My husband would describe me as "extreme."
I'm all or nothing.
It has taken me most of my life to realize there can be a middle ground and that sometimes how you feel about something can change.
I tend to get into ruts. Not just ruts like other people probably think of ruts. I will do things repeatedly for days, months, years, and then I'll stop cold turkey. I'll exercise rigorously or not exercise at all. My emotions and opinions can swing from one extreme to another.
When I was younger, things seemed so much simpler. Even when my behavior was extreme, I felt secure in my feelings about whether things were right or wrong. I loved things or I hated them. I always knew what I wanted. I always had a goal. And I felt confident in my opinions.
But as I've gotten older, everything has become more ambiguous. The lines between right and wrong, good and bad, have become blurry. It's almost to the point where I almost never feel strongly about anything.
In many ways, it has made life calmer. I am less volatile. I am less judgmental and more understanding and sympathetic about other people's lives. I guess that having more experience and more knowledge has made me more sympathetic.
There have been times when my daughter has gotten frustrated with me because, just like I felt when I was her age, she wants there to be answers about everything. She wants me to have a definite opinion about things.
But usually I don't.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly have preferences. There are things I like more and things I like less, but I no longer feel as if there's an actual "right" or "wrong" when making most decisions. Because, as we've discussed in previous blogs, you can't always know how life will unfold. Things that seem "bad" might end up being positive. And something that, on the surface, felt amazing, might end up negatively as time passes.
It makes my daughter mad because she thinks I'm too passive. She thinks I just can't be bothered to care enough to have an opinion.
So I've been wondering, is she right? Have I gone too far the other way? Am I too passive?
I do think that being more flexible in my thinking is a good thing. But maybe I have mistaken not being opinionated for apathy. Maybe I purposely don't throw my hat in the ring because I don't want to have to have a stake in the game. It's been interesting to realize that what I assumed was a positive change in my behavior might not be as positive as I thought it was.
How do we find the right balance?
I've been thinking these past years that I was being more reasonable because most of the time it's not good when I am passionate about something because it becomes all consuming. But maybe I'm still following my behavioral pattern of extremism because maybe I've simply replaced caring too much for not caring at all—about anything.
It's obviously not that cut and dry. I clearly still care about things. But I do have trouble making decisions. I have trouble giving advice because my mind second guesses itself. After all, experience has shown that we do not know what the future holds. And just because I don't like something or someone, doesn't mean that other people should feel the same way.
Going along with the current makes things easier. It's certainly easier to let exterior events or people make choices for me. But I need to remember there has to be balance. Understanding how to find that balance will be more difficult.
So I asked my mom about how she finds balance in her life.
1. Are there Buddhist teachings that help you find balance in your life?
Wow. There are so many. In fact, finding balance is one of my principal attractions to the Buddha's teaching. I'm not interested in "transcendent" states that people think of as nirvana. I'm interested in finding exactly what you write about: the right balance. This is because it's only when I'm balanced that I don't feel tossed about by what happens in life, like a ship on a stormy sea. Balance brings with it a sense of peace in my life.
I'll describe a few teachings...and then maybe mention others in my response to your other questions.
The first teaching I rely on is the Buddha's four noble truths. I don't have time to discuss this in full. I can only refer people to my books for that. Basically, in the first noble truth, the Buddha set forth a list of the tough things we'll all encounter in life—from illness to aging, to not getting what we want to getting what we don't want, to losing what we cherish. It's a daunting list.
If that list (in the new edition of How to Be Sick, I call it "The Buddha's List") were all he provided us with, we might fall into the unbalanced extreme of despair. In fact, some people say that Buddhism is pessimistic but that's because they don't understand that by providing us with this list, the Buddha was simply setting forth a realistic view of life, so that we'd know what to expect and won't be thrown to extremes when they happen. And, he doesn't just stop at that list. He goes on to help us learn how to keep balanced in the face of these tough life experiences.
There are many aspects to keeping balanced. The first is to acknowledge that life inevitably will be tough at times and to give up the fruitless—and often compulsive—desire to never encounter these unpleasant experiences. That desire serves only to make things worse for us since it's a desire that can never be fulfilled. So, acknowledging and accepting that unpleasant experiences are part of life helps me keep balanced because I don't expect things to be otherwise. This is not a passive stance. On the contrary, I think of it as engaging life as it truly is.
A second way I keep balanced is to remind myself that life is a mixture of joys and sorrows. The Buddha's List enumerates those sorrows, but there's joy too. In the subtitle to my second book, I refer to "navigating joys and sorrows." I touched above how to navigate sorrow, but why do we need to navigate joy? The answer is that we need to have a balanced attitude toward joy when it's present because it doesn't last forever. And so, if we cling to it, that's going to an extreme because we're setting ourselves up for a big fall when that joy passes. And so, for me, the key to finding balance in life is to embrace joy when we feel it but not cling to it and to not feel aversion when sorrow shows up (that list again), but to accept it as part of the human condition.
I am not saying that it is easy to do either of the things in that previous sentence but I've discovered that when I'm able to do them, equanimity arises (it being one of the "sublime states" in Buddhism). Equanimity is that calm and balanced state of mind that allows us to feel at peace with life. In my view, true equanimity is nirvana...and it's what I work on every day.
For me, when I'm resting in equanimity, I know I've found the right balance in my life. It's not a passive state but one that engages life's joys and sorrows—it's up and downs—with wisdom and with compassion.
2. Are there times when you catch yourself being extreme in your behavior? How do you walk yourself back?
Good question. Depending on the situation, I'd say I do one of two things to walk myself back from extremes.
First, I keep what Zen teacher Seung Sahn called a "Don't-Know Mind" (something I also write about in my books). I may feel 100% sure that my opinions are right or that such and such a person is right or wrong, but do I really know? Almost always the answer is "no." Thich Nhat Hanh had a different way of expressing this. He said we should ask ourselves "Am I Sure?" before speaking or acting. I have many examples of when that "Am I Sure?" kept me from going to extremes.
That said, there are a few things I am sure of based on my commitment not to speak or act in a way that will be unkind or harmful to myself or others. In Buddhist terms, we'd say that I'm checking to see if what I'm about to say or do will help alleviate suffering as opposed to intensifying it (which come under "wise speech" and "wise action" on the Buddha's Eightfold Path).
There are some opinions I am sure are right and so I don't keep a Don't-Know Mind about them. For example, one is in my unshakeable belief that racism is wrong. You could say that this means I am extreme in my view, but I see nothing but suffering coming out of holding racist views or speaking and acting based on those views.
A second way I walk myself back when I catch myself being extreme in my behavior is to go straight to self-compassion. These past 10 days have been terrible for me because our dog Scout did something that set off cramps and muscle spasms in her left leg. The vet could find nothing wrong, but the episodes were painful to watch and when she wasn't in a spasm, she lay on her bed and wouldn't get up. (We experimented with some medications, particularly an anti-spasm drug, and she's finally recovered).
But for 10 days, we had no idea how to keep her from being in pain and we had no idea how long it would go on or whether we'd have to admit her to the vet hospital in town (she's horribly afraid of cages due to mistreatment as a puppy).
As the week progressed, I became more and more "extreme" in my worrying and fretting. I spent hours and hours on the internet trying to figure out what was wrong. I couldn't sleep well because I knew she was on her bed next to mine and could cry out in pain any moment.
The way I walked myself back from my extreme worry and stress was through self-compassion. Like equanimity, compassion is one of the "sublime states" in Buddhism (and is highly valued in most religious and humanitarian traditions). This is both compassion for others and compassion for ourselves.
Here's how I evoked it when I felt overcome with extreme emotional distress over Scout. As I lay in bed, I'd stroke one arm with the hand of the other and silently speak soothing words to myself: "This is really stressful. No wonder you feel extra sick right now. This is hard, really hard. You're taking the best care of her you can." And that walked me back.
3. Do you find that because of your illness, since you have less exposure to life outside your house, your tendency to feel strongly about things has become more extreme or less extreme?
Well, the internet gives me almost as much exposure to life outside the house as I'd get if I were physically going out! And yet, being mostly housebound has helped me be less extreme. For one thing, emotions are felt in the body and my body needs as much quiet as it can get. So emotional extremes (which are anything but "quiet") are very hard on me physically, which is one reason I actively look for ways to avoid them—the ways I talked about above. Sometimes I'm more successful than other times...I didn't do so well with Scout this past week...but, hopefully, I learned from the experience and will do better when the next crisis arises.
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Mara and I would love to know what your strategies are for finding the right balance in life.
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