Dukkha

I'm constantly feeling the impacts of being a step behind — constantly. Life, it seems, is a balancing act, a ongoing exercise in tightening or loosening the strings, tuning in to the intersecting set of needs and wants and goals, and taking the most appropriate action in the moment to move forward. (Inaction is often the most appropriate action.)

Regardless, this "constantly feeling the impacts" is not how I want to live ...

Though it strikes me: what is it that I'm throwing a flag on, in this case? Is it being a step behind? I don't think so (though for many, many years, I did — bought in to the belief that certainty was just around the corner, that stability was coming soon ™, that this next system or process or job or relationship would resolve that tension).

But I now see (and this is due to my long, somewhat recreational foray into the philosophy and practice of mindfulness + meditation, and most pointedly from reading Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks): we never will be on top of things ... we will never be satisfied, not in any durable sense. Because perhaps the universal truth is that everything changes, so any sense of satisfaction will change.

So the real trick is not to get on top of things, but to accept the feeling of being a step behind, thereby defusing its negative impacts.

I'm reminded here of Joseph Goldstein's lesson on the etymology of the work dukkha — an "ill-fitting axle". In the metaphor, my perception of life is the axle shaft, and life as it is in the axle housing. If my perception is straining — grasping for what I desire, averting itself from unpleasant things, that is makes for a grinding, noisy, bumpy ride — suffering. That is the axle not fitting well: wishing things were otherwise.

So yes, it's not so much about changing reality to match my perceptions — we have extremely limited capacity to do that (though I do believe we have some). But there's a much more powerful lever available to us, and that's changing our relationship with reality, accepting it as a process of becoming, and settling smoothly into the axle housing. It's a choice, but one we don't really realize we're making day in and day out. (I've been returning to this theme — see No summit.)

Every step is the goal.