Posted on by Asia Lenae

3 Revolutionary Scientists’ Rituals & Routines

Here are the rituals and routines of yet 3 more remarkable people profiled in Mason Currey’s delightful Daily Rituals:

1. Charles Darwin

At the ripe age of 22, Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle and set sail for the Galapagos.  At this time, his life was romantic and adventure-filled: he traveled to faraway lands with foreign customs and strange people who spoke in even stranger languages, marveled at the boundless biodiversity of our improbable blue planet, studied his now famous finches and began to formulate his earth-shattering theory of evolution.

However, his life while actually writing On the Origins of Species was rather dull by comparison.  To escape the commotion of city life and work without disturbance, Darwin and his family left London in 1842 and moved to the quaint English countryside.  There they made their home at Down House, a former parsonage in Kent, about 14 miles southeast of London’s Charing Cross.  Darwin loved his secluded home— the “edge of the world” he called it— because he could be alone with his controversial thoughts.  He knew his theory of evolution would cause an uproar.  Not only did his thesis directly contradict a literal interpretation of the Bible, it suggested that man, who was supposedly created in the image of God, was just another beast in the animal kingdom.  Man descended from monkeys?  He knew such a blasphemous notion would cause an outcry and potentially ruin his career (time proved Mr. Darwin right; after he published his theory, one critic raged, “Darwin’s story begins in the mud, has a monkey in the middle and an infidel at the tail.”)

Still, Darwin worked steadily in secret on his ideas.  At Down House, Darwin led a simple, solitary life.  After waking, eating breakfast and taking a morning stroll, the great scientist settled into work.  There he labored for an hour and a half before meeting his wife, Emma, in the drawing room, where she’d read him the family letters and a portion of a novel.  At 10:30, Darwin returned to his study and worked for another hour and a half, which he considered a good day’s work.

Much like Wordsworth and Thoreau, the father of evolution understood the importance of idleness to creativity and made time for long, meandering walks throughout the day with Polly, his beloved fox terrier.  Afternoons were reserved for leisurely lunches with his family and letter writing (Darwin made an effort to respond to every letter he received no matter how nonsensical or crazy); if he didn’t reply to even a single missive, he’d feel so guilty, he couldn’t get to sleep).  In the evening, he’d have a small dinner (even if his family was indulging in a luxurious feast, he’d only have tea, an egg or small piece of meat), smoke a cigarette or two, play backgammon with his wife and then read and retire to bed around 10:30.

2. Albert Einstein

einstein #2

Perhaps the most influential scientist of all time, Albert Einstein was many things: groundbreaking physicist, champion of the imagination, unwavering believer in human goodness, unapologetic individualist, passionate pacifist, stanch defender of free speech and civil liberty.  In addition to discovering E = mc2 and developing his groundbreaking theory of relativity, he made great contributions to human thought and philosophy. 

When Hitler rose to power and the threat of war began to darken the continent in 1933, Einstein fled to the United States where he joined the faculty at Princeton University.  There, he followed a predictable routine: he read the papers and ate a breakfast of eggs, mushrooms, and honey, then headed to the office.  At 1:30, he returned home for lunch and an afternoon nap.  The rest of the day, Einstein worked, answered letters, and occasionally entertained.

Despite his legendary life, Einstein’s day-to-day wasn’t particularly noteworthy.  Like most remarkable men throughout history, his life wasn’t glamorous or thrilling, filled with fascinating people, faraway places and glittering parties— it was single-mindedly focused on his work which— from the outside— doesn’t look all that interesting.  Picasso could delight in a dinner party now and again, but preferred to paint in his quiet studio in Montparnasse.  Matisse worked 7 days a week, only taking a brief respite to oar in the harbor and play violin.  When he wasn’t revolutionizing modern poetry, T.S. Eliot was wearing a suit and tie and working a rather regular job at a bank.  As philosopher Bertrand Russell once observed so astutely, “Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting.”

Indeed, Einstein preferred to do certain things the same way everyday to save valuable time and energy.  Rather than squander a precious hour debating whether to wear a button down shirt or a cashmere sweater, Einstein bought several versions of the same gray suit so he had a “uniform” he could wear everyday.  “The same exact thing…everyday?” you fashionistas may be gasping in horror, “How boring!”  Though his unrelentingly gray wardrobe might seem dreary, Einstein understood life was full of decisions: better to automate as many unimportant ones as possible so you can focus on what truly matters: your mission.  Steve Jobs and his black turtleneck.  Mark Zuckerberg and his uber-casual Silicon Valley uniform of a tee shirt and jeans.  If you want to found a multi-billion dollar company or unlock the scientific mysteries of the universe, the idea goes, simplify your wardrobe and streamline your routine.

3. Margaret Mead

margaret mead

Like most productive people from Joyce Carol Oates to Stephen King, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead was deeply devoted to her work.  Endlessly energetic, Mead was always working on something, be it her revolutionary study of adolescence in the South Pacific in her controversy-stirring book Coming of Age in Samoa or her PhD.

Mead’s life is a testament to what positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered in his fascinating study of “flow”: we’re happiest not when we’re relaxing in leisure but when we’re engaged in something difficult and worthwhile.  Mrs. Mead despised being unproductive and hated nothing more than frittering away hours.  So protective was she of her time that she became enraged at anyone who disrupted her schedule.  On one occasion at a symposium, Mead was outraged to learn that a session had been postponed.  “How dare they,” she exclaimed, “Do they realize what use I could have made of this time?  Do they know that I get up at five o’ clock in the morning to write a thousand words before breakfast?  Why did nobody have the politeness to tell me this meeting had been rescheduled?”

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The Rituals & Routines of 3 Famous Artists

Self-help books and personal development podcasts all tout the importance of having a morning routine.  But what— exactly— is the ideal way to start the day?  Many experts argue you should begin with your most important task and avoid checking email and social media first thing in the morning.  Others contend you should make your bed every single day.  Such a simple act is a symbolic gesture: by establishing order in your physical environment, you establish order in your psyche.  Still others recommend journaling, meditating and exercising.

Despite our cultural fascination with the most productive way to divide our days, a quick perusal of Mason Currey’s charming Daily Rituals will reveal there’s no one perfect routine.  An extensively researched collection of over 160 artists, writers, painters and poets, Daily Rituals suggests there’s no single path to a Pulitzer or literary fame: the only thing that matters is sitting your butt in a chair, no excuses, day after day after day.  Whether you work for at least 8 hours like phenomenally productive Joyce Carol Oates or can’t write for more than 2 hours like Southern gothic novelist Flannery O’ Connor, you can write a novel or compose a poem so long as you consistently stick to some sort of routine.  Below are how 3 groundbreaking artists structured their days:

1. Pablo Picasso

Picasso

Pablo Picasso was many different things to many different people: to some, he was a genius, a god; to others, a devil.  At times, he could be charming and convivial, at others, callous and cruel.  His daughter Paloma compared him to the center of our solar system: “If you get too close to the sun, it burns you.”

Picasso was notorious for his moodiness and bad temper.  When he finished working for the day, he’d join his girlfriend Fernande for dinner.  “He rarely spoke during meals; sometimes he would not utter a word from beginning to end,” she recalled.  The painter was more companionable when they had guests over but remained ambivalent about entertaining: though he liked to take breaks between periods of intense productivity, he quickly tired of too much frivolous socializing.

Painting, on the other hand, never bored him.  Like many artists, he was most content when he was in front of a canvas.  For 12 hours a day, Picasso would withdraw to his studio on boulevard de Clichy in Montparnasse.  More a night owl than a lark, he’d begin his work day at 2pm, work until 10, have a late dinner until 11, then continue painting until 3 am, long after most of us have gone to bed.  The result?  Picasso was incredibly prolific, producing over 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints, 300 sculptures, and 34,000 illustrations.

2. Andy Warhol

andy warhol

Andy Warhol is one of the 21st century’s most accomplished artists.  Besides leading the pop art movement, he managed the Velvet Underground, popularized the expression “15 minutes of fame,” and founded The Factory, a hip gathering place for artists, intellectuals, models, musicians, drug users, and drag queens which came to epitomize the nonconformist spirit of the 1960s.  Warhol, much like great artists Van Gogh and Chardin, found beauty in the most mundane things.  In the same way that Duchamp shocked the world when he submitted a urinal to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, Warhol broke the barrier between the elevated and everyday.  For him, art wasn’t only bowls of fruit and breathtaking landscapes; it could be Coca Cola bottles and Campbell Soup cans, Brillo soap pads and iconic portraits of celebrities.

Though he was notorious for his eccentricities, Warhol deeply valued routine.  According to his collaborator and longtime friend Pat Hackett, “keeping to his beloved ‘rut’ was so important to Andy” that he veered from it only when absolutely necessary.  Every weekday morning from 1976 until his death in 1987, Warhol— who was obsessed with documenting his day a whole half century before social media— called Hackett and recounted the events of the last 24 hours: the things he’d done, the people he’d seen.  Hackett then transcribed and collected these events in The Andy Warhol Diaries.

After his daily call with Hackett, Warhol showered, got dressed and had breakfast.  Then he’d go shopping for a few hours, usually along Madison Avenue, then in antique shops, auction houses, and the jewelry district.  Between 1 and 3, he’d get to the office.  Before doing any real work, he’d check his appointment book, take a few calls, and open the mail, looking for letters, invitations, photographs and magazines for his Time Capsules.  A snapshot of both his personal life and the zeitgeist of his age, the Time Capsules were an extensive collection of mementos Warhol kept in hundreds of 10×18×14 inch cardboard boxes from 1974 to 1987.  “Less than one percent of all items that he was constantly being sent or given did he keep for himself or give away,” Currey writes, “All the rest were ‘for the box’: things he considered ‘interesting,’ which to Andy, who was interested in everything, meant literally everything.”

After finding material for his Time Capsules, Warhol chatted with people in the reception area and then moved to the sunny window ledge to read the newspaper and leaf through magazines.  Eventually, he would go to the back part of the loft near the freight elevator and settle in to do some real work.  A socialite who loved a glamorous party, Warhol reserved evenings for socializing.  Never the stereotypical reclusive artist, he believed life was a vital part of his art— not an enemy of it.  Indeed, Warhol often used his real life for inspiration.  An obsessive chronicler of the commonplace, he never left the house without film in his instant camera and often taped conversations.  Whether he was hanging with Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger or model Edie Sedgwick, Warhol thought a bit of captured conversation might later supply the dialogue for a play or movie script.

3. Henri Matisse

henri matisse

A French artist known for his expert craftsmanship, bright, expressive colors, and strong shapes, Henri Matisse is considered— along with Picasso— to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century.  The father of Fauvism, an artistic movement that emphasized vivid and unnatural use of color, Matisse had a great influence on expressionism and continues to inspire artists today.

“Basically, I enjoy everything; I’m never bored.  Do you understand why I am never bored?  For over fifty years, I have not stopped working,” Matisse told a visitor to his studio in 1941.  This was no exaggeration: over the course of his career, he worked 7 days a week.  Though his paintings give the impression that they were created with effortless ease, Matisse confessed he had to labor painstakingly to achieve such seeming simplicity.  However, he loved the challenge of capturing his vision in painting.  “From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life,” he once said, “I threw myself into it like a beast.”

Matisse’s day began at at dawn when he’d head to Club Nautique, where he’d oar in the harbor.  After he returned home, he’d practice the violin for a few hours.  From 9 till noon, he’d sit to work only to briefly take a break for a nap and lunch.  Around 2, he’d pick up his brushes again and paint until dusk.

The French painter followed this rigorous routine even on Sundays.  “On Sundays I have to tell all sorts of tales to the models,” he admitted, “I promise them it will be the last time I will ever beg them to come and pose that day.  Naturally I pay them double.  Finally, when I sense that they are not convinced I promise them a day off during the week.  ‘But Monsieur Matisse,’ one of them answered me, ‘this has been going on for months and I have never had one afternoon off.’  Poor things!  They don’t understand.  Nevertheless, I can’t sacrifice my Sundays for them merely because they have boyfriends.”

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The Routines & Rituals of 3 Famous Authors

What is the secret to success?  The answer— many of us contend— lies in the rituals and routines of great men.  By studying the biographies of billionaires and business men and adopting their habits, we believe we can attain similar success.  If we read a book a week like Bill Gates, we think, we’ll found a multi-billion dollar company and be just as wealthy as him.  Though this idea is obviously preposterous, something about the routines of the rich and famous still captures our imagination.  One look at the most listened to podcasts on Spotify reveals our fascination with the mysterious workings of the creative process.  We long to know how Beethoven prepared his morning coffee, when Picasso began his work day, when Einstein went to bed.

If— like me— you find such trivia endlessly entertaining, you’ll love Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration and Get to Work.  A charming compendium of more than a 160 artists, writers, painters, poets and philosophers, Daily Rituals illuminates the many ways remarkable people throughout history have structured their days.  Though there are some commonalities among those featured, no one routine is universal.  Some worked for long stretches of time; others could only manage to work for an hour.  Some were early birds; others were night owls.  Some followed a strict schedule (Hemingway, for example, rose every morning at dawn no matter how much he drank the night before) while others were less regimented with their schedules (later in his life, man of the Jazz Age F. Scott Fitzgerald struggled to maintain a regular writing ritual).  In the end, the habits of these remarkable minds are as distinctive as the people.  Full of amusing anecdotes, interesting oddities and little-known facts, Daily Rituals will delight you— and perhaps reassure you that there’s no one “right” way to work.  Below are 3 of my favorite authors profiled:

1. Haruki Murakami

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For Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, writing is just as much a physical challenge as a mental one.  “Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity,” he told the Paris Review in 2004.  To stay in peak physical condition when he’s writing, he rarely drinks, eats mostly vegetables and fish and runs (his memoir What We Talk About When We Talk About Running, of course a nod to the classic Raymond Carver story, is one of my favorite books on either writing or running).  Because Murakami is a serious athlete (he began running 25 years ago and has been running daily ever since), he understands writing is a sport that requires focus and endurance.  Murakami follows a strict writing schedule in much the same way he trains for marathons: he wakes up before dawn (4 am) and works for 5-6 hours.  He is unwavering in his commitment.  No matter how enticing the cocktail hour or glamorous the party, Murakami often declines social invitations.  For him, writing is his number one priority.  Lesson?  Though your friends might get mad when you yet again say “no” to a night out, it’s more important to say yes to your novel and yourself.

2. Joyce Carol Oates

oates

Is there any writer who’s as productive as Mrs. Joyce Carol Oates?  One can only look upon her more than 50 novels, 36 short story collections, and countless essays and poems and gasp in wonderment.  How can a mere mortal observe so much of the world and craft art from her every experience?  What’s her secret?

Though Oates’s output seems impressive, it isn’t a surprise considering how many hours she spends at her desk.  America’s foremost woman of letters writes every day from 8:00 to 1:00, takes a brief respite for lunch, then writes until dinner.  “I write and write and write, and rewrite, and even if I retain only a single page from a full day’s work, it is a single page and these pages add up,” Oates told one interviewer.  Never one to fall for the myth of mood, Oates writes no matter what; she doesn’t wait for the mercurial muse.  Lesson?  If you want to write, be willing to work.

3. Stephen King

Master of horror Stephen King is yet another phenomenally prolific writer.  The macabre mind behind such bone-chilling books as It and The Shining has written over 62 novels and 200 short stories.  His books have been adapted for the silver screen, translated into over 50 languages and sold upwards of 350 million copies.  His body of work is— to say the least— intimidating.

So how has the sinister scribe managed to write so much over the course of his nearly 50 year career?  First off, he writes every single day of the year.  That’s right: every single day.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas or his son’s birthday: he sits at his desk and writes until he reaches his self-imposed quota of two thousand words.  Like many in Daily Rituals, King begins writing first thing in the morning— 8:00 or 8:30— and works until he meets his goal.  Some days that might be until 11:30, other days it might be until 1:00.  Though he writes diligently every day, King isn’t a humorless workhorse.  His schedule allows for plenty of unstructured time for rest and renewal.  Once he writes two thousand words, he has the rest of the day to himself: to read, to write letters, to spend time with loved ones.

Posted on by Asia Lenae · 1 Comment

Pema Chodron on How to Break Our Habitual Patterns & Live More Mindfully

mindful Pema

What is a habit?  Oxford English Dictionary defines habit as a “settled or regular tendency or practice.”  Brewing a cup of coffee, stumbling into the bathroom and brushing our teeth, rising at six every morning: each is a habit, a task we ordinarily undertake.  Habits may make up the mundane material of our day-to-day, but they dictate our destiny (“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our our lives,” as Annie Dillard so exquisitely says.)  It’s simple: if we have good habits, we’ll lead good lives.  If, for example, we’re in the habit of exercising daily and eating only healthy, wholesome foods, we’ll be fit and full of vigor.  If, on the other hand, we’re in the habit of smoking half a pack of Marlboros and guzzling a gallon of Jameson every night, we’ll waste our days miserably hung over.

The beauty of habits is they’re automatic: they don’t require much— if any— effort.  When we leave for the office every morning, we don’t have to consciously think “turn the key in the ignition,” “shift from break to drive,” “press the accelerator.”  Nor do we have to consciously think to find our way there.  Because we drive to and from work twice a day, five times a week, we instinctively know where to get on and off the freeway, where to make a right or left turn.

Where would we be without such automated, unconscious processing?  Imagine how much energy we’d expend navigating streets!  Or deciding what to do when if we didn’t have daily rituals to divide our days!  Habits streamline our lives and sculpt the formless clay of existence into a beautiful, orderly shape.  Philosopher William James went so far as to advise we make as many useful actions habitual as possible.  “The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work,” he believed.

Yet we don’t want to act from habit alone.  British philosopher Alain de Botton views habits more pessimistically, “Much of life is ruined for us by a blanket or shroud of familiarity that descends between us and everything that matters,” he writes, “Habit dulls our senses and stops us from appreciating.”  After all, if we act out of habit, if we mechanically, mindlessly follow a routine, we’re by definition not thinking.  We’re reacting rather than responding.  It’s a habit to either sit and sulk or shoot back with a cutting comment when our mother makes a passive-aggressive comment about our dining room’s disarray.  It’s a habit to get defensive and retaliate when our boyfriend brings up something that bothers him, even when he does so in a constructive rather than critical way.

Rather than fall into familiar roles and act out the same habitual patterns, ordained Buddhist monk and master of mindfulness Pema Chodron suggests we pause and get fully present before we react in the same unhelpful ways.  In her life-changing Practicing Peace, she makes a radical, revolutionary assertion: war and peace begin with individuals, not with nations.  If we want to create a more loving world, if we want to build a society based on loving-kindness and mutual respect rather than hostility and hate, we must first look at ourselves: how do we behave with others day to day?  do we act with compassion and understanding or do we judge and discriminate?  if there’s conflict, do we seek to find a compromise or do we wage war against our enemies?  The key to peaceful relationships whether between nations and citizens or friends and family is thinking before we act and before we speak.  Maintaining our composure, of course, is difficult when we feel wronged or angry.  As Chodron writes:

“When we’re feeling aggressive— and I think this would go for any strong emotion— there’s a seductive quality that pulls us in the direction of wanting to get some resolution.  We feel restless, agitated, ill at ease.  It hurts so much to feel the aggression that we want it to be resolved.  Right then, we could change the way we look at this discomfort and practice patience.  But what do we usually do?  We do exactly what is going to escalate the aggression and the suffering.  We strike out, we hit back.  Someone insults us and, initially, there is some softness there— if you can practice patience, you can catch it— but usually you don’t even realize there was any softness.  You find yourself in the middle of a hot, noisy, pulsating, wanting-to-get-even state of mind.  It has a very unforgiving quality to it.  With your words or your actions, in order to escape the pain of aggression, you create more aggression and pain.”

What do we do when someone hurts or humiliates us?  When someone attacks us, our first impulse is to fight back.  Say our sister accuses us of being cheap.  Outraged, we want to defend ourselves and collect evidence to support our case.  Has she forgotten all the times we so generously picked up the tab?  or that we just covered her share of the security deposit at our new place?  How dare she call us cheap?  Blood boiling, we want to shout and scream: She was the money-grubbing miser.  She was wrong.  She owed us an apology.

But where does hurling accusations get us?  When two parties are in conflict, does criticizing or pointing fingers ever accomplish anything?  Even if someone wrongs us first— makes an unfair allegation, calls us names— do we reach an amicable compromise by launching our own crusade?  No, usually bombarding our enemies with bullets of belittlement only makes them fortify their walls and assault us more viciously.  For there to be any hope of resolution, we must not add fuel to the flames:

“If we want suffering to lessen, the first step is learning that keeping the cycle of aggression going doesn’t help.  It doesn’t bring the relief we seek, and it doesn’t bring happiness to anyone else either.  We may not be able to change the outer circumstances, but we can always shift our perspective and dissolve the hatred in our minds.”

It’s a common misconception that Eastern religions advocate pacifism that borders on passivity.  Buddhism recalls images of monks meditating serenely in monasteries or sitting cross-legged beneath bonsai trees, their tranquil faces radiating joy and peace.  To be spiritually enlightened, we imagine we have to be similarly all-loving and all-forgiving.  If a cashier is rude to us, if a hostess is discourteous after we’ve been waiting an interminable two hours to be seated, we tell ourselves we shouldn’t be irritated/irate/angry.

Buddhism may advise us to pause and reflect before we rant and rave, but it never recommends we repress or deny our feelings.  We should validate how we feel: it is upsetting when the grocery store clerk barely raises his head to say hello, it is infuriating when the hostess doesn’t apologize for the long wait.  We can feel our feelings but choose how to express them.  The goal is to bring more alertness, awakeness, and aliveness to our interactions with our fellow human beings.  Or—to paraphrase the poetic Rebecca Solnit— we can feel ire without inflicting it.  No matter how strong the urge to exact revenge or unleash our rage, Chodron encourages us to simply stay with our difficult feelings:

“So when you’re like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means slowing down at that point— just pausing— instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response.  You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot.  But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling.  You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression.  In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself.  If you wait and don’t fuel the rage with your thoughts, you can be very honest about the fact that you long for revenge; nevertheless you keep interrupting the torturous storyline and stay with the underlying vulnerability.  That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability, is nothing solid.  And yet it is painful to experience.  Still, just wait and be patient with your anguish and discomfort…This means relaxing with that restless, hot energy— knowing that it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world.”

No human ability is more powerful than the word.  “In the beginning was the word,” the Bible reminds us.  Words birth new nations, begin and end bloody world wars.  They can build bridges or erect walls, promote forgiveness or harden a grudge, resolve differences or incite rancor.  They can be stitches and slings or bullets and bombs.  They can bandage wounds or leave lifelong scars.

“For every time you regret that you did not say something, you will regret a hundred times that you did not keep your silence,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote.  Though it’s tempting to slight our sisters when they say something mean or strike back with a spiteful comment when our boyfriend hurts our feelings or otherwise insults our dignity, retaliating only perpetuates the cycle of suffering.  Yes, our boyfriend is a jackass for confessing he finds another woman attractive, but what do we accomplish by getting revenge?  We make him insecure and jealous?  Do we promote an atmosphere of trust by exaggeratedly checking out every remotely good-looking guy we pass on the street?  Do we strengthen our relationship by intentionally drooling over every six-packed movie star we see on TV?  No, no matter how much we want retribution for our lover’s insensitivity, our job in life is to keep our side of the street clean:

“At this point you’re getting to know anger and how it easily breeds violent words and actions, and this can be decidedly unnerving.  You can see where your anger will lead before you do anything.  You’re not repressing it, you’re just sitting there with the pulsating energy— going cold turkey with the aggression— and you get to know the naked energy of anger and the pain it can cause if you react.  You’ve followed the tug so many times, you already know.  It feels like an undertow, that desire to say something mean, to seek revenge or slander, that desire to complain, to just somehow spill out that aggression.  But you slowly realize that those actions don’t get rid of the aggression, they increase it.  Instead you’re patient— patient with yourself— and this requires the gentleness and courage of fearlessness.”

Every difficult conversation, every moment of doubt, fear, and insecurity offers an opportunity: will we reenact the same predictable patterns and believe our same habitual stories or will we behave in a new way?  Will we be courageous enough to be vulnerable and open up or will we defend ourselves against possible attack by hiding behind an impregnable stockade?

Often times, anger and aggression mask a deeper vulnerability.  Why, for instance, are we so outraged at discovering that our partner still stays in contact with his ex?  We feel indignation perhaps because we find such a relationship inappropriate, yes, but our swearing and screaming is really just a guise for our insecurity.  It’s easier to feel fury than realize just how utterly helpless we are at the hands of our beloved.  Those we love— more than anyone else— have the profound power to hurt us deeply: sure, they might love us now, but one day they might reunite with their ex or run off with their skanky, short-skirted secretary.  Rather than be vulnerable and reveal these anxieties to our partners (“I know you love me but it makes me feel insecure that you maintain a relationship with your ex.  I worry you still harbor feelings.”), we lash out.  We harden instead of soften, as Chodron might say: we call our husband a bunch of obscenities, we sulk and spoil our evening out to the movies, we reach out to our ex just to be petty.  We don’t dare articulate our actual feelings (“I love you/ I need you/ I’m scared you might leave me.”):

“Behind resistance— definitely behind aggression and jealousy— behind any kind of tension, there is always a soft spot that we’re trying to protect.  Someone’s actions hurt our feelings and before we even notice what we’re doing, we armor ourselves in a very old and familiar way.  So we can either let go of our solid storyline and connect with that soft spot or we can continue to stubbornly hold on, which means that suffering will continue.”

How can we break destructive, dysfunctional relationship patterns and express ourselves openly and honestly?  Chodron has a simple answer: live more mindfully.  If we return again and again to the present moment, we can observe our thoughts from a place of detached objectivity, label our thinking as “thinking,” and choose our actions accordingly: 

“Mediation teaches us how to open and relax with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.  It teaches us to experience the uneasiness and the urge fully and to interrupt the momentum that usually follows.  We do this by not following after the thoughts and learning to return again and again to the present moment.  We train in sitting with the itch…and with our craving to scratch.  We label our story lines ‘thinking’ and let them dissolve, and we come back to ‘right now,’ even when ‘right now’ doesn’t feel so great.  This is how we learn patience, and how we learn to interrupt the chain reaction of habitual responses that otherwise will rule our lives.”

Practicing Peace illuminates how we can bring more compassion to a world so often driven apart by conflict and cruelty.  With mindfulness, we can improve relationships individually and globally between men and women, between liberals and conservatives, between people of different religions, races and nationalities.  For more Chodron, read how to be courageous enough to grow up and how to let pain enlarge your heart.  If you want more Buddhist wisdom, learn how to live intentionally from Thich Nhat Hanh and how to entirely inhabit the present moment from Alan Watts.