How do you feel? Need to check your phone? Want to see if that message has been read, seen, replied to? Want to *just check* if they are online? Or maybe *just check* when they went offline? How many times have you looked at your phone today? Are you holding it right now? Is it right next to you? Is it closer than your own child is when the are at home?
Mine, in truth, is right here, mere inches away from the keyboard and the moment it beeps or buzzes I WILL pick the fucking thing up. And, do you know what, that’s okay.
This essay is not about telling you that it’s wrong to have your phone by your side like a small shiny-screened pet. It’s just about seeing that it is. And then seeing how it might be otherwise if you’d like it to be. Which, if you’re like me, I suspect you do.
I love to read old historical essays about people and society and to see how appalled the writers always are with how things were “then”. I smile as I see how much more of a mess we’re in now. And that the Big Media culture which demands many, many essays about how things are “terrible” now as opposed to then is still dominant.
I smile and think of the likes of Alan Watts because, most of the time, he was smiling too because it’s okay that things are a mess. Life has always been a mess. A fuck up. We’re all fuck ups to some extent and, really, mostly, that’s okay. Most of us cause little harm to others and more to ourselves and our immediate friends and family. That cycle of inter-generational trauma has likely been going on since the beginning of time. The wider, systemic problem is with the people who take their pain and broken-ness and use it as a weapon to harm others or reinforce systems like Big Finance, Big Media, mainstream politics, Big Food, Tobacco and Alcohol to cause large amounts of harm to everyone who’s different to them.
There’s no mythical time period in the past where we were all nice and living in tune with our environment and nor will there be one in the future (Sorry, Jean Luc). What there is instead is acceptance.
It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that Zen and mindfulness are about a retreat away from life and from stress in search of peace for there is no such thing as total peace: a state cannot exist without its opposite.
Zen is not about escaping your life but about stripping away the stories from how it really is right now. It’s about acceptance. Yes. That word again.
And so what, you ask, does any of this have to do with WhatsApp? For me, WhatsApp crystallises Zen and the absolute importance of stories in our lives.
The 2am Last Seen when your partner texted you at 1am? A simple fact? Or a story about how they’re texting someone else? Or prefer someone else? Or hate you and are about to leave you? The fact that they’re online right now and not talking to you. Is that because you’re not important? Because they hate you? Or maybe they’re talking to their aunt about the museum of poo…
I don’t know about you but I often feel like everyone hates me. Or, that they will if I say how I really feel, what I really think, what I really need or anything else that, if based on me and the truth of me, always feels like the wrong thing.
The challenge with the stories we have in our heads about us and who we are, about the people and world around us, is that we have been telling ourselves these stories for a long time. And also that the narrative structure and themes were created before we were even babies. The story are shaped by our mother’s lives and her mother’s lives, by the way our families worked, or mostly didn’t and the way in which they, and then we, fitted in or didn’t to the societies and culture into which we were born. These stories started, were baked into our blood and blood, at a time before we were ever able to question them and they are listened to in an environment that rarely gives us the space or time or event the tools TO question them. We hear and we believe, as a child believes in Santa. But, unlike with Father Christmas, there’s rarely a point in our lives where someone comes along and tells you that those stories you believe in, those narratives about yourself, about who you are and what you’re for what you’re capable of, and also what the world is like and for, are not necessarily true.
The stories our mind makes up, these are eddies in the tide. Waves on the surface. They’re not the full picture. The truth is under the surface: deep and calm and smooth. It’s up to you to dive deep enough inside to see it.
Some of them might be, some of them definitely aren’t. It’s up to us to learn to really see, with clear eyes and open hearts, and then to begin to question.
For me, I see that sometimes I’m anxious. I see that sometimes I couldn’t give a toss. I see that sometimes I can be petty and judgmental. I can think mean thoughts. I feel good. I feel bad. I feel something all of the time. And the key is to notice and accept and to start to really listen to what those feelings might be telling you. And to learn to accept and move on from them when they’re not kind or helpful to you.
It’s also important to know that it’s okay to not accept needing to accept it. Accepting what is when we don’t bloody well like what is is really hard. The glorious thing about Zen is that it already knows this about us – it knows that the fighting, resisting, the refusing to see are all part of seeing. So, the pain and resistance and fear? They’re okay too. Just accept them. Let go of the stories and just see what is.
We do, of course, discuss and, when and where necessary, challenge behaviour that makes us feel bad or uncomfortable. We have those conversations about our feelings. We understand the fact that our own behaviour also provokes unpleasant responses even if we haven’t intended it. We take responsibility for that. We also understand that most of the time the feelings come from our stuff and not their behaviour and that that works both ways.
Or rather we LEARN to. We need to learn to do those things and we are gone to fuck up along the way and that is also okay. Really.
Too often we’re waiting to feel better about ourselves before we make changes, take action. But sometimes it takes the action to make the feeling come. And sometimes it takes not doing the action to see that THAT is what we really need. This is where you have to learn to trust yourself and your inner, body-wisdom about what you need right now. Accepting that we don’t want to go the gym or cook dinner, or be in that relationship or job anymore, accepting and then doing it anyway, or seeing that we need to stop and take the pressure of ourselves, is the first step on the way to accepting yourself as you fully are, in all your perfect, flawed glory.
