Resentment, Responsibility & Becoming Unhooked

Online early this am I came upon a wonderful link on Twitter from the blog of one of my favorite NPR programs "Speaking of Faith." The blog is by senior editor Trent Gilliss and features a fascinating and thought provoking piece of artwork called "The Animated Avadhuta." The 20 foot long piece of hand drawn artwork has been illustrated and narrated and set to music as a 10 minute short film. I urge you to take a little time to check it out. I promise the ten minutes goes by very quickly. The film is linked to the blog above.

Sometimes we really need to be reminded we are more than what's going on around us, that we are better than our worst angry thoughts, our challenges, and what we feel are not only our limitations but the limitations of our circumstances as well.

For myself this video was the perfect beginning to my day. It has been a tough pain week. It had been a great week in so many ways, but I had spent two and a half days with a pretty nasty migraine that was so bad I spent much of one of the days in bed. And as if they didn't want to be left out, a bunch of other not fun, but not serious symptoms reared their head and joined the party in the form of leg cramps, that icky flu feeling and stomach cramps. This happened, most likely, because I took on too much the weekend before and didn't get enough rest, and because I received two pockets of bad news that I allowed to freak me out. Not melt down freak out, but enough to be seriously bummed inching towards freak out.

Tired of feeling panicked and well, tired, last night I decided I wanted to spend this weekend contemplating the Buddhist term "Shenpa" and how we repeatedly get hooked on the drama our mind's make up. I'm pretty aware of when I'm stirring things up for myself (and when I'm trying to stir things up in others, usually with gossip or snarky observations), but being aware of something and taking action to stop it are two different things.

I want to stop stirring the up the fire.

Pema Chodron goes to great lengths to explain just exactly what Shenpa is, and it's many sticky nuances. She calls it, "how we get hooked" and goes on to explain:

"Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word to you and then something in you tightens— that's the shenpa. Then it starts to spiral into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself."

The above is from Shambala Sun "The Shenpa Syndrome." I can work with a migraine, I can even go to meetings with a migraine (which I did this week), but after they escalate to a certain level of pain I know I just have to go to bed and be still. I have learned at that point not to torture myself with negative thoughts, but it's the "up to that point" of course, that needs help. My negative thoughts don't actually cause the migraines, I know this, but stress of negative thinking makes them much worse - and really, is there any worse hell than the one created by our own thoughts in our own head?

Prior to last night I had no idea what Shenpa was, I just knew I was in a bad place, rehearsing negative thoughts and I didn't want to stay stuck there. I pulled out Chodron's book, "No Time to Lose" (which I've had trouble in the past getting through, I wasn't ready for its depth) opened it up, and this was at the top of the page (pg 132):

"The basic message is this: instead of turning up the heat and bringing your emotions to a boil, add some cool refreshing water to the mix and the shenpa charge will subside."

Wow, that was poignant. I kept reading little bits and then laying in bed pondering. I felt new avenues of possibility open up.

One of the reasons I was so hooked last week was that I've had two situations come up of late where people have held me semi-responsible for how an idea I came up with for them played out in actuality and not hitting what they were hoping for in the time frame they wanted.

The challenge for me is that in one instance I had very little say in how they went forward with the idea and put it into play (indeed, many of my suggestions were ignored) and in the second instance I had no real say at all. I came up with the idea, I made introductions and went to two brief "let's talk about this idea and who to approach" meetings. I had nothing to do with the approach, the scope, the people involved, or the creation of the final product.

The problem is that I take the emotional baggage of this kind of responsibility on all of the time. Sometime in my early adulthood I got the message that because I was so smart, when I was involved in a project, I was responsible for everyone else's part as well - because I'm the one who should have been able to foresee all of the possible pitfalls, challenges etc. The irony is that when I do bring up the challenges - I am told to stop being negative, or I'm thinking too small.

Crazy I know, but there it is.

Now, I'm certainly not special in the above. People are constantly finding ways to make others responsible for things that are really only our own deal, but for some reason for years and years even though I knew intellectually I wasn't responsible I still took on the emotional baggage. I still accepted the role. And that needs to stop, both the taking on and then the resentment of. I want to get unhooked.

And as I write this I realize what a time suck being hooked is, truly! If I didn't spend time being hooked on some silly piece of drama that wouldn't be if I didn't amplify it I could spend more time being creative and maybe I could animate my own little short film.