The Tipping Point Between Excitement and Disappointment
I recently went to a yoga class led by a teacher I'd never taken a class with before, and right from the beginning I felt a warm sense of homecoming.
At first my mind got excited in a benign way: “Hooray!! This is exactly the type of class I’ve been looking for!!”
The excitement felt good — pleasant.
But as the 90 minutes moved along, my mind started rolling down the slippery slope from delight into clinging territory:
“This is perfect. This can be my new Sunday morning ritual. I'll come every week…”
But no sooner had my attachment to this imagined ideal new weekend routine started to settle its roots in than the teacher announced at the end of class that this would be his last class here in San Francisco. He was moving to Germany.
I felt the whomp whomp whomp descent from excitement to disappointment.
HA!
I laughed to myself as I was so comically gifted this mini lesson on attachment:
“Right. Clinging leads to suffering.”
Noted :)
Maybe you've noticed this in your own life.
That a pleasant experience only feels pleasant up until the moment you pass the tipping point from enjoying the present moment pleasantness into becoming attached to the feel-good feeling.
And that, paradoxically, the more your mind tries to cling to the feel-good feeling in an attempt to make it stick around forever, the more quickly the pleasant feeling becomes neutral or unpleasant.
Clinging leads to suffering.
Meaning: Trying to control our way into turning something that's ephemeral – like everything actually is – into something permanent that we can hold onto forever inevitably backfires.
Not that trying to make a feel-good feeling last forever isn't the most natural impulse in the world. It certainly is.
The only problem is, it just isn't possible.
Things change.
Things are constantly changing.
Of course we know this intellectually. It's just harder to remember it when there's something we really like and want more of.
So given that change is the nature of life, our only choice is to try to resist that constant flow of change — and make ourselves miserable in the process — or to decide to loosen our grip, soften our being, surrender into the flow, and get curious about where it will carry us.
And having a little laugh at how sweetly predictable the nature of these minds of ours is — constantly clinging at what feels good and pushing away what feels bad — can definitely help create more space.
Wishing you some nice light moments of noticing how reliably your mind works to try to keep you safe and feeling good these next few weeks.
Lots of Love,