Third Week: Personal Responsibility & Choice

The themes of personal responsibility and choice are central to my experience of day-to-day life and have become more important to me over the years I have practiced mindfulness meditation approaches.  Knowing that each moment offers a choice, I have created a practice for myself which centers on choosing how to respond to events and feelings.

Whenever I interact with someone in a way I don't feel good about, I go back and apologize, or say what I needed to say, or do what I needed to do in the first place.  While not much fun to do at the time, this practice holds me accountable and tends to make me more conscious of the choices I'm making in the midst of interactions and reactions. Sometimes, these can be dramatic moments for me, sometimes they are simple interactions that don't really matter to anyone but me.  One of the simple examples was a day I went into a healing center to drop off some books for a workshop.  I met the person who ran the center and we had a delightful, animated conversation.  As I left, I realized that there had been another person there...in the back of the room answering phones...and I hadn't bothered to introduce myself and say hello.  By the time I was on the sidewalk outside, I called the healing center office on my cell phone and asked the name of the person who answered the call.  When he told me, I introduced myself and apologized for not having taken a moment to talk to him directly.  We had a brief chat and that was the end of the conversation.  It wasn't earth-shaking, and wasn't even particularly important, except that I felt a need to follow through with meeting the moment in a way that felt more in tune with how I've chosen to be in the world. 

Another everyday example occurred one day when I found myself particularly irritated with a man in a copy shop who was taking what felt like a lot of time to make some copies.  While not overtly nasty to the man who was helping me, he couldn't have missed the fact that I was feeling impatient.  (The fact that I was tapping my fingers on the counter probably conveyed my impatience quite loudly.)  After receiving my copies and walking out of the shop, I remembered my commitment to becoming conscious and took myself back into the copy shop to apologize.  I'm sure the man behind the counter must have groaned inwardly when I came through the door.  When I got all the way inside, I simply said I was sorry that I had added to the stress of his day and then I left. I have no idea how he responded to my apology.  All I knew was that I had taken full responsibility for the quality of my interaction with him.

Basically, bringing personal responsibility and choice more consciously into my life has allowed me to move from feeling victimized or helpless in everyday situations toward a more ongoing sense that, no matter what happens, I have an opportunity to choose how I'm going to meet the moment.  I acknowledge that I can't control what each moment brings my way, but I can decide how to move through those moments to the best of my ability.

While we can't control what may come our way in life, and while we may not be able to control the feelings that come up in response to an event, we can choose—to some degree, more or less at any given moment—how we will respond, in spite of our feelings.  Even if we are activated by intense feelings, we can practice choosing to feel with or without acting on our emotions, depending on the particular, unique circumstance in which we find ourselves.

And so, for this week, as you encounter each challenge, or whatever experience comes your way, take a moment to notice whether or not you are choosing or reacting.   Choosing leads to response.  Reacting leads to who knows what, because you're probably not in the driver's seat.

As with all exercises in awareness, remember that there are two important companions along the way.  First is self-acceptance.  Whatever is, is.  Notice your responses without judgment.  Life is a learning process, not a test.  Secondly, there is curiosity.  What a delightful companion this is!  Curiosity opens into—I wonder what I'll learn?—and allows us to move toward experience with a sense that we-re on a journey of discovery.

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