Learning How to Face Right Now

The deceptions we inflict on ourselves and possible liberation.

Photo credit: iStock

By Ira Rabois

It can seem that some lessons need to be learned over and over again until they finally live in us. These lessons are often the most basic, maybe even the most obvious.

But sometimes, instead of an old lesson needing to be re-learned, we’re noticing a new perspective on an old situation, or seeing a new dimension in something we thought we should’ve known all along.

For example, we have an expectation, fear, or regret, a project and we get lost in it; we ruminate on a detail and forget why we started the project to begin with. We lose ourselves in thought and don’t recognize that we’re living being lost in thought; we’re living an idea and no longer feel our life. We do something and feel we did it incorrectly and think we’re now and forever a mistake. And then we live angry at ourselves. Or we get angry at someone; and somewhere inside us we imagine this anger at another will save us from our own shortcomings⎼ but there’s no such escape. We’re just living scapegoating, living resentment.

Oh, and here’s one that’s common: we’re exercising and thinking mostly of getting it done. Or, similarly, we’re in a car driving to meet friends in order to relax together. But we drive…