So the other day skipper puts the milk into the larder instead of back in the fridge, so it goes off – because without refrigeration milk lasts approximately 39 minutes in the tropics before curdling. Anyway, this annoys me because I don’t like chucking food away, especially now I’m actually in Africa, and I’m crabby and irritable anyway because I’m living on a big ocean-going boat, but can’t even go to neighbouring Kenya because all the borders are shut.
We live in a small space together, so naturally we regularly annoy the pine nuts out of each other – it isn’t even the last time that day that I want to push his head under the water and hold it there until he stops wriggling. Anyway, you know what stops me from my murderous intent, aside from the potential legal wranglings? A flash of insight that there’s literally a new reality – a pristine, clean, unsullied blob of NOW – available to us in every single moment, for us to imprint with whatever the fuck we like.
So sure I can rubber stamp the “milk moment” with anger and irritation and annoyance, but I don’t have to. The moment doesn’t demand a certain response. It’s just a moment, neither good nor bad, just a moment. It is my freewill to choose how to respond to it, or how to think of it, even. And this is powerful stuff because if there’s literally a new reality available every moment, it means it’s possible to change your reality every moment too. And so while you might not be able to snap yourself out of your mood necessarily (although I actually was this time), recognising what you’re experiencing is an active choice of your own making (and not something that was pushed on you, or something “you can’t help” or something that is demanded by the situation itself), is enough for you to pause before you start rolling your eyes and grumbling and generally dishing out citations for petty domestic infractions – which you’ve got to admit is twatty.
Because choosing to blame someone for “making” you feel bad is utterly baseless. Your thoughts are the only things in the entire universe that have the power to “make” you feel anything because thoughts create feelings. No matter how much we insist that somebody’s else’s thoughts and behaviours are responsible for making us feel something – good or bad – we are wrong.
Me blaming skipper for my feelings over the milk was inaccurate and unfair, to both of us. Unfair to him because he gets blamed for something he hasn’t done (namely, causing my feelings), and unfair to me because I’m painting myself as someone who can be made to feel something by somebody else AKA a powerless victim. None of which is true. And believing that it’s true creates a lose-lose situation, a zero-sum game.
Once you realise this, not only is it quite hard in getting wound up over petty annoyances made by those around you, but actually you feel kind of an arrogant blowhard if you do. I mean, who are we to go around blaming others for our self-created feelings? But don’t feel bad if you are someone who flies off the handle because nobody told us that our thoughts create our feelings – which is really the touchstone of where all this wisdom falls out of. Now that you do know however there is the potential for change. You don’t have to be that person anymore. All it takes is a little practice and maybe access to one or two breathing techniques, because no matter how much wisdom you have knocking about in there, you’re still going to experience a flash of irritation when you find curdled milk in your larder – it’s just that you won’t feel the need to act on it anymore.
The truth is attack is never justified. Not only that however, it’s also a fools’ errand, because the only person you’re ever actually attacking? Is yourself.
Thanks to Bekir Dönmez for his awesome pic on Unsplash