“A lot of what weighs you down isn’t yours to carry.” ~Unknown
What are you worried about right now? No matter how hard we try to not worry, and even when we know that stress is terrible for our health, worry inevitably seeps into our boundaries for one reason or another. Chronic stress causes wear and tear on our bodies, potentially leading to a number of health ailments.
This terrifies me as a person with many stress points in her life, and as a widowed only parent of three young children. I want to live a long, healthy life so I can be there for my family as long as possible and also enjoy my life. For me, the stakes are high, and I know that I need to work on how I respond to stress.
Dealing with our worries is a journey of learning when to let go and when to hang on in the wild rollercoaster ride of being alive.
My school district gave out almost 300 pink slips this year. These are legal notifications that your job is in danger of being eliminated. I was one of the teachers who received one, even though I had been teaching for twenty years.
You expect to receive them as a new teacher. The last one I received was six years into my career. However, receiving a pink slip at this point was a huge shock to me and a lot of my veteran colleagues, because we had reached the peak of our career mountain when we were supposed to be staring down the final descent toward retirement, not going back out into the job market.
Worry existed on steroids at my school. I have a leadership position, and one of the most difficult parts of the experience was watching grown adults have breakdowns, perseverating over worst-case scenarios and riddled with anxiety about the future.
After the initial shock wore off, they cycled through feelings of anger, sadness, and fear. Many of them did not know how they would pay their bills. The toxicity of everyone’s moods hung like a dark cloud over all of us, and I found it difficult to cope with my own emotions while submerged in this environment of despair.
I found myself turning to my Buddhist practice during this time. The first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism is dukkha, which is suffering. Suffering is a fact of life. It exists on a spectrum ranging from minor annoyances to major tragedies, usually a matter of life or death.
Another way of thinking about suffering is life not going as expected, or not getting what you want. Suffering, or the fear of suffering, causes worry.
I had gotten comfortable in life and was caught off-guard about my job. It didn’t even cross my mind that this kind of suffering could exist, but of course it was always there. I worried about not finding a similar position, and I worried about putting myself out there in interviews and hustling to market myself as a professional.
Realizing that attachment causes suffering is Noble Truth #2. Letting those attachments go to stop suffering is Noble Truth #3, and the truth of the path forward is Noble Truth #4. These are designed to help us accept reality as it is and to live in the best possible way for our individual journey.
Once the initial shock of my pink slip wore off, I started imagining various scenarios and how I would respond. I realized there was a path forward no matter what happened, even if I couldn’t fully conceptualize what mine would look like.
I had a colleague who said something profound during the crisis. He isn’t usually the type to stay calm during times of adversity, but he said, “I’ve lost a lot of positions in my life, and I always land somewhere better.”
Those words stuck with me. No matter what happens, you’ll likely grow and learn from the experience and maybe end up somewhere even better than before.
Part of learning to accept reality is to understand and embrace the concept of impermanence. Impermanence means that nothing stays the same.
The bad news is that the good aspects of your life will not remain forever. You will not always have your favorite people in your life. The brand-new car you bought will get scratched and eventually have a lot of miles on it.
However, the good news is that the bad things in your life also will not stay the same. Quarrels blow over. Elections come and go. Recessions eventually disappear into the rearview mirror.
We eventually adjust to changes in our circumstances, even the ones we didn’t want.
I know the education budget crisis will eventually pass. I know this because in 2012 I was out on the streets waving signs and advocating and wearing pink to show solidarity, and that feels like a lifetime ago. Now we’re wearing “red for ed” and back on the streets fighting for education funding in 2024.
For the past twelve years, I haven’t had to think about the budget. I survived the recession and kept my job.
It will get better.
And it will get worse.
It will also look different.
This is all part of the journey.
Embracing the concept of non-self is important in addressing our worries. It is necessary to separate who you are from your problems. I think we have a tendency to merge the two.
I hear people make self-deprecating comments like “I’m a terrible speaker.” This is not a fixed character trait.
The way to become a better speaker is to keep speaking. To practice. Trial and error.
The only way out is through. You’ve got to do the thing. I think a lot of our worry comes from boxing ourselves into labels that are not real. This can blind us to the fact that we can change our situation at any given moment, even if it is only our perspective and attitude about it.
I am a teacher, but that is not who I am. I teach at a particular school in a particular department, teaching particular courses, but those details are not who I am either.
It’s easy to cling to those labels and call them an identity when those aspects of our lives feel important and familiar. However, everything will inevitably end at some point anyway, and we will still be the same person, with or without the details we clung so tightly to.
We have to work on becoming less self-attached. Our foolish selves naturally gravitate toward thinking about me, me, me. We are inclined toward self-centeredness. We wallow in our personal circumstances and cannot see past our little bubble, and it obscures the big picture.
Finally, working on non-attachment is a way to alleviate worry. We are attached to so many things, and this is what causes us to suffer.
As a teacher, I see my students attached to getting into a specific college, or getting a certain grade, or winning a game, and the list goes on and on. It doesn’t get better in adulthood. Adults may be attached to projecting a specific image or having a certain amount of money. A parent may be attached to what they think their kids should play for sports or how they expect them to perform in school.
Let these expectations go. Stop being attached to one version of life. Be open to other variations, and you might have a few less things to worry about. This requires trust in the innumerable paths life has to offer us.
In the end, my school district rescinded all of our pink slips. Nothing happened to my job, at least not for next year.
One may view this experience as a waste of emotions, but I see it as a wake-up call. I know I’ll come out of this experience stronger, more resilient, and better prepared for whatever is around the corner.
Suffering is important and it can actually make us better humans. Thich Nhat Hanh said that “suffering is essential for happiness. We have to know the suffering of being too cold to enjoy and appreciate being warm.”
One way to think about what worries us is to accept the worst-case scenarios and be willing to look for the lessons. This changes how we view suffering. It shifts it from being the boogeyman who we are scared of to a firm but impactful teacher who helps us become comfortable with the uncomfortable.
It is important to remember that the present moment is not always going to be rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it will be losing a job, someone breaking up with us, our loved one dying, the refrigerator breaking, getting sick, and a lot of other potential unwanted scenarios.
Whatever is happening, we need to be able to sit with it, know that it will not last because of impermanence, and also remember that it is teaching us something that is making us better versions of who we were.
Maybe half the battle of worry is normalizing failure—to adjust our reality. Not internalizing failure but recognizing that it is a normal part of the growing process. It is not something that defines who we are. It is not something to hold on tight to, but rather something to reflect on and let go so you can make space in your life and have the energy to try again.
When you feel worried about something, remember that the best way out is always going to be through. Trust the process.
About Teresa Shimogawa
Teresa Shimogawa is a human being trying to do good things in the world. She is a teacher, storyteller, and currently studying to be a Shin Buddhist minister’s assistant. She writes at www.houseofteresa.com.
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