“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”
-John Lennon
Or was it Henry Cooke? Walter Ward? Quin Ryan or Allen Saunders? Or does it really date back to the Book of Proverbs?
My research concludes that while the quote is commonly attributed to Lennon, it first appeared in 1957, together with nine other unrelated sayings, in a section of Reader’s Digest called “Quotable Quotes”. The contributor was Allen Saunders. Similar versions are credited to other sources over the years. But less important than who said it first is the message. Be present.
One of life’s great ironies is that no matter how much you want to change who you are, how you live or where you think you want to be, wherever you go…there you are. You cannot escape yourself, try as you might. The romantic notion that if things aren’t good here you just have to go there creates a cycle of dissatisfaction and a prison of unconsciousness. Sooner or later, the same patterns and problems return.
Wherever You Go, There You Are is the title of a 1994 book by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The title quote has been attributed to the author, to a journalism student at Penn State, to writers at the Chicago Tribune and the Hartford Courant, and even to a film character named Buckaroo Banzai. The book has sold millions of copies to date and is considered to have been a groundbreaking manual on mindfulness and meditation.
Shortly after its publication I was given a copy as a birthday gift from my stepmother-in-law. To clarify, this was not your stereotypical stepmother. Younger than me (though only by a few weeks) she was one of my closest friends. She married “John Senior” a month after I married “John Junior” and we all lived in the same town in Connecticut. We were both 25-year-old midwestern girls who were new in town and we settled in together. We played softball on the same team, joined the same book club, met great new people and did a lot of drinking together. A lot. Our husbands drank with us too. A lot. Holidays and events were pretty much drinking fests. On a family trip to a college graduation I was tagged as the “designated driver”. Unfortunately, what felt like sober to me (relative to my usual level of drinking) was not sober in the eyes of the New York State Police, who had set up a sobriety checkpoint between campus and our charming bed & breakfast in town. Nevertheless, with a DUI on my record and significant legal expenses, I continued to drink.
Eventually my in-laws moved to a big farmhouse in the country. We saw them less but it always seemed to be a holiday or a celebration or some occasion (maybe just a Saturday) to get hammered.
And then she stopped drinking. She told me it was because my father-in-law was drinking too much. He never stopped as far as I know. But she did. She took up golf and in 2 years she was the women’s club champion. She started painting and her work was soon being sold in major galleries. And it was around that time that she gave me the book.
The only thing that intrigued me was that on the cover it said: “Author of Full Catastrophe Living”. Now THAT was something I could identify with. My life by that time seemed to be one catastrophe after another. I was always spinning, racing and doing damage control on my life. I never seemed to have enough time and I often felt out of control. I was still drinking, pretty much daily, and smoking weed on a regular basis. The idea of being still, or mindful, or present? It just did not compute. I put the book aside after a few pages. “When my life gets less crazy” I thought “I’ll have time to read this book.”
I had it all wrong. What I wish I’d considered is this: “When I make time to read this book, my life might get less crazy”.
And then things got worse. And a few years later I hit my bottom. It wasn’t spectacular or newsworthy. I didn’t kill anyone or go to jail. I didn’t even go to rehab. I was just done. So I went to a meeting. And then more meetings. I started hearing about mindfulness and meditation and I started exploring different practices. And one day I heard someone at one of my meetings say “wherever you go, there you are”.
Lightbulb.
I went home and found the book and it was pretty clear that I’d barely made it past the introduction. The “bookmark” that was tucked between pages 12 and 13 was a business card. It belonged to a man with whom I’d been having a wildly inappropriate relationship…during that time when “my life was so crazy I didn’t have time to read the book”. I could now see the unmanageability…and the unhappiness…that I’d been fueling with alcohol, drugs and other addictive behaviors. It had taken a while but I’d now taken the first step. I’d admitted that I was powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable.
I was finally able to sit still and read the book, as well as some others that were recommended by my new sober friends. Mindfulness, I learned, means paying attention in a particular way: purposefully, in the present moment, with curiosity and compassion, and without judgment. It means letting things be and allowing them to unfold in their own way. This practice was the gateway to a new understanding of meditation. I don’t need a mantra or a Buddha statue or a special room or a cushion or incense or sitar music. I just need to know what I’m doing while I’m doing it. Yes, sometimes that means being quiet and still, which remains a big challenge for me. But it’s not necessarily shutting things out…or off. It’s seeing things clearly, and positioning myself differently in relation to them.
I’ll end with another quote:
“The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Or was it Thich Nhat Hanh? Or Ram Dass? Or maybe Mother Teresa? I guess it doesn’t matter who said it first…
It works for me.
Comments