or not perfect. It cannot be placated by persuasion, by argument or by giving in, and it is not at all interested in the evidence of my eyes and ears and heart. Living with the critic is like living with a rabid dog.Defending requires meeting the critic with equal and opposite energy to its attacks, pushing them away with considerable force. Expletives help - the more evocative the better. What does not help is passivity: quietly waiting, staying small, until it goes away. This strategy, familiar to me from my childhood, just invites the critic to keep going.When I remember to defend myself adequately I gain a measure of freedom, some space, into which the longings of my heart and conscience can step forward. It turns out that the critic - though it will defend itself by telling me it is my conscience - is interested neither in what I long for nor in what is right. It cares only about maintaining a vanishingly small world in which nobody can ever be disappointed and no shame can occur. And it's willing to use the very disappointment and shame it so fears from others in order to keep me in line.And so I have to remember to defend, every day. As time goes on the attacks become more disguised, more wily. It's a lifetime's work. And necessary, if I am to live fully, and if I am to take up the freedom and capacity to contribute that is my - and everyone's - birthright.
It’s common to think that insight is required before you can make a change to your life, to your work, or to your relationships. From this perspective you'll put off changing until you've "got it", until you've understood what's called for.But it’s equally true to say that insight is what happens as a result of the changes you make.Being different, or understanding more deeply, often requires first standing in a different place to the one you’re standing in now - giving up your certainty, taking up new practices and behaviour and a fresh, perhaps temporary, story about who you are and what's possible for you. You have to step purposefully and with some courage into the unfamiliar territory of not knowing before you have much chance of understanding from a new perspective.If you’re waiting for insight to strike you first, you might have it exactly the wrong way around.
Perhaps today is the day to start allowing yourself to feel the impact of the life you're living.What joy, sorrow, tenderness, anticipation, love, fury, despair, disappointment, acceptance, hope is being brought about by your life?What does it feel like to be you, really?It will probably take some softening, some slowing down, and some opening on your part, so that you can feel beyond the numbing and automatic habits we're all prone to fall into.Once you start to tune in to what life is actually like for you, you open the possibility of a new and fresh response arising - one that honours your life and that of those around you.And what better project could there be to take up at the dawn of a new year?
I'm learning how easy it can be to experience life as an affront.When life shows up this way my attention is drawn to everything that is absent. I see how much I long for that cannot be, and the many reasons why that is the case - the limits of my resources and power, the particular place and time in history into which I was born but which I did not choose, the people I have met and not met along the way, the many choices made and the many chances missed. How nothing is ever complete. And how nothing is ever perfect.Life as an affront is nothing but a series of unrealised and unrealisable expectations which somehow I'm expected to take care of.It's not hard to amplify the feelings of shame and resentment and despair that arise from this. I can easily dwell on all the ways I imagine I am to blame for it all. Or, in a more grandiose sense, I can get to feel entitled to a life that spares me from the ever messy, partial, uncontrollable situation in which we all find ourselves, and resentful and fearful at its impossibility.Sometimes I catch myself in the act of choosing this interpretation of life, for a choice it is, and see that it's a habit - a way of thinking and feeling in a predictable and familiar way, over and over. A way of sameing myself.I'm reminded that choosing differently will be difficult and unlikely to become a new kind of habit without my dedication, commitment and constant practice.So I'm hoping over the coming months to learn from traditions that have chosen a different and more joyful interpretation of life. I want to follow in the footsteps of those who have been attuned to the very real difficulties and suffering we experience and who have nevertheless deeply cultivated their capacity to look upon life with both wonder and joy.The Sufi tradition in Islam, Hasidism in Judaism, the Jesuit order in Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism all have a strong streak of joyfulness and laughter woven through their stories and practices. They are able to laugh at and laugh from within life, and take joy in the sacred messy incompleteness of everything.I'm seeing what it could be like to whirl and be whirled by life, to consciously practice finding joy at what is, to love and be loved by life rather than habitually being affronted by it.Already I'm seeing so much in ordinary life that normally passes me by.I'll let you know how I get on.
I think there's much to be said for 