dear friends,
Have you ever lived through a stretch of life when everything that can go wrong, does, and just when you think things can’t possible get worse, they do? Like the title character in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, that’s how my life has been as of late. (If you don’t know this delightfully funny children’s book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz, please stop reading this right now and find a copy.) I’m not going to list out the specifics of my particular tale of woe because I don’t think the details matter all that much. Being human means going through rough patches.
For someone who has had her fair share of terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad days/months/years, you’d think I’d be better at navigating them. My tendency is either to stamp my feet that life shouldn’t be this way or slouch my shoulders in resignation and trudge forward. Neither response is particularly skillful. So, last week when I received one more piece of completely out-of-the-blue difficult news, I decided that maybe this would the perfect time to get serious about a practice for handling the “second arrow of suffering.”
If you’re not familiar with the Buddhist story about the second arrow, it goes something like this: the Buddha asks a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student answers yes. Then the Buddha asks, “If that person is struck by a second arrow, is it painful?” Again, the student responds yes. Then the Buddha says, “In life, we cannot control when we are hit by the first arrow, but the second arrow is our response to the first. And the second arrow we do control.”
In theory, this all seems quite reasonable. When something bad happens, you get laid off or passed over for a promotion, instead of raging at the world or beating yourself up for not being “better” somehow, you accept the reality of what happened and move on.
Yeah. Much easier said than done, for me anyway.
Not shooting that second arrow is tough, but there’s a lot that’s been written on the subject over the past two thousand years. Tara Brach has a particularly straightforward approach for dealing with the second arrow that relies on asking two simple questions when you’re in the middle of the pain of the first arrow. I’m adopting her practice with a gentle twist:
(1) What is happening right now? This question interrupts the rush of thoughts and emotions that flood us after the first arrow hits. It’s still a struggle for me to ask this question in a timely manner. My experience has been that I get hit by the first arrow, then the second, and then, when I’m feeling particularly awful, I remember to ask the question. The amazing thing I’ve discovered, though, is that even when I’ve already shot myself with the second arrow, asking the question still works. It remind me that I’m neither the misfortune nor my unskillful emotional and intellectual responses to that misfortune. The question invites you to become curious about what is happening in the moment, and curiosity naturally moves you out of a constricted energy state. Every time I answer the question, “What is happening right now?” the tightness in my stomach and chest relaxes.
(2) Can I be gentle with whatever it is? This question invites us to just let be, which invariably expands what we experience. It can start with, “Can I be with the rejection (first arrow) and the self-doubt (second arrow)?” The answer is almost always “yes” because no matter how unpleasant the emotion, we are all capable of spaciousness. Even if, like me, you grew up believing that you should push against “negative” emotions by either suppressing them or denying them. You’ve probably discovered yourself that pushing against an emotion solidifies it. But, when we can be with what is, which means: we name and accept the first arrow, name and accept the second arrow (if we shot it), and name and accept the pain and suffering we’re in because of the arrow(s), the suffering energy dissolves. It may take some time and repeating the questions over and over again, but it does happen.
Okay, that’s it for this week. And as I sign off, I share my wish that you don’t have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but if you do, I hope this practice helps.
warmly,
alison
