Lessons in the Park 2

(about patience, gratitude and loving kindness)

You could have knocked me over with a feather! A day later and I am finding the detox diet a bit hard: it was not too bad when I first got up, though disappointment at how I looked in the mirror (not as slim as I had hoped) soon set me back. Later, when my partner and I decided to go to our favourite coffee house, all I could drink was plain water while he indulged himself in iced cappuccino and cake, and I found myself slowly dipping into a dark mood and it rapidly escalated on the way home until I was feeling very negative about more than just the diet, feeling almost angry at not being able to have what I wanted and at life and other equally intangible and ridiculous things.

Once home, I did not feel like going to the park for peace and inspiration. Instead, I just stripped off and watched TV but it was boring and my mind wondered. I focused on how I felt – it felt ghastly. Then it struck me that the feeling was very familiar. It was how I felt only last month when I was still enduring a three-month period of almost no work and nothing much else to do other than eat (hence the detox diet). The pain of the frustration was intense, stripping life of a sense of hope and promise but I had learnt that the ego props itself up with activity to establish a semblance of usefulness and worthiness. The feeling today was identical, even though the subject matter appeared to be different. I concluded that my bad mood was simply a recurrence of the thrashings of a frustrated ego, unable to assert its control and have the delights it wants. You might think that it would be content with the plan to look and feel better by means of the detox but, alas, no. This longer term prospect was a little remote compared with the immediate satisfaction of giving in to my cravings.

What astounded me was that the mere recognition of what was really going on, the ego’s refusal to play second fiddle to a heart-felt, soul-driven desire to be fit and healthy, was enough to have its ‘whole pack of cards’ collapse and the bad mood vanished in an instant. It was extraordinary: truly this dramatic change in mood shocked me and lifted me back into a positive frame of mind that had me decide to go to the park after all. The icing on the cake was when my partner looked at me as I was about to get dressed again and asked me “Are you holding your stomach in?”, when in fact I wasn’t and he told me it looked much better. So, I was almost walking on air not two minutes after awakening to the real cause of my mood that so effortlessly vanished, leaving hope and patience in its wake, a sort of blissful state of self achievement.