It's Good to Suck at Something

I went on a bike ride with my husband on Saturday, which highlighted once again my difficulty being in my own experience when I am around other people, but that is for another post.  What I’m interested in today is the fact that it also highlighted the fact that I still can’t really ride out of the saddle.  I can pedal a few times, but not for any sustained, coordinated amount of time.  The background here is that I just learned how to ride a bike about two years ago.  Literally, riding in a parking lot with my husband running alongside.

I watch my husband climb a hill up out of his seat and I can see that it is effective, but part of me feels like I’ve spent two years getting pretty good at riding up a hill sitting down, so I should just stick with that.  After all, when I do get up, it seems really hard, not just in terms of coordination but it uses different muscles, which I suppose is the whole point, but makes me tired.  As I’m writing this, I am remembering that the story about me learning to walk is that the doctor said basically I had gotten so good and fast at crawling that there was no incentive for me to walk—he recommended my mom get some kind of a stand up push toy to motivate me.

In yoga, the word we use for the effort and discipline it takes to do something hard is tapas.  Tapas literally means heat and pretty much when we do something difficult, it creates heat, like friction.  Recently, one of my yoga students said that she used something she got from me with her third graders, which is that when you are new at something, you suck at it (that’s how she said it, I don’t remember if I said it that way, but it is definitely possible).

Just in the last couple of weeks, I decided to learn to knit “continental style,” which is different and more efficient that the way I had been knitting.  It was really frustrating and annoying for a little while and I thought about just doing it the old way, but convinced myself that if I stuck with it, I would be glad and it would pay off and it did (and it didn’t take long at all).

So I thought about that on my bike ride and know that with a little bit of tapas, I can learn how to get out of the saddle.  I just have to be willing to suck at it and feel like it’s “too hard” for a little while.  I am old enough to know that staying with something familiar just because it’s familiar is a terrible reason, but it is amazingly hard to break the habit.  When I think back to how hard it was to ride my bike two years ago, though, and how much fun I’ve had since then (and how much I’ve learned about myself) I know it’s worth it.

Trying to Be "Right"

So I am still thinking about this idea of identifying with things outside of myself as a cause of suffering.  A yoga word related to this is avidya, which could translate as ignorance with a capital I—not knowing that I am consciousness itself, which Patanjali says is pretty much the cause of all the other problems I run into.  Ahankara is another good word, usually translated as ego, more literally the “I-maker” or “I-action.”  Identification is the job of the ego—I am this, I am that.

Last week, I got a big box of yarn in the mail.  I had ordered it about a week earlier and even before it arrived, I knew it was going to be mixed results (literally and figuratively).  There was a sale at an online yarn company and I was almost ready for a new project and I really love a deal.  After looking at all these different kinds of yarns and different colors, I decided to get not one but two grab bags.  Something appealing about the surprise of it, plus it’s an even better deal. 

But I realized between the time of placing and receiving the order that another big factor in choosing the grab bags was not being able to decide.  I look at lots of patterns and can’t decide what to make.  I look at lots of yarns and can’t decide what to buy.  I figured that I would get these yarns and that would help guide me in figuring out what to knit next.  Sort of the artistic idea that by creating limitations something might happen that wouldn’t otherwise happen.  Which may be true.  And it’s also true that I could get yarn I just didn’t like, which would be much less likely if I picked it out myself rather than letting someone else pick it out for me.

Ultimately, it seems to me, that difficulty making a decision always comes down to the belief that there is a “right” decision.  And this is what brings us back around to identifying with things outside of ourselves.  When I identify with the outcome of my choice, then I better make the “right” one.  Very stressful.  Fortunately, when you are talking about yarn, it’s easier to spot the faulty reasoning.  While some part of me does think this is a very important decision, another part of me can see we are talking about YARN and that whatever happens, I will have some fun knitting and probably end up with some things I like and some things I don’t like, and most importantly, my worth as a human being doesn’t depend on any of that.

I guess I’m just saying the same thing I did in the last post, but it sure takes a while for it to really sink in, doesn’t it?  The thing about being in that place where you are trying so hard to make the “right” decision is that it never ends.  So now I have all this yarn and I still spending hours looking through patterns trying to pick the “right” one—trying to use the “right” yarn to make the “right” item.  But I can see it happening and then just stop (at least for a moment).  THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY.  I guess ego, ahankara, is also the thing that thinks it can actually control life and make it so nothing unpleasant, sad, frustrating, etc. ever happens.  Which is the belief behind the belief that there is a “right” decision—if I make the “right” decision then nothing bad will ever happen, I’ll never have to experience anything I don’t want to experience.  That’s funny.  And terribly sad, because it really does cause us a lot of suffering.

I always feel like I need to say how things turned out.  Not a big surprise that I got some yarn that is great and I love, some that’s o.k. and a few things I don’t like much at all.  A lot of yarns that aren’t even quite enough to make anything, which means I get to work on overcoming the belief that because I bought all this yarn I can’t go buy more.  I’m sure there will be some future posts about the great yarn grab bag experiment.

The Set-Up

So sometimes when I ride my bike, I just want to go for a ride.  And sometimes I feel more like “training”—seeing if I can beat my average speed, that sort of thing.  Today, I decided I would go on a ride and just go whatever speed, enjoy being in my body and being outside, and take it easy on my knee that was hurting a couple times recently after I rode.  What was interesting was that part way around the lake, I started checking my speedometer and comparing my speed to my usual speed.  I could see I was being set up—if I ride “too slow” then I’m out-of-shape and should be riding more (etc.) and if I ride “too fast” and my knee hurts then I shouldn’t have fallen into the trap.  I was getting caught in a no-win situation.  So I reminded myself of my original intention and decided I was just going to stick with that.

Sometimes I notice a similar thing happening with writing this blog.  I originally set out not to set standards for myself regarding frequency or anything so that it wouldn’t turn into a chore.  I wanted it to help me pay more attention to my own self.  But still the thoughts arise that I should be posting more and I start to think, “I should just make a commitment to post at least once a week.”  Fortunately, I recognize this once again as a set-up.  There’s nothing wrong with making that commitment, but I already made a commitment that I wasn’t going to do that and when I start changing my plan in response to thoughts that I’m not doing good enough, I’m headed for trouble.  Standards that change all the time are hard to meet and ultimately just make a person feel bad for not meeting them.

I think this relates to the sutra where Patanjali says that suffering is caused by identifying with things outside of ourselves.  When I feel like my okayness is dependent on how I ride my bike or on my blog posts, my okayness is not very lasting and often altogether elusive.  But my actual inherent nature is okayness.

The other question that has recently crossed my mind regarding this blog is whether it is helping me pay more attention to my life or is separating me from my life?  Sometimes I feel like a person who spends all their time taking pictures of everything rather than experiencing it.  Ooh, another set-up.  It has to be this one way or it’s not right and I should just quit.  Not falling for it.  Really, it’s a little of both of these things (paying attention and looking through a camera) and that’s okay.  Sometimes I have something to say and sometimes I don’t, sometimes I am watching and thinking and sometimes I am experiencing and feeling, sometimes I am riding fast and sometimes I am riding slow.  And that’s okay.  I’m okay.  Regardless of how my conditioned mind tries to trick me into thinking that is not true.  And the great part is, as Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

Lessons from Maggie

It seems like so much has been happening lately that there hasn’t been anything to say. And now today, I feel so full of ideas that I don’t even know which one to write about. So I’ll choose the most current occurrence, which is spending about forty-five minutes looking for my dog, Maggie. Usually we take her out on a leash, even though we don’t really need to, because she is a terrier and cannot resist chasing a squirrel if she sees one. Today we went on our usual Wednesday car ride to the grocery store—as usual, she followed me up the stairs while I carried the bags. Great. Then I had to make a second trip and thought she might as well get a bit more exercise and come with me, but this time she didn’t follow me up the stairs and by the time I got back down there, she was nowhere to be found. Argh.

I was mad at her, mad at me, had all kinds of thoughts about how I shouldn’t have done that, should have known better, was wasting my time. Part of me could recognize that things just happen, that the last forty times we’ve gone to the store Maggie hasn’t run off, that it was a lovely day to be walking around, but the other part of me was just annoyed. I have been realizing lately that I just try to get rid of “negative” feelings more than I would like to admit. Intellectually, I know it’s o.k. to feel them, but a big part of me still doesn’t want to and tries to rationalize myself out of them by saying things like, “There’s nothing you can do about it. Just enjoy being outside.” It’s tricky because that is true, but it can be also used to squash emotions that are also true.

So I was walking around looking for Maggie sort of flipping back and forth. There’s a difference between allowing feelings to be there and egging them on. Just thinking the thoughts about how things should be different and I want to be doing something else is neither feeling the feelings nor finding my way to a more objective witness place—it's really just egging on. After the fact, I can see that the missing step was experiencing the sensations of frustration in my body. I can do that without “thinking” at all. In this way, I can stay in the truth (satya) of my experience without indulging or denying (which happens in the head). I guess I need more practice.

Just in case you were wondering, Maggie came strolling up with our neighbor looking super-dirty. Her little beard and feet were all blackish and she had all kinds of burrs and leaves and twigs in her fur. It would seem she was off on a big adventure being a dog while I was wandering around struggling with being a human.