The warrior is Here, Now. ― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
This past week I reached a breaking point with a situation in our neighborhood that has been unfolding for quite some time.
For the past two years we’ve lived in close proximity to a house that has become “party central” for a large group of young people. On any given weekend, holiday, or during any major sporting event, our neighborhood will be descended upon by large numbers of young people drinking, cavorting, being loud and generally disruptive, at all hours of the night.
On a number of occasions, I’ve taken the time to speak directly with the tenants of the house about the disruptions their loud gatherings create for the neighborhood. They are always polite, tell me what I want to hear, and are right back at it in short order.
This past weekend was particularly bad and I finally came to the realization that talking to them directly was not working. Something more needed to be done.
By this time, however, I’d become so emotionally triggered by the on-going nature of these incidents that my ability to manage the steps I needed to take was becoming colored by my emotions.
It’s been interesting to watch within myself the inner dance between the desire to wage all-out war on these young adults or to completely ignore the situation and pretend a problem doesn’t exist.
When I’m in combat mode, I’m overcome with negative emotions, distracted with planning who I’m going to talk to, what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do, and catastrophizing the outcome.
When I’m in Pollyanna mode, I’m so wrapped up in enjoying my life and things outside this potentially difficult situation that when I am reminded there is an issue to attend to, I am inclined to just push it away and pretend it doesn’t exist.
The reality is, the anger welling up in me is legitimate and is a natural reaction to the relentless nature of the situation. The challenge for me is to attend to it in a skillful way.
So, this week I’ve spent some time getting a handle on my emotions and mining their depth to see what might be laying beneath them. It was not much of a surprise to discover that some of the emotional triggering actually harkens back to a time in my life when I was a child and didn’t feel safe in my home; a time when I didn’t have the power to do something about it.
Having acknowledged the old emotional content, I’ve been able to relax a bit and focus on the situation at hand.
The bigger challenge for me now is staying in the present moment as I take steps to inform myself and create a plan for addressing the issue with my neighbors. My mind wants to leap far into the future, creating all kinds of negative scenarios for any action I might consider taking, and making plans for how to deal with these future fantasies.
It has been a struggle to gently, with kindness to myself, bring my mind back to the present and the task at hand. I find myself doing this over and over again…but, of course, this is the nature of practice.
The more I bring myself back to the present moment, the less the situation is about my emotions or shaping a particular outcome, and the more it becomes about taking measures to care for myself, my family, and my community; to speak my truth about what I see unfolding in front of me.
Having the opportunity to attend to old emotional wounds, further hone my practice, and honor my truth are the gifts this situation bestow upon me.
Yes, it is work and effort on my part…far more than the effort my young neighbors are taking to honor and respect their neighborhood…and it is the effort that makes it skillful.
Suffering: The White Elephant