I’ve always known about meditating in the zendo. I’ve known about meditating at home. I’ve thought about meditating before school starts or at recess, but this week, in class at the zen center, someone described how they had meditated in the moment.
This person had been involved in some less-than-compassionate emails with another person. Their initial response to the most recent scathing email was to shoot back a scathing response. Their second response was to send an email that sent the same message, but that was couched in more compassionate terms. Then they considered sending an actually compassionate email, one that really did “take the high road.” Instead, they got off the computer and meditated for 10 minutes.
I’ve definitely noticed myself reacting rather than responding to the kids this week, so I decided that when I felt myself doing that, I’d actually stop and meditate. Not sit down or face the wall, but just take a walk around the classroom, a mini-meditation to bring me back to the moment.
Or course, Girl 1 gave me the perfect opportunity to try this out. During Art she was walking around, bugging other kids, and then arguing with me when I was asking her to stop. I called her over to talk with her and she argued some more, acting like she didn’t know that it was not okay to grab someone’s pencil or bump their desk as she walked by. While I was talking to her about respecting personal space and listening, she stretched her foot toward the office chair I was sitting in, and pressed the button that lowers the chair.
I was livid: hello? Are we talking about personal space? Did you just stick your foot in my personal space and lower the chair? Are you really not listening to me while I’m talking to you about listening?
I shot up out of the chair and headed toward the color card chart to “teach her a lesson” by turning her card to yellow. But then I stopped and thought about what I had agreed to do. Instead I turned left and walked the perimeter of the classroom. Girl 1 watched me and as I walked past the card chart, I hoped that she was feeling uneasy and thinking about her choices. She wasn’t, or if she as, she wasn’t willing to admit it. When I got back, she was still in her defensive mode, acting like she didn’t know what I was talking about. But by that time, I was less angry and so I focused instead on telling her what she needed to do.
Taking the walk did not change Girl 1. She continued to argue with me and bug other kids. But taking a lap changed my interaction with her. Had I not taken the walk, she would have just been on yellow and sitting back in her seat. We both would have been disengaged from each other: she feeling hurt, rejected, and angry; me feeling like I was a bad teacher for reacting to her. Taking the walk gave me space to refocus on what I was doing and to see her as a little girl again.
Writing this days later I see even more clearly what was going on: she either is just being an eight year old and pushing the cool button on the chair or, more likely, has issues with personal space. She certainly wasn’t thinking what I was feeling, “Oooh, how can I annoy her? How can I do the opposite of what she wants me to do.” And what she needs from me is not disengagement, but interaction, instruction about what she is doing and how it affects others.
This clarity of thought is what Paul has been asking us to have as our first response to our situation. And he has been pointing out to us that meditation is what allows us to have the clarity of thought when we’re in the moment, instead of days later as we’re composing a blogpost. Today was a start and I’ll continue to try meditating in the moment. It didn’t fix everything or change Girl 1 but it did affect our moment together.
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