I’ll Have the Rat Shit, Please
Yesterday kind of sucked. I’d gotten home past midnight the night before from some heavy-duty travel, and after a couple of hours of sleep I woke up in a panic about not having done any writing for a couple of days.
You know the way you felt in high school when a term paper was due, when the ever-present dread of it lurked like a loathsome parasitic monster draining the joy from your soul? That’s pretty much how I experience the writing life.
Or it does when I neglect my mental hygiene.
The guilt and dread of NOT having written sent me careening down one of my favorite fear spirals. I gnawed my way through far too many breakfast pastries, obsessed about all the things I hadn’t done, all the things that I’d done badly, and of course, all the things I did well that didn’t succeed. I spent a long time thinking about how it’s too late for me to redeem myself, but not late enough to stop trying. By afternoon I was crouched in one edge of my mind whining, like a cornered wind-up toy.
Then, just when I was about to abandon myself to the special hell reserved for blocked writers and eaters of gluten, grace came upon me.
It arrived in the form of my wonderful new batch of freshly-minted master coaches. They arrived for their graduation retreat, and their presence was so lovely it pulled me into an upward spiral. I began noticing what is working in my life. I thought of the times when I’ve been blessed by small miracles. I focused on the readers who seem to accept my writing, warts and all.
Thinking about warts made me remember one of my Chinese professors in Singapore (an epically warty individual), and this in turn got me reminiscing about a story from a Zen master named Yang-shan. According to legend, Yang-shan once said, “In my shop I handle all kinds of merchandise. If someone comes looking for rat shit, I’ll sell him rat shit. If someone comes looking for gold, I’ll sell him pure gold.”
If that makes no sense to you, it’s because you haven’t spent years noticing how you direct the focus of your own brain. Zen practice — basically staring at a blank wall forever — forces you to observe your own attention because there’s nothing else to observe. You eventually notice that attention is like a flashlight shining in a dark place full of infinite variety. We see only the things our attention lights upon. In other words, what I focus on determines what I see, which I think of as “reality.” I always get what I’m looking for. Or looking at.
There’s a lot of pure gold in my life, guys. I mean a buttload of pure gold. Amazing people, astonishing experiences, ridiculous advantages. And still, even now, I wake up some days and tell the world, “I’ll have the rat shit, please. Give me a tall stack of rat shit, with rat shit on the side and some rat shit to go.”
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT?
The thing is, I know how I order the rat shit, and I know how to order the gold, and it’s time I stopped eating rodent droppings and used my skills. It’s not easy (at least not for my ego, which loves whining and moping and waiting for a better reality to force itself into my attention), but it’s not all that complicated, either. I just have to take a deep breath, pull my flashlight-beam of attention off the poop, and put it on the gorgeous, shining, precious things that are also clearly visible in my life, if I’d just take a minute to look at them.
Look! Right here is my bookshelf, filled with the wisdom of great minds and compassionate hearts. In the Middle Ages, books were more valuable than jewels. My home overflows with them. Gold! In my hands is a machine that can connect me with practically every book ever written, bring me information about everything from seagull biology to risotto to my long-lost friends from high school. As recently as my own childhood, I’d never dreamed of such a thing. GOLD! In my email are messages from real, warm-blooded human beings, all of whom have taken a few minutes to connect with me. Some are far away. Some are sound asleep. Some I’ve never even met, but we’ve read one another’s words, and found company and solace in them. PURE. SOLID. GOLD!
Oh, wow, it’s happening. Everything is changing, right in front of my eyes. I’m shattered with gratitude, filled with wonder, teary with awe. Everywhere I look, I see shimmering, precious things. This is magic. This is alchemy.
A moment ago everything in my world, even the gold, looked like rat shit. And without moving from my chair, I just moved into a world where even rat shit is made of gold.
