Befriending the Moles

This is the kind of stuff that goes around in my mind all day long:

IF I can just get the oil changed…

clear up the credit card glitch…

have my teeth cleaned…

answer all my emails…

THEN I will be able to:

calm down,

take a break,

relax,

and really live my life!

This is, of course, completely misguided. Because as soon as the oil is changed, the teeth cleaned, the credit card glitch cleared up, and the emails answered—or even before these things are done—something else will come up, such as a washing machine malfunction, or, God forbid, a computer meltdown. Which means, of course, that I will never get to calm down, relax, and really live my life. As in that amusement park game of Whac-A-Mole, new problems pop up even as we’re resolving old ones. Life, I’m beginning to learn, is an endless game of Whac-A-Mole, one that only ends when we die.

So the trick is, I suppose, to find a way to really live life even while annoying moles keep popping up all around us and we whirl about madly trying to whack them with a mallet. But I find this almost impossible to do, having learned all too well the childhood lessons of “no dessert until you’ve cleaned your plate,” and “no going out to play until you’ve finished your homework.” Thus, no real living until I’ve crossed out all the items on my to-do list, or whacked every last mole into submission.

Deferred gratification has served me well for most of my years, but now I find myself having to unlearn that exemplary habit. Which seems unfair—except that the cost of persevering is that I won’t get to really live until I’m dead.

So I have to find a way to stuff some real living in the spaces between the items on my to-do list. Still better, I should aim to be really alive even while I’m whacking moles—getting the oil changed or the computer fixed or staying on hold for the credit card lady in far-off Ceylon who greets me with “Thank you for patiently waiting.”

The answer to this, as to almost everything else these days, is to pay attention. Pay attention as I stuff the sheets into the washing machine, clean the kittty litter, stand in the check-out line. Not easy to do if, like me, you’ve been programmed from birth to think about other things while you’re doing things.

Is this a particularly Western habit? I suspect it is simply a part of being human. Otherwise, Buddhism wouldn’t insist so vehemently on the need to pay attention even to the most menial of tasks (chop wood, carry water…). But the Buddha wasn’t the only one to harp on the need to be present at all times. As early as the sixth century, Saint Benedict in his Rule instructed the monks to wash dishes “as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar,” that is, with attention and reverence.

With attention comes reverence and often affection for the person/animal/thing being attended to, followed (I hope) by happiness or at least contentment for myself. Reverence and affection for the dental hygienist in her mask, for the credit card lady, and for the plump supermarket clerk who is dreamily checking out groceries and making me late for my oil change appointment. And yes, reverence and affection even for those pesky moles, strung like beads along the thread of my days, whom I have for years so cruelly persecuted with a mallet.