In class this week, Paul pointed out that by setting an intent, we notice when we miss our intent. My intent was to "let go." Lately I've been noticing how frequently I don't "let go" or "let things be." These aren't big things that I do, I'm not striving for more or being greedy. It's way more subtle than that. It doesn't bring me great suffering and I'm not getting all down on myself about it but I'm definitely noticing that, about 90% of the time, I don't accept reality.
Example 1: It was my friend's birthday so I asked what I could bake for him. He said oatmeal raisin cookies. I don't like oatmeal raisin cookies, I don't even like raisins and didn't really want to buy a bag of raisins just for his cookies. So, the next day I said, "Hey, what about oatmeal chocolate covered raisin cookies?" He said, "Not so much. Raisinets kind of creep me out."
And you know what, I still wouldn't accept this. I bought the chocolate covered raisins anyway, and made two doughs, one for him and one for me. Just out of curiosity, I tried one of his. It turns out they were really good and now I kind of like oatmeal raisin cookies.
If I had just accepted that the cookies I made for him weren't going to be my favorite, I would have been fine. But I didn't. I wanted things my way and ended up making two batches, just to avoid eating raisins! Did this cause me suffering? No, it made me good cookies and now I have a kind of fun recipe to try. But it's interesting, to me at least, how much effort I put into making things go the way I want them to.
Example 2: I was making cauliflower millet polenta. I don't like cauliflower (except in this recipe) and the recipe called for a "small head" so I set out to find the smallest head of cauliflower I could so that I wouldn't have extra. I went to Trader Joe's and found that they only had prepackaged large heads. So, I went to Safeway. Unfortunately, they also only had prepackaged large heads. I ended up buying orange cauliflower just because it was the smallest. When I got home, I unpacked the Safeway bag and put the orange cauliflower in the fridge. Then I unloaded my Trader Joe's bag. Guess what was at the bottom? A second head of cauliflower. Apparently in my quest to find a smaller head at Safeway, I didn't pay attention to the fact that I had already bought a head at Trader Joe's.
Is this suffering? No, not at all. Did I succeed in avoiding my suffering of having extra cauliflower? No! I ended up with more cauliflower exactly because I was trying to avoid the reality of extra cauliflower. Again, this is not a big thing but in noticing when I do and don't let go, I see how much time I spend trying to change things. And in trying to change things, two things are happening. 1: I'm kind of "wasting" my time because in the end, I don't actually end up changing things. 2: I'm missing out on what life actually is giving me: oatmeal raisin cookies and extra cauliflower (which I'm going to use next weekend to make a cool curry dish. Hmmmm, I can't tell if I'm letting go or not in doing that...)
No comments:
Post a Comment