When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope. Thich Nhat Hanh
That is, the search for Zen, or my own personal view of it. In its simplest terms Zen emphasises simplicity, present-moment awareness and an interconnectedness that allows one to be at peace with one’s own thoughts. I really try to embrace the meaning of the above quotation. No resolution comes if we run about like chickens with our heads cut off. All the shouting in the world won’t resolve a problem. In anger we just complicate the problem. Over the years I have sought to quiet the war of emotion and self-recrimination that hurtles around in my head. I seek to be serene. I seek the Zen place. But it is a battle I’ve fought and lost more than I’ve won.
And the last week further challenged my quest to master inner peace. It began and ended with a tech crisis that engendered so much intensity it was possible that my fury and angst could have provided power for a small city. These things always begin with disbelief and move rapidly through a sequence of horror, grief, fury and inevitable tears and a bit of swearing. Throw into the mix a heated discussion, aka full-blown argument, with a loved one who thought offering a lesson on the importance of backing up the work was worth having during the chaos. I moved wildly between wanting to smash the computer and curling up on the couch in a foetal position.
So, the catalyst for this disruption was the loss of the first 7 chapters of the book I’m currently writing. (I pause here for the collective gasp of horror from my fellow writers).
For some reason, which I’ll never understand, the computer gods decided that in the midst of working on said document that they would force an update, a shut-down and then conduct some preposterously named clean-up which corrupted the document. When eventually it (the computer) allowed me to access my document it was gone…a blank and glaring screen of nothingness stared back at me. I stared at it. I shut it, I opened it and still nothing. My work was gone. And occasionally it would open in other formats in hieroglyphics and at other times it would give a cryptic message that effectively said computer says no.
The outcome has been a reasonably happy one. Most of the document has been recovered through another incomprehensible process where a person from afar took remote control of the computer and found the errant document taking refuge in the cloud. (Pause so all can wave towards the sky). Apparently, your work doesn’t go to Azkaban or into a cyber vortex, it merely rests calmly until it can be retrieved virtually intact.
So yes, I’ve learned an important lesson about backing up my work, how to trust that the machinations of Microsoft are not incomprehensible, nor a collusion to make me tip over the sanity cliff. But more importantly I’ve learned that my tenuous hold on my ‘Zen-ness’ is a terribly fragile thing. Just as I was beginning to believe that I could ride out the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ it turns out that I’m terribly fallible in this area.
I’m not proud of my catastrophising of the event (I can’t rewrite it; I hate my writing; I’ll never write again). I’m not even sure I’ve fully recovered from the stress of it as it’s taken me a while to get back to rewriting the last few thousand words that were not retrieved. And I also think I’m going to have to review my expectations of how I might achieve inner peace. Or even if my personality type is likely to ever attain a level of serenity that might reflect some mastery over my thoughts. Of course it wasn’t a catastrophe. I was not wounded nor were any lives lost but in the throes of the event I could not see past my own sense of doom and sense of failure. Very ‘unZen’. In some ways perhaps I’m also disappointed with myself for the reaction (over reaction). The yelling and howling were quite bad. But every trying experience is an opportunity to learn about handling perceived disaster. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, despair is not a remedy for calamity. It just adds to the disaster. It feeds the overwhelming nature of hopelessness.
So, I am pressing on with writing. I will not completely abandon the idea of serenity. And should my computer decide to kidnap my work again I will attempt to envision it propped on a cloud in a state of relaxed awareness knowing that somehow I shall re-claim it.
Lessons learned.
Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear-are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Eckhart Tolle
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