Today Is As Good a Day As Any

A friend of mine is reading When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun, wrote the book to present alternatives to chaotic, stressful, restless living. My friend is appreciative of the insights and perspectives the book provides, so she bought and gave a copy to me.

As I was completing a DBT exercise this morning ("Noticing and Managing Thoughts That Are Judgmental and Ineffective") Chodron's text was lying on the coffee table next to my DBT manual. I noticed it incidentally and proceeded with the skill practice. 

The first step in the exercise was to briefly describe the situation in which the judgmental and ineffective thoughts are occurring. I wrote, "Someone I love has cut off contact with us."

Next, I was to identify "emotional mind thoughts" and describe and rate the correlating mood and urges. Thoughts ranged from "I can't stand this anymore" to "I'm never going to see this person again."  Mood? Sad, angry, and fearful all scored a 65 on the 1-to-100 scale. Urges also hit high numbers and included wanting to "fix things" at any cost.

The second-to-last step was to  use rational thinking to re-state beliefs and choices. After writing, "this has happened before and I have coped" and "most likely, he is doing the best he can."

Toward the end of the exercise, I paused and did some mindful breathing. By that time, my mood had altered to peaceful, loving, and accepting.

Now that I was more settled, I noticed Chodron's book again, picked it up, and opened it to my bookmark stuck in between pages 44 and 45. Scanning the pages, I paused at these statements, and read them thoughtfully. 

"We're always trying to deny the fact that it's a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers, time is passing... not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time--that is the basic message."

I took the words to heart, recalling my mother at the end of her life. She still had so many things in her "in box" she told me. And to her last days, she tried in vain to put systems into place that would exist in perpetuity and protect those she loved from their individual circumstances and choices. At the time, I'd recognized the futility of trying to control things beyond the grave. Today I asked myself, "But isn't it equally futile to try to control things while I'm still alive? Yep. And with that in mind, I told myself that today is as good a day as any to accept things as they are at this very moment with this person I love. Today is as good a day as any.