Three Essential Skills     

Life is essentially unworkable. Impossible stuff happens. No matter how smart or how wise or how lucky you are, things will not always go your way. Failure, loss and suffering are inevitable. Clarity of purpose will come and go. Confusion, anxiety and despair will be occasional or frequent companions. Important things like relationships, plans and your body are guaranteed to break down.

None of this is a problem that can be solved, it’s just how life is.   Like my friend, an Episcopal priest, once said: sin (missing the mark/imperfection/forgetting) is not an issue to be fixed, it’s just a condition to work with. So how do we meet this life (and ourselves) that cannot be fully fixed?  What skills are helpful in the face of the full catastrophe of life? Here are three fairly durable skills that I have found useful in the face of it all:

#1 Staying – In difficult situations, most of us want to fix, ignore or get away from whatever it is. None of us like to be uncomfortable for very long. When things and situations can be fixed or straightened out or clarified, I’m all for it. Fix it if you can and move on. Likewise, ignoring difficulty is a terrific skill to have. Sometimes avoidance is simply the best option available—at least for a time. And there are some situations that are so toxic, or violent, or dangerous that leaving is the appropriate, compassionate and wise thing to do.

But when none of these three strategies work—when it’s important not to leave and you can’t fix it and can’t ignore it—STAYING is a powerful strategy. Staying means choosing to remain in the middle of the impossibility of the situation without a plan. This is not the same as physically remaining present while you escape to distant regions in your mind. Staying is the practice of choosing to be present even after all your good plans and strategies have crumbled to the ground. Staying means being alive to your own feelings, thoughts and sensations as well as to the presence, thoughts and words of the others who are there with you (either in person or in your heart).

#2 Doing Nothing – This is a subset of Staying. Doing nothing is a good option only after you have tried everything else. Many daily problems can be resolved by improved communication, working together and being reasonable. But the big ones that appear in our lives often don’t yield to these common-sense strategies. The only way to know what kind of a problem you are dealing with is to do your best to work it out using the rational skills at your disposal. When these don’t work (and I guarantee there will be times when they don’t) your next best option is to Stay and Do Nothing.

This doing nothing is not the same as spacing out and is not to be confused with not caring. Doing Nothing is an active intention to be present without manipulation. Not running away, not fixing. Being alive and aware, but giving up the delusion that it’s all up to you. You become an interested and intimate participant in something that is happening through you and everyone involved in the situation. You give up your pretense of control and stay to learn and be transformed.

#3 Following – Following is a shift from trying to lead a situation in the direction you think it should go, to a willingness to stay with what is unfolding moment by moment. True following usually is only possible when we have given up our delusion that our perspective and our solution are the best way. True following comes only after the failure of all our usual success strategies—after we have been as wise and clear and strong and direct as we can and it has not worked.

Following then means to turn our attention to the unworkable situation itself, not to fix it or even to move it forward, but rather to notice and be present with what is already going on. Following means being curious about what is here in this impossible place. We begin to listen for what we have not yet heard and look for what we have not yet seen. Then we practice going along with whatever is arising.

These three seemingly simple skills can be useful reminders in almost any situation. If you’re interested, you might want to try practicing these skills today. In the next even slightly uncomfortable situation you notice, see what happens is you simply stay, do nothing and follow what is unfolding. It might be quite interesting.