Tag: meditation

Ordinarily extraordinary

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We all are ordinary.

Ordinary is our fragility, our pain, our fear, our anger and our continuos search for a fix. Ordinary is the way we feel about others, the impression to have been set up against the whole World, the hurried decision we make about something that lasts. Ordinary is our joy, our excitement, that feeling we can accomplish everything anytime anywhere, followed by the sudden and inevitable realisation that it is not true. Ordinary are our surroundings, our contexts, our scenarios and situations, our homes, offices, gardens, restaurants, cafes and shops. Ordinary is the way we think of that, how we cling to it, the partly inexplicable desire to be measured according to how good that is.

The fact all of that (and much more) is ordinary does not mean we are not important. It means we are not alone. The moment we realise and practice that is the moment we become extraordinary.

It’s when we sit with the discomfort and end up laughing at it. It’s when we lend an helping hand to our neighbour, despite feeling shattered and not liking them. It’s when we are not carried away by easy ups, stay aware of the upcoming downs and focus on the long term. It’s when we treat the stuff we build around us, material or not, as temporary, mutable, ultimately not a reflection of who we really are. It’s when we understand that thoughts and feelings come and go, and what remains is now.

We all are ordinarily capable of achieving extraordinary things.

Life is repetition

Fabrizio1 Comment

This year I have started taking Tai Chi lessons. There is one thing that I am particularly enjoying, and it is a thing that few years back I would have probably hated.

The lesson is usually 75 minutes, and between 65 and 70 minutes is dedicated to repeating parts you have learned previously. During this time, you do the moves over and over again, the teacher comes to you and tells you how to perfect them, and it is often a matter of moving the hand up a bit, or sliding the foot few centimeters to the side, or keeping the back slightly more straight. The remaining part of the lesson is about learning 1 or 2 new moves.

I find this is a great lesson in patience and working for the long term. There is no need to rush to the conclusion, you better focus on what you are doing and completely be in the moment while you transition from one move to the next. There is also absolutely no pressure in getting the moves right the first time, it is a given that you will have to try them hundreds, thousands of times before they are really yours.

Life is 99% repetition. We better be well aware of this, embrace it and live it fully. Perfect our moves until they come natural, so that we can also get better at enjoying the unexpected, unknown, exciting and inspiring 1%.

 

The theory of empathy

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To most people, empathy does not come natural. It certainly does not come natural to me. For many years, I have had the tendency to put myself at the centre of the World. Everything that happened was, to some extent, because of me.

People were certainly acting in a certain way because they wanted to signal something to me. My friend had stopped calling because for sure they did not want to hang out with me any more. My boss was being cranky because she did not like my job and was about to fire me. My girlfriend was being cold because clearly she was not interested in me anymore. And so on.

This slowly built up a worldview according to which it was very difficult for me to be empathic. On one side, the others were mostly being negative. On the other, they were being negative because of me, and so I was also unworthy of their interest, friendship, trust, love.

Raise you hand if this situation sounds familiar.

I had to train myself in empathy. Here is what Wikipedia says about empathy.

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.

Sounds intimidating just by reading it.

The first step I took was to start asking people about their motives. What I found floored me. In 99.9% of the cases, I was not the reason why they were acting in a certain way. I found, actually, that most people had feelings that I was very familiar with, or were living through situations that I had also lived through in the past.

After I started approaching meditation, and to some extent a more Buddhist take on life, one theme resonated with me. We are all going through the same distress. Even though our lives are different, even if some have more and some have less, even if some are alone and some are not, even if some live in some place and some in another. We are all challenged by the attempt to make sense of a World that is senseless.

When you understand that what you feel, what you think, what you live is an experience you have in common with other human beings, that is the moment empathy unlocks.

I am still learning, and it is easy to fall back to certain patterns, easier than one would care to admit. Real empathy is one of the most needed characteristics in today’s World, and what is incredible about it, is that it expands in a sense of belonging like no other I ever experienced before.

Good luck on your path.

Stay still

Fabrizio1 Comment

One of the main things I am learning with meditation is staying still.

We are used to react to whatever happens around us and within us, all the time, every day. Many times, during meditation, I get pulled by a thought, an urge, a desire, a memory, my kids screaming, the computer notifying me that somebody requires my attention, a thousand other things happening in that very same moment.

My first instinct would be to let go of the posture, go check what’s happening, and perhaps come back later.

And yet, I don’t.

I just sit still, letting things around me take their course, taking note while simply caring about being present. It is liberating. Even more when you realise that this is a habit you can take with you wherever you go. You can even get to a point in which it is no longer a deliberate choice. It’s just the way you are.