One by One: A Mindful Approach to Life's Uncertainties

0:00 { Helvetica; **Speaker A**: Hi, this is Margaret Meloni and welcome to the Death Dhamma podcast. In a series I used to read, occasionally one character would say to the other, may you live in interesting times. It was understood that this was a curse where interesting times meant chaos and difficulty. Well, we do live in interesting times. I mean, don't we? Always. So this season together we will explore equanimity and chaos. Recognizing that many aspects of life are beyond our control. Let's find a sense of balance and peace amid external chaos.

0:03 Hello there. I come to you today with some stories of travel and what that has to do with us and equanimity and chaos and letting go and all those good things. I don't know why we took a red eye flight, but we did. Probably a combination of cost and time constraints. It was a less expensive flight and each of us, you know, each of us traveling had limited time off and actually we don't get paid for vacation or sick time. So time away from work means time without pay. Traveling at night means less loss of work time.

0:03 It turns out the red eye might not have been the best value though when you factor in the loss of sleep. And it wasn't really a true overnight red eye because it was only a three and a half hour flight. None of us slept a wink. Then we had a one hour layover and then a short final flight to our destination. Then a few hours before we could get into our hotel room, we arrived as zombies. Zombies, being used to their state, are probably more fully functional, but we were happy and excited to reach our destination.

0:03 Absolutely. Now, in recent episodes we've discussed finding balance in the small moments, finding calm and chaos and choosing letting go over giving up. Preparing for this short trip and engaging in travel was really, you know, a perfect integration of all of these topics. Examples that come to mind. Starting by thinking that on that short red eye I could at least get a couple hours of sleep. Seriously, what was I thinking? That was not rooted in any type of reality. I know that I have restless leg syndrome and when it bothers me, which is always at night and always at a certain time of night which coincides with the red eye, that I'd be, you know, in cramped seating.

0:03 And at first I tried to fight this and be in denial, but then I realized the right thing to do was to just let go and accept the true nature of the situation. I was not going to sleep. I was going to try to quietly and with minimum disruption to others, tend to my leg, moving it and massaging it until the tingling stopped. The tingling was not going to stop until the flight ended and I could walk around freely. That's how it was. Two of us on this trip deal with travel anxiety in different ways.

0:03 I want to be on the plane and in my seat as soon as possible. He needs to wait until almost the final moment because being crammed into his seat with people around him makes him more anxious. When we exited the plane, he almost ran through the airport to make it to our connecting flight. We had time, by the way. That's just what he needed to do. I did my best to keep up, and he did his best to be patient with me because I don't run or walk as fast as he does. When we took a cab from the airport to drop off our bags at our hotel, the lack of clearly marked lanes on the road, combined with the absence of stop signs and traffic lights and the number of cars had me taking some very deep breaths.

0:03 Ah. When I finally asked the driver how he knew when to go, he said to me, one by one, and I watched the traffic with a fresh eye. Okay, well, as fresh an eye as a zombie off a sleepless night of travel can be. Indeed, everyone seemed to understand the rhythm and flow as well as the courtesy of one by one, this car goes through the intersection, then that car goes through the intersection. To the untrained eye, to a visitor like me, there was chaos. To someone who understands the way, there was a well understood way of being one by one.

0:03 While the cab driver was teaching me about how he and others handle the flow of traffic, probably so I wouldn't, you know, freak out in the backseat of his cab, I found a deeper meaning in one by one. I began to see it in how people walked on the crowded sidewalks or waited their turn in line, or even in how groups participated in the local parade. One by one, each with excitement and the crowd greeting each new group with excitement, one by one appreciation for each and their right to their turn.

0:03 And one by one is how one of us might have a day when we were tired or crabby, or one of us was relaxed while another was anxious. And one by one is how we might select destinations to visit so that each of us felt included in the travel plans and how we found balance in small details like sharing a lunch order or let somebody run into a local bakery for a treat. One by one helped me to find calm in what I saw, as, you know, the dangerous chaos of traffic and allowed me to let go of sitting rigidly and gripping my seat with a death grip as if I were going to be smashed in any moment by another car because I was sure we were going to be hit by another vehicle.

0:03 And one by one helped me to let go of uncertainty, of how things were supposed to work, and just let the experiences unfold. Travel provides many opportunities to shift our perspectives, to work on mindfulness, compassion, and equanimity, and to take each experience one by one. You've been listening to the Death Dhamma podcast with your host, Margaret Maloney. Thank you so much for being here. Come find me on margaretmeloni.com M A R G A R E T M E L o n I.com and until we meet again. May you be well, may you be happy, may you be at ease, and may you be free from suffering.

0:04 Bye for now.