Suffering

(This is something I actually typed up several months ago, and just copied and pasted it here now.)

Let me just say it.  Being a mother sometimes sucks.  That sounds a bit harsh, I know.  However, unless I’m honest, I cannot move forward and get past this cold, hard fact.  Sometimes it sucks more than others.  Sometimes it doesn’t suck at all.  There are times when it’s the most heartbreakingly wonderful thing in the word.  It still amazes me how something so incredibly wonderful can be so incredibly awful. 

Anyway, my point is not to simply bash motherhood.  I was having a particularly rough morning with my 2 and a half year old.  We were running late, as was becoming the norm.  Aidan needed to get dressed, so that we could get to his preschool on time, and so that I could subsequently arrive at work within a close approximation of the time that I was supposed to be there.  And that’s when the negativism and the whining got to me.  I was trying to use whatever tricks I had to cajole my toddler into going “pee pee in the potty.”  Once that task was finished, I moved onto getting dressed. 

 After asking Aidan to stand up for the umpteenth time, I gave up and started putting on his pants.  That’s when the itty bitty shitty committee piped up and said, “What are you doing?  He should be putting his own pants on.  Make him do it!”  So, I tried that.  It didn’t go so well.  At one point, I put myself in time out and ended up crouched down in the kitchen crying.  

The sweetest moment occurred next.  Aidan came out of the bathroom, with his pants on, and said, “No mommy.  Don’t cry.”  I was too busy in the moment reacting to the fact that I couldn’t even control my “time out” to see the sweetness that was present.  Frustration, anger, and sadness were all deeply lodged in my chest and throat, and I couldn’t shake them.

This continued on for a bit, until we were in the car and driving along.  I dropped A.J. off at preschool and then went to my part time librarian job; a place where I could go to the bathroom alone and could tune out any potential whining from co-workers without feeling like a bad mother.  While I was there, I was researching something when I came across this quote:

“Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this ‘war with reality’ to be at the heart of the problem.” Stephen Cope

And a light bulb went off in my head.  All the suffering from the morning, the tears, frustration, burning anger, and shame all were a result of wanting things to be a certain way.  A way that they were not.  I had waged war with reality, and Aidan was the collateral damage.

But the strangest part of this story is that I know all this. I’ve been practicing yoga for several years, and this idea was not new.  It is, in fact, one I have seen many, many times, in many, many ways.  So, why did I keep forgetting it in the moment?  

When my son was in the emergency room and then the ICU a few months before, there was no suffering!  I knew what my role was, as A.J.'s mom, and fulfilled that without a thought to anything else.

What do you do to remind yourself to stay in the moment?