This Too Shall Pass

While I fully advocate living in the present, being in the Now and all that, sometimes we need to know how to step out of the current moment. This may be one of those times, given the world’s economic situation.

Experts are saying that we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929. People are losing their savings, investments, jobs, and sanity. Now, more than ever, we need to remind ourselves: This too shall pass.

1. You can’t take it with you

With banks collapsing like dominoes, most of us have either lost a lot of money, or know someone dear to us who has. And it’s not very helpful telling someone whose hard-earned savings have been wiped out that “It’s only money.” Unless you have too much of it, money does matter.

What works for me is telling myself that at some point I am going to lose all the money I have. You can’t take it with you when you go. It’s just a matter of time. Whether you lose it all now or later, you’re going to lose it. You’ll have to come to terms with the loss anyway.

By the way, all this applies not just to money but to everything in life. No matter how much you love a person, at some point you will have to say goodbye. No matter how much you love your work, at some point you will have to let it go. This is not a tragedy. This is life. Accept it now, and the irrational fear of loss loses its grip on you.

2. Trust your creative mind

What really hurts is not losing the money or the relationship but the broken dreams. That early retirement may have to be postponed, the college education forgone, the vacations sacrificed, the happy-ever-after marriage not to be.

We despair only when we see no way out. The moment the mind can conceive an alternative, hope is restored. This is what you can work on. You cannot change what’s happening in the world, but you have total control over how you think. And the mind can be trained to find alternatives.

Creative thinking is a skill that can be acquired and practised by reading a book on creativity, attending a course, or just setting aside ten minutes a day to think about your future, with the sole aim of eventually coming up with another plan. Watch a James Bond movie, or even Kungfu Panda, to get into the spirit of being foiled time and again and yet being able to find another way forward.

3. Listen to fact, not opinion

I am mildly amused when I see the newspaper headlines everyday. One day the stockmarket “crashes”, a few days later it “soars”, then it “tumbles”, and so on. It’s easy to get carried away by the hyperbole, until you look at the numbers and realise that all this apparent acrobatics usually takes place within just a few percentage points.

Obviously the situation is not ideal, but keep your understanding as clear as you can without getting carried away. Base your evaluations and decisions on the numbers, not the emotions of other people or yourself. Remember Rudyard Kipling’s advice to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”

4. Zoom out

Try zooming out several times on this screen right now. If your browser works like mine, you’ll soon be unable to read this post or anything else on this page but you’ll still see the images. When you zoom out, only a few things stand out clearly. It’s easier to focus on those few big things.

This works with your life too. Project yourself five, ten, fifty years into the future so that the present moment recedes further and further from view. A lot of what’s happening now will start to fade and you will see more clearly the big things that don’t change over time.

The furthest you can zoom out to is your deathbed. From that perspective, the things that matter are usually the people you love and the things you wish you’d done. These are the things that warrant your time and energy now, not the other things that don’t last. Read books like Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson or Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life to get a better perspective on the things that really matter in life.

5. Know that everything changes

The laws of physics dictate that matter is constantly changing form. Things cannot and therefore will not stay the same. Even the cells in your body are not the same ones you had a year ago. Whatever is happening now is not a static situation and will be different a year from now.

There is an inherent tension in every situation, with different forces pulling in different directions, like the ebb and flow of the tides. This tension ensures that eventually something has to give. Instead of fighting these powerful forces, learn to align yourself with them and be prepared to take advantage of whatever force seems strongest.

For example, in the financial world, either the market will right itself eventually, or it will collapse and a new financial order will take over. Position yourself to succeed whichever happens. If the market recovers, you will have learnt an important lesson about economic cycles. If a new type of market emerges, learn as much about the new rules as you can to get a headstart in the game.

In your personal life, know that the turbulence in a relationship will not last forever. Either the relationship will end and the goodbye comes sooner than you expected (don’t forget, even a till-death-do-us-part relationship has a goodbye at the end), or you will change and grow as a person and the relationship will work out because you said goodbye to the old you.

“This too shall pass” is not just a convenient consolation; it is a certain truth. Knowing this will free you from the despair of feeling unable to do anything, and gently remind you that sometimes all you have to do is wait. The sun will come up tomorrow, whether you want it to or not, and there is nothing you can do to hurry its rising. Just wait.

Just wait.

(This post is dedicated to Tamsin / Nudgeme, whose generous support in these early days of this blog is appreciated more than she knows, and whose comment about the current pervasive gloom and doom at the end of the post Three Times As Good, One-Third As Much inspired this post. Thank you, Tamsin.)



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Posted by Daphne | October 5, 2008 | in Speak Gently


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