Recently, I spent a weekend in Paris, visiting a city I hadn’t seen in many years.  Paris was dressed up for the holidays, so it was a real treat to reconnect with it at this time of the year.  The trip began with the usual excitement of travel – an easy time.  When I got to the airport, I discovered that one of the friends traveling with me had forgotten her passport and couldn’t come until the next evening – a challenging time.  The other friend with whom I was traveling had to work while in Paris, so it turned out I had the first day on my own – an opportunity to walk around the city and reacquaint myself with it after many years – an easy time.  The trip itself was a delicious on lots of levels – an easy time.

Then, a couple of days after returning, I was sitting in my office having a case consultation session with a colleague when I noticed what looked like a wave of water running under my office door and into the room – a challenging time.  The handyman had been working on my office toilet and it had literally exploded.  He was soaked, the bathroom was soaked, and the office was rapidly becoming a lake – a challenging time.  Everyone who needed to become mobilized to lessen water damage did so, jumping in to stop the flood, vacuum up all the water, bring in a de-humidifier, and generally do what was needed – an easy time.  Then, the toilet didn’t work for the rest of the day – a challenging time.

What I experienced throughout all of this is that, when there’s no judgment of “good” or “bad”, easy and challenging times simply become the next thing awareness notices as I move through the day.  What I also noticed – and notice consistently – is that when there is no judgment, I save a lot of energy.  When a moment is either easy or challenging – or all the things in-between – it becomes the next experience emerging into my life rather than the next awful punishment I want to avoid or a yearned-for experience I want to keep beyond its time.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to play with bringing awareness to the next moment without judgment.  In place of judgment, notice the next moment as the next opportunity for awareness, the next chance to be present to what is, as it is.  Usually, when we’re able to take this stance, responding becomes more fluid, easier, and much less stressful.

This doesn’t mean we don’t wish that some moments wouldn’t happen or that some won’t make us sad, angry, joyous, or whatever our response might be.  What it does mean is that we can practice moving through the variety of daily experiences with a fundamental stance that each thing is just what’s happening next in a life that has its ongoing, normal, ups and downs.

The key to this experiment is to explore your stress level when you move through both easy and challenging experiences with an awareness that doesn’t push away or seek to grasp at what’s unfolding.  As my office flooded, I certainly had some concerns that the wood floor under the carpet might buckle and I would have to replace the floor, but that was a background murmur that became increasingly quiet as everyone involved took each step to resolve the problem.  As I soaked up water with towels, I didn’t allow myself to go too far into the future, too far into worry, which saved me a lot of wear and tear when all was said and done.  That’s the way I invite you to play with this experiment.  Try out different responses and notice which ones lessen your level of distress.

As with all experiments, move through this one lightly and with curiosity.  There aren’t any right answers here – just an opportunity to explore your relationship to awareness.