291st Week:  Engaging Hopes and Fears Mindfully
I’m writing this experiment on New Year’s Day of 2008.  For so many of us, the first day of the calendar year is a day to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going.  The “where we’ve been” reflections may sometimes include regret, guilt, shame or other uncomfortable feelings, even as they may include a sense of accomplishment, self-esteem and other positive experiences.  Our ponderings about the future may also include mixed feelings, with some of us looking forward to already-known or as-yet-to-be-discovered opportunities, even as we may also have fears about what the future will bring. 

One thing is certain – whatever the past has brought, and whatever the future may bring, life offers a constant invitation to be in the flow of our experience with aliveness and awareness.  As we all know, as the future unfolds itself into the present, there will be things we can change and things we can’t.  As we look back, we know we will discover that we have made some good decisions and also some that were not so wise.  When we know that life inevitably contains both good and challenging moments, often in equal measure – times when we are both skillful and not so skillful – we can more easily move through whatever life brings without being overly burdened by how we feel the future should be, or how we wish the past had been.

For example, I’ve just returned home from a visit with a dear friend who is dying.  I spent several days sharing sacred space with her, which had moments of deep connection and also moments of true sorrow and difficulty.  She is someone I’ve known since we met in first grade and, now that I’m home, I experience even more fully the fact that, since she lives clear across the country, she will die sometime soon and I won’t see her again.  This is the way of the flow as it moves through our lives – moments that feel good and moments that feel hard.   I have a choice each day now.  I can focus on resenting being so far away and fretting over the fact that I won’t be able to see my friend again, or I can focus on the beauty we shared, on our lifetime of experiences together, and draw comfort from the visit I just had with her.

And so, for this week’s experiment, I invite you to notice your responses to the past and future.  If you find you have a tendency to move into regret or worry, play with shifting away from those thoughts into either neutral territory – simply being aware of what’s moving through – or actively thinking about what went right this past year.  If you find yourself worrying about what lies ahead, the same choice point exists – you can decide to simply notice that you’re worrying, or you can shift into a “wait-and-see” state of mind of curiosity about how the year will unfold itself.  This doesn’t mean to engage in denial, or to push away feelings and experiences that are real to you.  It also doesn’t mean to avoid creating intentions for the coming year, or making plans.  Rather, it’s an exercise in paying attention to the thoughts and feelings you generate when you think about the past or future.  It also offers an opportunity to get to know what supports a greater sense of ease, openness and comfort in your relationship with both the past and the future.

As with all the experiments, there aren’t any right answers as to how to do this one.  Remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion, and to notice your automatic habits of mind, as well as the reactions that spontaneously emerge as you relate to what has been and what will be.  Then, give yourself a chance to make some new choices and see how they affect the quality of your internal state of body-mind being in the present moment.