When Your Writing Mentor Snatches Your Wig
Life is a bitch. I particularly hate it when the thing you try to avoid comes back to bite you in the ass. That in a nutshell was my Sunday. To explain I have to do one of those flashbacks (pretend there’s some music and a dreamlike sequence).
At a particular moment in my life I lived in Northern California. It was a gorgeous location with perfect weather, and I largely lived a happy, non-orange sky in the morning existence. I leaned in to the Californianess of it all. Or rather it overtook me before I knew it. I was suddenly healthier and eating less meat. I went to a farmers’ market (sometimes two) on a weekly basis, I bought locally, and I went hiking all of the time. Given my NYC roots that was a big deal (I learned that hiking was just really walking on non-paved surfaces). To top it off I had a meditation practice. Yes, I used to meditate. There was an amazing, open, non-judgmental meditation center in my neighborhood, and I used to attend meditation sessions and workshops. I even did some cleaning for the center on a volunteer basis.
You don’t get “good” at meditation but you do make a commitment to it. I did, and I was meditating for 30 mins or more daily. What seemed difficult at first was eventually normal and even enjoyable. I was also voraciously reading all things from certain teachers I admired. Anything by Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron was an automatic borrow from the library or buy from the bookstore. My work yielded fruits. I worked through several unexamined issues from my past, I was more aware of my emotions, and I even learned to enjoy doing mundane things like washing dishes. Ultimately, my meditation practice and therapy also led me to realize that my government job was unfulfilling and I eventually it left for academia.
Let me clarify in case this sounds idyllic: nothing about meditation or Buddhist teachings is easy. These pictures of sereneness and calm mask a lot of deep and painful introspection. Everything that I learned about meditation involved a lot of effort and honesty. I had to stop lying to myself. I had to stop reaching out for comforting crutches. I had to be more compassionate and open. I had to accept that change was a normal part of life. And most painfully, I had to take personal responsibility and keep at it.
Old habits die hard and there is a reason something is comforting even if you should know better. Leaving for academia led me to think that things were “fixed.” New city, new life. I was happier now that I had my new job. Academia was fulfilling, placed no limits on my ability, and gave me tons of freedom. I no longer thought I needed meditation as much to cope. There was still some meditating but slowly I fell off. First I made excuses and eventually I stopped altogether. I talked about getting back to meditating but I never did. Nothing was noticeably wrong at first. But then when things got bad I had nothing to fall back on.
Eight years and lots of things happened (Imagine a quick montage of scenes my life): Mom dies, Dad moves in, new job, Dad dies, microagressions at work, and eventually another awesome new job.
Things had to fall apart for me to find my meditation again. I was so desperate to figure out how to write more that I was willing to get back to basics. For the past three weeks I’ve been slowly working my way back. First very short guided meditations. Then a couple meditations without a guide. Then meditations which were a bit longer. It’s a pain. My back hurts and I want to bail every time. But I’m doing it. And once again I’m a lot more aware of things going on in my body and my methods of avoidance.
And now we’re finally back to the present and the beginning of my fourth week in writing bootcamp. Karma smacked me hard when it put me face to face with the ultimate Zen teacher: my writing coach was telling me to look inward. (This is the part of the movie were I’d foolishly I thought I’d made it through the hardest part of the journey only for the wise guide to laugh and tell me “you have no idea”). This week’s topic: resistance.
Sounds easy enough. Turns out I only knew a limited part of the resistance story all along. I had been engaging in a very one-dimensional analysis of resistance. I only talked in terms of perfectionism and procrastination. Turns out there’s a LOT more.
I should have known better. After all, over the years I’ve seen myself engage in some complex mental gymnastics to avoid writing and other unpleasant things. As I have learned, resistance actually covers a whole broad set of behaviors, myths we tell ourselves, and complex mental gymnastics. There’s also denial, avoidance, and anger involved.
By this point of my life, my brain has written an entire set of novels on the subject of why I shouldn’t write and why I hate it. Here’s today’s game changer (that moment in the film where you have the epiphany and you feel kind of happy but really nauseous at the same time): none of this has to do with my laziness or any other personal flaw in my character. All of the effort, pain, and running have to do with my brain protecting me! Writing brings up anxiety and the resistance is just trying to protect me from that anxiety. Simple enough.
Yet, I feel utterly uncomfortable, discombobulated, and extremely hopeful at the same time. Yes, I now know that there’s nothing wrong with me but what’s even scarier is that I am completely in control of shifting things and developing a relationship with my resistance. This was every Buddhist teacher I’d ignored for 8 years coming coming back to haunt me. My very simplified version of the Buddhist theory is that we suffer a lot more because we spend a lot of time trying to avoid suffering. In economic terms we are extremely inefficient in our suffering because we spend tons of unnecessary and wasteful resources trying to avoid it. A teacher in mindfulness would encourage you to learn to suffer well by accepting suffering, sitting with it, and being compassionate with yourself.
Turns out that’s exactly what the bootcamp approach is as well. Notice the resistance, acknowledge it, shift your thinking, and get back to the things you really should be doing (writing). Eight years I’ve been running away from meditation and Buddhism and here I am right back at square one. I cannot avoid writing in order to make writing feel better. I have to write. There is so much simplicity and complexity dripping from those sentences. Why is life like this?
Over the course of human history patterns that we have built up have served us well — we have survived. I’m obviously from a long line of very careful, anxiety avoiding individuals. I have a very well-developed sense of risk-aversion. My brain does an amazing job of having me avoid anxiety, but that doesn’t work in this non-life or death modern world. I think there is just a fundamental disconnect between modern needs and old human biology. Some of this is soothing your brain and reminding yourself that you’re not going to die by sitting down to write.
Awareness or mindfulness is a shift but one that requires work. I think the Buddhists have it right. If your starting point is that suffering will occur either way I think it’s best to be efficient with it and avoid the needless suffering that resistance can lead to. This week I am committing myself to suffering less by writing more and being mindful of my resistance.
I look forward to sharing more of my journey. Here’s Part I if you missed it.
