Private Weather

You ever wake up in a funky mood? And I don’t mean funky like George Clinton or the Meters. More like there’s an emotional atmosphere from the get-go. Maybe a feeling of unease, melancholy, irritability or vague apprehension. Sometimes there’s an identifiable cause, and sometimes there isn’t.

Usually, when we experience an amorphous, unpleasant emotional tone, the mind seeks an explanation. We start looking for reasons. Was it a dream I had? A news item I came across earlier? Am I imagining what might happen if this or that comes to pass, or doesn’t? Uncertainty itself becomes a source of discomfort.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: on a basic level, human beings are fairly simple. We tend to seek comfort, novelty and certainty. And these three things aren’t always, or even often, in harmony.

Comfort is easy enough to understand. We want the nice things, the stuff that makes us feel good without having to struggle for it. But we also crave novelty, and we’re easily bored. Even when what we have is pretty good, we wonder whether something more, or something different, might be better. Meanwhile, certainty remains elusive. What happens if we don’t get what we want? What if we acquire it and then lose it?

These are uncertain times, which can be a trigger in itself. Food recalls, potential climate catastrophes, rising prices, job insecurity, political instability. The list goes on and on.

Often it’s not the circumstances themselves, but the feelings they provoke, that become difficult to manage. If we’re engaged in the practice of relating to emotions directly, we might even begin to hector ourselves for not being able to better regulate them. All this meditation, therapy or pharmaceutical assistance, and we’re still experiencing uncertainty and discomfort!

I put all of this in the category of private weather. Simply put, our feelings don’t always need explanations, and we ultimately don’t need fixing. Still, we may benefit from reliable ways to experience difficult emotions without needing to eradicate, divert or suppress them. We can develop the ability to allow their presence with some curiosity about the ways sensation, perception and conceptual elaboration interact.

Of course, sometimes our moods are telling us something important. Anxiety can indicate actual danger. Sadness arises from the experience of loss, and since everything is always changing, coming and going, that’s an inescapable aspect of being human. Irritability might signal exhaustion, burnout or unmet needs.

I’m not trying to romanticize ignoring underlying causes or turn contemplative acceptance into another form of avoidance. It’s more about being grounded and open enough to turn toward what we’re experiencing and allow it its place and the time to arise and dissolve, as all thoughts, emotions and felt sensations do. This approach doesn’t demand explanations or solutions, although these may become apparent once we give some space to what’s being experienced.

It’s a lot like actual weather. We recognize the external conditions, dress appropriately and take shelter when necessary. But we don’t have to become meteorologists of our inner lives, much less imagine that we’re responsible for whether the sun shines or it rains. So much of this is beyond our control, simply because of the interdependent, co-arising nature of reality.

For myself, it’s useful to ground in the simplicity of my body, to come down from the thinking mind somewhat and welcome what’s present for as long as it’s there. I can also gently expand my awareness to encompass things I might not otherwise notice. These can be very basic sensory aspects of being, from the breath to the feeling of gravity supporting the body, at rest or in motion. Opening to the play of phenomena, inside and out, without fixation on any particular aspect.

Today I have a bit of work to do. But before that, I intend to take a little walk, during which I’ll press pause on interrogating my feelings and simply experience.

Whatever mood I woke up with may accompany me for a while. It may change before I reach the end of the block. Either way, there’s more to appreciate beyond the private weather. And I don’t have to wait for the skies to clear to enjoy it.