On Not Watching the Debate

It turns out that drinking espresso in the late afternoon, actively not watching the first Presidential debate and reading a disturbing novel in bed are not a great recipe for a restful nights sleep. Who could have guessed?

I did, however, get to hear the wind kick up and blow the trees around. I got to imagine the leaves falling fast and furiously into the Temple koi pond and wonder if the skimmer would clog and prevent the water from reaching the pump and eventually cause the motor to burn out. I also got to begin counting backwards from fifty (to switch on my para-sympathetic nervous system (whatever that is)) a number of times. Even with beginning again somewhere near I stopped, I still didn’t get past 22 and whatever sleep inducing benefits that were supposed to come from that were lost on me.

I lay what seemed to be long hours on my uncomfortable comfortable bed. Finally I began simply to notice the breath going in and out of my body. I wondered if I will be so distressed when I am lying in my bed and truly unable to get up. At some point, morning will not be the release, but rather simply the time when I lie in bed in the light rather than the dark. How will I be with myself then?

Last night, however, I was not distressed, just worried. I remembered any number of times when people and organizations and I have been in turmoil and how it all seems to have a life of its own in my head during the dark hours. Part of me wants to release and relax, but part of me won’t or can’t let go. Some inner necessity decides that active worry is required and I am helpless to decide otherwise.

It’s a wonderful example of the elephant that Jonathan Haidt writes of in The Righteous Mind. He says our thinking processes are like an elephant and a rider. Most of what we think occurs below the level of our conscious awareness—the elephant. Our conscious mind is the rider—the little person sitting atop the elephant that is supposed to be making the decisions. I suppose that with a skilled rider and a well-trained elephant, things could go quite well. But, apparently, my elephant and rider mind could use some remedial work.

That’s why I meditate. It doesn’t save me from my life, but at least I get to see some of the dynamics up close. In Zen meditation, our vow as we sit still and upright is to cultivate a basic friendliness toward ourselves and our actual experience of the moment. We’re not trying to cultivate special states of mind but rather to be present with our minds, hearts and bodies as they actually are. What I and millennia of Zen meditators have discovered from this practice is that the mind is constantly active, that everything that arises passes away and that disturbance is unavoidable.

And last night I was disturbed by the debate I didn’t watch earlier between Joe Biden and Donald Trump – two men who have thrust themselves into a realm of power and intrigue that is playing out in front of our eyes. I chose not to watch because I knew it would be too upsetting to me. My nervous system is on high alert already, without having to watching Trump perform his mesmeric and terrible combination of lies and mean-spirited attacks of everyone who disagrees with him.

I hope that Biden held his own—that he remembered to use the time to talk about his vision for America—that he conveyed a sense of decency and embodied some kind of hope for reconciliation. Reconciliation requires acknowledgment of truth. Something that Trump appears incapable of.

I thought of getting up to read reports of how it went. But my rider had the good sense to realize that that would not be good for the elephant if we wanted any sleep.   So we stayed in bed. Me and my unruly elephant. Though he’s rather wrinkly and occasionally misbehaved, I do love and trust his unspoken wisdom. Sometimes he’s much wiser than me and sometimes he needs me to remind him of the simplest things. Like that the breath is precious and that even this place of disturbed resting is just the momentary scenery of my ever-changing life.

The rain eventually came. Then I opened my eyes in the dark and it was morning. I don’t know how or when I got to sleep, but am grateful for the release that always finds me at some point. I can never tell whether I have done something that has led to my good fortune or if it’s just the random and wondrous correlations of the universe.