I am in the process of updating my operating system. Not my phone’s or computer’s, but mine. It is slow, deliberate, sometimes agonizing, effortful work that requires a lot of my attention, care, and practice.
I don’t always bring those last three to the party. In fact, I’m pretty harsh with myself about my mistakes or when I fall into habits or what I’ve learned from societal expectations as the way to be or act.
Several months ago, one of my meditation teachers shared an exercise that in a pre-COVID world, he’d have students do in retreat settings. In the meditation hall, each student would be given a kazoo to hold between their lips during meditation. They were instructed to blow it every time they noticed they were distracted and came back to awareness. He described a meditation hall that was full of the short bursting, flat toned wooooz wooozes of the many kazoos in the room.
I immediately loved the playfulness of this. The way it normalizes that of course we all get distracted; the way it celebrates the practice of noticing when you’ve fallen into habit and returning to your intention; the way I could immediately feel in my heart the connection I’d have to - and the feeling of belonging I’d have with - other people if I were in a meditation hall blowing my kazoo with them.
I’ve been trying this on as a metaphorical practice since my teacher shared it with me. When I find myself distracted or acting in habit and when I return to intention, I blow my imaginary kazoo and I crack a little celebratory smile. I’ve noticed that when I turn this level of care and love to my mistakes, instead of my judgment and self-derision, I make more progress. It feels more doable to make the updates to my operating system that I want.
My current intentions for my operating system update are:
Be kind. Don’t participate in gossip, the undermining of anyone’s humanity or worthiness, or other sort of talk / behavior that erodes another’s and my humanity and connection.
Live in the present. Relax into what it’s like to live in this moment, in reality, in action. Discern which thoughts are ones I want to take on as mine, release those that simply arose in my consciousness and are distracting. Notice when I’m living into the anxious energy of the future or the judgmental shame of the past, bring love and care to what those habits are trying to offer me, and reset in the present.
Talk to myself like I would one of my best friends. Gas myself up. Hug myself when I’m sad. Celebrate the daily small wins and the long-worked for huge ones. Acknowledge that my self-critic is a mirror voice of society, and choose love instead.
You might notice here that holy shit this is hard. I’m blowing my imaginary kazoo a lot, though I can say I already notice so many moments where the update is overtaking a habit, and even presenting more advanced challenges to sort through.
As an example, I’m noticing I now have a strong aversion to anything unkind, and in that aversion, there is unkindness from me that I’m putting out into the world back at those who I experience as being unkind initially. It’s quite a hamster wheel to find myself on, especially when I’m not skilled enough yet to get off of the ride. I haven’t cultivated a practice yet that allows me to be kind to everyone at the same time while still maintaining a sense of right or wrong. Instead, I’m cultivating a sense of over-empathy that’s making it difficult to agree or disagree, or sometimes even participate in dialogue or make decisions. This feels like the next challenge in this ongoing effort to update my operating system, but it’s only even available to me because I took the first step to stop being okay with the thousands - millions - of ways we dehumanize each other.
When someone recently said to me that anyone at this point who isn’t vaccinated is making a personal choice to not be and they shouldn’t be impacted by that choice, I actually physically recoiled. I don’t think this person at all meant the most unkind interpretation of this statement - that if you’re not vaccinated, then fuck you and you deserve whatever illness you get - but in the moment, I was almost immobilized by that interpretation. It wasn’t until much, much later that I was able to see that this person was, perhaps inelegantly, expressing a frustration in having prioritized the health of the community for more than a year, yearning for the freedoms the vaccines give us, and wanting to be free of a world where public health has become the latest indication of where you stand in the culture wars. This person wanted to feel safe. To feel like the community was on their team, too. To feel like we can relax again and that we can collectively do hard things together.
I had to blow my kazoo a lot in working through just this one example. I was so judgmental of myself as I replayed this conversation, deriding the hypocrisy I was living into by not being able to show up for this person that I care about, too. I lived in the past replaying this conversation so much that it started to feel like I was trapped in this conversation like Groundhog Day. I extrapolated this belief to all liberals and for a minute was off to the races in my head judging the righteousness that I myself once actively participated in.
What I found was in blowing my kazoo, I was able to more skillfully reflect on this situation. I could move to a place of inquiry instead of judgment. I got curious about what I wanted instead, what I could learn, what I could apply next time, and from where this habit of behavior comes from / what need it serves within me. I got to laugh at the absurdity of my brain. My kazoo helped me see that I’m not a horrible person because I couldn’t hold the kindness for everyone, instantly in this situation. I’m just simply someone who is trying to hold more than I’m used to and I’m not skilled enough yet. And, with practice, I can develop into the kind of caring, discerning, loving, person I want to be without also losing my ethics or morals along the way to do so.
So, beloveds, maybe we should all pick up a kazoo at our local dollar store when COVID recedes from pandemic levels. Let’s flood the streets, our homes, our offices with the woooooz wooooz sounds to celebrate our growth and our shared humanity when we make mistakes or fall into old habits. In the meantime, blow that kazoo in your imagination and be full of love and joy and kindness as you yourself continue to unfold.
This resonates, and I think about it all of the time!: "I haven’t cultivated a practice yet that allows me to be kind to everyone at the same time while still maintaining a sense of right or wrong. Instead, I’m cultivating a sense of over-empathy that’s making it difficult to agree or disagree, or sometimes even participate in dialogue or make decisions."
I have these aphorisms I'm always trying to hold onto: "everyone's always trying their best," and "everyone is doing what makes perfect sense to them," etc., but it's hard to hold onto that AND watch a video of someone putting gasoline into a plastic bag.
Where I'm at with it today is reflecting on just how much of a role fear/survival plays in our lives. Like...I don't have to agree with the person putting gasoline in the bag, or not getting a vaccine, but if I can pause for a minute, I can have empathy for them, realize that for them it might be a fear-based reaction, and meet them there. I don't agree with it, but I can still love them.