Inhale. Pause. Exhale. Pause.
Inhale. Pause. Exhale. Pause.
And then go back to your day.
So if you’re not going to join a monastery, you can find ways to bring the monastery into your life. Find small moments of seclusion. Calm and clarity will gradually become part of these random moments. For me, since I work as a therapist, it means taking two minutes before my next client comes in, and just breathing in my office chair with my eyes closed. You can do these things. You really can. You can build these little moments of seclusion, these little resets, into your life.
* * *
So don’t get drunk. Or high. Or if you do get drunk and/or high, track your experience, do some phenomenological accounting, and see for yourself when moderated intemperance serves you and when it doesn’t. After all, teetotaling has some benefits. Like the fact that you’ll make fewer dumb mistakes, have more clear moments, and you might even be surprised by how little you need to alter your consciousness with chemical compounds. Building on that, we suggest you set an intention in your life to stay clear. And we mean that in all the most obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Still, staying clear, in our experience, requires frequent mini-forays into intentional seclusion, and we’ve come to see these abbreviated quasi-retreats as not only essential to maintaining a modicum of clarity but also as one indispensable ingredient in an ever-developing strategy for surviving modern life.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
Friends! We are fast approaching the conclusion of our semi-Buddhist survival guide. It’s been a wicked ride—fun, a little harrowing, certainly a very new experience for the two of us. We are grateful and honored you’ve come this far. Happy to have spent some time together.
Along the way we really loved telling you about how meditation might nudge your days into less stress, more focus, and a sweeter humanity. We hope you enjoyed reading about how to be less of a jerk and more of an amicable altruist. Also, that part where we waxed poetic about the wonders of generosity? That made at least some sense, right? Oh, and truth. And sex. Truth definitely seems important, and sex is also far from a trifling topic, what with being foundational to biology, emotions, relationships, society, and our general happiness on this planet. So it was cool we got to hang out with those two for a few pages.
Last but not least, though: clarity. We love clarity. In fact, maybe staying clear is the heartwood of the proverbial tree. The quintessence. The bottom line. Brass tacks, and all the rest. Because when we stay clear, really clear, about who we are, what we’re about, and what we genuinely, truly want out of life, there is a lot less that can shake us up and make us crumble. Just look at the greats, if you need some inspiration. The Dalai Lama lost his entire country to an invading military force, yet he manages to be an ambassador of compassion and steadiness in the face of it all. Thich Nhat Hanh refused to take sides in the Vietnam War because of these very principles we’ve been unpacking along the way here. And even though it got to the point where his own government wanted him dead, he was able to stay clear and calm and kind, and he has never swerved from that path. Then there’s Angela Davis, Desmond Tutu, Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King Jr., Greta Thunberg, St. Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, bell hooks, Matthieu Ricard, Roshi Joan Halifax, Mingyur Rinpoche, and a thousand other real-world sages, some historical and some living right now, who embodied and embody the principles of this book in real time with clarity and commitment and grace.
But here’s the thing. The big take-home. The spectacular reveal. The Message with a capital M: You, too, can do this. It’s not just for fancy historical figures or people who write books and give TED talks and share wisdom from the mountaintops. You really can stay clear, say what’s true, give a little, make sex good, meditate occasionally, and be less of a jerk and more of a stable loving presence in your world. Right in the middle of everything. Even when the shit is hitting the fan, your housemate is on drugs, your job is a mess, your romance is shaky, and you don’t know just exactly what you want to do with your life. Right there, in the middle of it all, you can find a little seclusion, perhaps do a little meditation, and reset your compass. Okay, you might say to yourself, as the two of us often do, I don’t know precisely exactly what to do. But I know who I am. I know what matters to me. And what matters to me is kindness, compassion, real friendship, doing good for others, contributing, taking care of myself taking care of everyone I meet, and deeply knowing my experience in each moment of every day.
Life, lived like that, becomes very immediate, very rich, and a whole lot more workable. So let the storms rage. Let the waves crash. Let the winds shriek and the demons sing. Because right at the center of the blizzard of stimulation that is modern life, and even with all your confusions and imperfections and sneaky little doubts, you can still place your hand on whatever patch of ground you’re sitting on and say, Today, in this moment anyway, I will be a slightly less dysregulated hot mess, a semi-still point in the spin, a builder of kindness and a bastion of decency. Or maybe I’ll just shoot somebody a flyby smile and call it good.