Pt 5 - When the bumper sticker all of a sudden makes sense

Day 5 was proof that all things come in waves.

And as I write this, I am racking my brain so as not to fall into the trap of solidifying this assumption that a bad thing must follow a good thing.

But let me get there...

There was this inner hunch that the squirrel-high of day 4 would probably not last. The real question, though, is, how does one not brace oneself for something “bad”, as it seems so inevitable?

Is whatever follows automatically just labeled as bad because it can’t possibly be as good as the high we’ve just experienced?

Think back to any life event that you’d consider a peak experience.

A graduation.

A wedding.

That one college party that felt like the most fun you’d ever had.

The thing is, after your graduation, you woke up the next day and asked yourself, now what?

After your wedding, you might have woken up and had a felt sense of, alright, now the real work in this relationship begins (I don’t have a reference for this and god knows I don’t want one, but I’ve seen enough relationships crash and burn to know a wedding is not a guarantee of eternal bliss).

And maybe the most classic of all, after you dance the night away, hoping it might last forever, you wake up with the worst hangover of your life pledging you’ll never touch a drop of alcohol again.

Day 5 was that.

The aftermath.

And it was the first of a couple of very profound teachings I was about to receive (I’ll dig into the second one in the next newsletter).

Ya know, the kind you read on bumper stickers and think, oh my, that is so true, but then you move on and completely forget to “carpe diem”.

Until one day you have this random experience and your whole body goes: Oooooohhhh, wait..now I get it.

(If you want a lot of those moments, let yourself be locked into a house with lots of rules about not speaking and no eye contact, and I guarantee you you’ll have epiphanies you never knew you needed.)

So back to day 5.

Again, part of me knew it was going to suck for the only and simple reason that day 4 was great.

So it got me thinking…

What am I to do with this realization that a “good” experience is inevitably followed by a “bad” experience?

Part of me just wants to say: It’s physics, babe, that’s just the way it is. Suck it up.

& I mean, yeah, sure..but the question remains, if you know it’s coming, how do you not brace yourself?

That’s when I learned about yet another layer of the Vipassana teaching: Anicca.

I have mentioned this idea of impermanence in previous newsletters. You know, the fact that nothing ever lasts, aka the reasoning behind “putting up” with the pain in my knee, you remember…

It was logical in the moment when I was sitting there going “it makes no sense to suffer right now sitting on this pillow since it’s not going to last anyway.” Sure enough, every time the chanting voice hit my eardrums, my pain waned because my body knew, it’s almost over.

Anicca (Pali for impermanence, pronounced: anitscha).

When we’re stuck in suffering, it’s easy to say, nothing lasts forever, but when we’re having the time of our lives, no one wants to say, nothing lasts forever.

In fact, the moment you think about it, your body may be flooded with this unpleasant feeling of “Oh no…no, no, no, don’t tell me this will be over?”

So what do we do..?

Jackpot, we cling to the “goodness”, busy with the illusion of trying to make it last as long as possible and therefore completely unaware of the fact that we are constantly at the mercy of this one thing: change.

Or to use another word: Anicca, impermanence.

So that’s when I realized: I cannot just surrender to the fact that “things will get better eventually” if I actually want a shot at happiness. I have to surrender to the fact that everything changes all the time.

And to get real deep here.. what if this idea of “a bad thing must follow a good thing and vice versa” is just in my head?

Obviously, we have the hangover evidence that might make you go:

Look, Mel, idk about you, but in my book, a party with friends will always beat an urge to vomit, a pounding headache and an eventual craving for fast food.

I hear you and I agree, but if “partying” were a permanent state, it would lose all its flavor, and the whole game would start all over again.

So here’s the bumper sticker truth that landed in my body on day 5:

Life is about contrast. The ups and the downs.

The up is only good because there is a down, and the down is only bad because we’ve tasted the up.

AND...

Suffering only comes from making ourselves believe that there is such a thing as up and down.

Watching squirrels was amazing, and the idea that whatever would follow could not possibly be as “good” was a belief that I chose to carry.

Or let me put it to you this way… isn’t it exhausting to think that things will constantly alternate between being great and completely sucking?

It’s very human (or well, we’ve been conditioned into it) to be thinking “uh-oh…” as soon as we realize things are just fine the way they are.

Tell me you’ve never had this moment: You wake up on a sunny Sunday. Your job is good. Your family is good. Your health is good. And then you go…oh shit.

Now, sure, I could go into a deep analysis of how our society is too stressed, can’t live in the moment, always has to chase the next best thing, and all of that would be true. However, it will always come back to thinking one thing is better than the other.

Aaaand... this is where you find yourself in a mindfuck, because you’ll say (again): but Mel, one thing is better than the other.

To which I would say: yes, but if the good thing is only good because of the bad and the bad is only bad because of the good, would you agree that they depend on each other?

And if they depend on each other, they can’t exist in isolation, yeah?

And if they can’t exist in isolation, they are kind of part of the same thing, yeah?

And if they are the same thing, then how can we make one bad and one good?

Well, you can’t...

But you do. (I do…)

Which means I suffer.

I suffer trying to separate my experience into good and bad instead of accepting that it is just simply always changing. Anicca.

Alright, so, obviously you’re a super smart cookie, and I just blew your mind with this spiritual bumper sticker revelation, but I did get a bit abstract, so...

What would that actually look like in everyday life?

Imagine this…you know you can’t stop time, you can’t change or control what is going to happen, so you no longer worry.

All these moments you spent worrying about whether you’ll make the train or plane, or whether you’ll get the promotion, or whether your parents-in-law hate you: pouf, gone. You’re relaxed. Present.

So when day 5 did, in fact, suck (because I was in my head, overthinking, trying to escape, full of self-doubt, in physical pain… you name it), I realized that part of it was because I was expecting it, because I was dreading it and because I refused to see it as part of the whole.

My whole perspective sucked, so of course my experience did too.

I’ll leave you with this...

The only thing that’s true is what we believe to be true.

What we believe to be true creates our experience.

Our experience is always subject to impermanence.

The more we embrace impermanence, the happier we’ll be.

Anicca. Anicca. Anicca.

And if you think this was the peak of my learnings, brace yourself. JUST KIDDING.

But for real, the next one (days 6 and 7) I did not see coming...

Love,

Mel 💌

PS. All my newsletters are written by me, not AI (so please flag the typos).

😉

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