None Of The Above

 

Have you had an experience like this one? You've been asked to fill out an intake form for a new doctor and it asks mental health questions where none of the options fit your response. Instead, you are thrown back in time to taking standardized tests where no bubble was the right one to fill. (I know I am dating myself with pencils and bubbles). Questions like: 

In the last two weeks have you felt nervous, anxious or on edge?
In the last two weeks, have you found yourself worrying too much about different things?
In the last two weeks have you felt down, depressed or hopeless?

The options are: 1) Not at all 2) Several days 3) More than half the days, or 4) Nearly every day.

These questions and answers left me curious about what is considered a "normal" amount of worry, anxiety, or feeling down. I'm not sure if I know anyone who doesn't worry about more than one thing throughout a day, let alone two weeks. And most people I know, including myself, have anxious moments daily. Does that say something about me or does it just mean I am human? 

At a Saturday morning meditation just after I filled out this form, I shared a daily contemplation from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's book Your True Home, which felt like the perfect response, if only it were an option on the intake form. In it he says, "For forty-five years, the Buddha said, over and over again, 'I teach only suffering and the transformation of suffering.' When we recognize and acknowledge our own suffering, the Buddha -- which means the Buddha in us -- will look at it, discover what has brought it about, and prescribe a course of action that can transform it into peace, joy, and liberation. Suffering is the means the Buddha used to liberate himself, and it is also the means by which we can become free." It was a relief to hear these words. They remind us that suffering is a natural consequence of being alive. Not something "wrong" and not a reason to have to be fixed but something we can work with. It is a part of life. It becomes a problem when we think it is "wrong" to be feeling what we feel.

My invitation this week is to meet your undesirable feelings with ordinariness. If you worry, have anxious thoughts, feel sad, or down, doubt or have low energy, you belong. You are human. You are alive and experiencing all of what it entails. No one is exempt from loss, from suffering. What we do with it is what matters and where our true freedom is found. When we feel these things, that's when care is needed. Not to fix it, but to listen to what it wants us to know. There is always something. In that something lies our deepening and is where the gift can be found. Again and again throughout our life, we will be presented with suffering and the gifts of freedom as we find our way through.

If you get a form with questions like this I invite you to smile and remember what the Buddha taught. However you answer the questions, there is nothing wrong with you, simply an opportunity to take a pause with any suffering that might be there and let it have a place at the table without adding on to it. 

Warmly,
Jean