This week, I taught a new class at Rancho La Puerta titled “Learning to Surf” inspired by the quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
We can’t prevent life’s challenges (just like we can’t stop the ocean waves from rolling in), but we can develop the skills and mindset to navigate them gracefully and even use them to our advantage rather than fight them. We can’t control the landscape of our life and other people’s actions, but we can always control our responses.
The talk I’d planned resonated with my own life’s journey. All the years of practicing the Serenity Prayer and studying Zen Buddhism and Stoicism—all of which emphasize distinguishing between what is and isn’t in our control—had finally integrated into my life.
That was Monday. Tuesday morning, my husband announced he was going to tackle the tallest, longest, and most challenging hike. Forgetting for the moment about learning to surf, I tried to stop the wave. I suggested that starting smaller would be wiser, as he hadn’t been on a big hike for quite a while. But he didn’t listen, and off he went. A few hours later, the phone rang. A nurse informed me that he’d had an accident, a “faceplant,” and had most likely broken his nose and sprained his wrist. And so that became my day. My class was canceled, and I spent the day with him in the hospital. He is okay; just sore and more humble. The following day, we were back in Mexico, and I gave my talk.
But I wasn’t so good at surfing at this point. I was reacting much more vigorously than I was responding. I found my mind going to irresistible, nasty places, finding evidence of other times he “hadn’t listened to me,” building a case for his being careless and making unwise decisions.
This was not the plan I had for delivering my new talk in which I would proudly represent my achievement in overcoming my tendency to control other people and then be righteous and upset when I failed.
After my sanctimonious self-talk and anger with my husband, I saw the funny side. Of course, I was going to teach something I needed to learn myself, and my sense that I had learned it was a further lesson in humility as well as a reminder that mindfulness, like loving and self-awareness, is not a place we arrive at but a practice we work on our whole life.
This is what I was going to write about. Then I got stuck because something happened in our wider world that caught my attention. Talking about giving up control of my husband’s hiking decisions paled in comparison. The world, as I imagined it to be, changed and I decided to cross the political line with an opinion.
I was raised in a family who voted Republican. My parents were part of a group of eight couples—four were Democrats, and four were Republicans. I remember the dinners when everyone would show up and stand around our living room, drinking an Old Fashioned and arguing loudly, intensely, and sometimes angrily about entitlements, military use, and regulations in the hours before dinner. What was extraordinary about those evenings was that when my mother announced that dinner was served, the arguing stopped, the raised voices softened, and the old friends went to the table for another long round of conversation with a much different tone—one of care and concern, talking about their families and their work, their neighbors, and aches and pains. At the end of the evening came handshakes, hugs, and back slaps. Those couples stayed friends until the last one died, despite their very different political views. Their conflicting beliefs didn’t get in the way of their friendship and care for one another. Moreover, regardless of their views about “entitlements,” each one found ways to give to those who had less than they did through donations, volunteering or participation in organizations which helped others, and privilege was something no one took for granted.
However, it’s not the same world we live in now. Therefore, despite my decision to avoid politics in my letters, I find myself today in a new place—somewhere I have never been, very far from the goodwill of those couples on Jackson Street in San Francisco in the 50s and even farther from learning to surf the waves and accepting that I can’t do anything about them.
A few days ago, our new president declared that he alone would decide who receives federal funding. His decision to cut funding wherever he chose, had it been carried out, would have halted funding for school lunches, rental assistance, childhood cancer research, Meals on Wheels, and much more. The president’s proposed action goes against the core of the U.S. Constitution, which was created to avoid a dictatorship at all costs and to ensure that we would remain a free democracy—by the people and for the people, decided by the people. Although the freeze was subsequently rescinded, it is a reminder that the way I always believed that this country works—with voting, checks and balances, and above all, decision-making based on the Constitution rather than on the whims of one person—is a system I can no longer take for granted. Whatever your political stance, please make it your business to understand what is going on, and, if it does not align with your view of what a democracy is, step forward to let your voice be heard.
Sometimes, surfing is going with the waves, and sometimes surfers can change course by leaning on their board to steer in a different direction. Surfing is about navigation and how to stay steady so that we don’t drown in the turbulent waters surrounding us.
