Last autumn when I was raking leaves in my back garden every weekend I thought, This is a bit tedious.Then I had a better thought: I get to have a tree! My tree puts out beautiful white blossoms in spring. The leaves turn fiery red in autumn. It does summer and winter stuff too. I get to watch the drama of the seasons happening just outside my bedroom and dining room window. I get to have a tree!
Many of life’s unpleasantnesses are part of the package of having life’s nice things. A good way to deal with the unpleasantness is to flip your thoughts.
Ugh, I have to buy a new set of tyres. ⇢ I get to have a car!
Ugh, I have to clean the windows. ⇢ I get to live in a house with light!
Ugh, I have to manually edit 600 cells on this spreadsheet. ⇢ I get paid money so I can live indoors and buy food and go to the cinema!
Ugh, I have to spend the next three weeks revising for this incredibly hard exam. ⇢ I get to have an education that will unlock many of opportunities for me!
These are small, obvious examples, but a lot of misery in the world is created by unhelpful responses to everyday situations.
Flipping works for big stuff too. I’ve written before about my time in Russia with Bill Gothard’s cult. It took years for me to fully recover from the mental and emotional damage that was done to me there. My parents, seeing the pain that I endured, said, We shouldn’t have let you go. My response was, You don’t understand. I got to live in Russia!
Grow slowly
Jeff
To add to your Tree metaphor, it might also help to meditate on that thing being taken away. My parent’s big maple began dying of root rot this year and had to be chopped down. They had it the whole twenty years they’ve lived there and it was the shade for their patio. All my mom’s plants are trying to figure out how to survive in that much light. Yes, all the helicopter seeds and leaves were a nuance two times a year, but you really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone!