Oh, my.  On days like these I am reminded of how fragile I can be sometimes.

All it takes is “a thing” to get me spiraling.  And there’s almost always “a thing.”  Life is full of them.

Work was hard today.  I can’t really write about it because I feel weird writing about work stuff on this blog, but suffice it to say I got some very negative feedback about one aspect of my recent job performance.  It wasn’t from my boss or someone really influential, but it still stung like hell.

This is when my whole lifetime of conditioning likes to rear its ugly head and growl.

I am criticized and I get into a funky mind-space, and then everything else just seems to be a little bit worse.  My brain goes on “search and destroy” mode.  I take over when where that person left off, and mentally flagellate myself into a frenzy.  All small things are blown wildly out of proportion.  Things once perceived as neutral become awful, and previously good things pale to merely tolerable.

Yet - I feel like I am evolving in this regard.  (Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t completely saintly.  I did eat an extra Christmas cookie (brought in by our intern’s parents) to try to drown out the chorus of mean-ass voices in my head.)  I wallowed in feeling like crap for several hours and let everyone at the office know about it.  

But I was aware of the state of my mind and my sincere desire to get the hell over myself.  By the time I got on the bus to go home, I had made a conscious decision not to lie in it.  A bad mood is like a snowball rolling down a ski slope.  It will grow and get more and more out of control only if I let it.  I do have the power to wake up out of these dreams, to shift.  

After I got some space, it occurred to me that my task here is to love myself unconditionally - even if I f%$ked up, even if I pissed someone off.  

How to appreciate myself mid - f%$k-up?  

How to adopt an attitude of curiosity about these things, to learn from them and use what I’ve learned, if applicable, now and in the future?  How to be less attached to perceived successes as well?  I will admit that I am a praise junkie.  I’m basically a slave to praise and blame, which, by the way, are among the “eight vicissitudes” that the Buddha talked about (the others are pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and disrepute).  These are the “worldly winds” that blow me along, and all I can do is to cultivate awareness and acceptance in the face of that.  And compassion for my fragility.

Gratefully, Sami fell asleep really early this evening.  My guess is that he didn’t nap at school.  So I actually had some time to decompress and examine that state of mind.  I almost didn’t know what to do on a weekday evening, so long has it been since I’ve had one to myself.

I spent the evening paying bills and laughing.  My friend and I made some amazing sorbet concoction out of frozen bananas and mangoes and pineapples watched Ali G in Da House.  I think laughter is the best antidote for fragility, disease, and all manner of ills. When I laugh, I am no longer consumed by the changing conditions of my life.  I’m zooming out to the “eagle view” that Ricky’s death reminded me of, where all is just unfolding, impersonally, despite outward appearances to the contrary.