Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen, and this is Wake Up Call 448. I’ve been talking about the three kinds of suffering: ordinary suffering like not getting what we want, or getting what we don’t want; the suffering of change, the way we can’t hold onto the things (or people) we love, and we can’t eliminate all the stressors: we can’t create a pleasant, unchanging reality for ourselves because, our bodies, other people, the world – none of it will stand still.
Insecurity is the third kind of suffering. When I say insecurity, I don’t mean the insecurity I felt as a teenager and in my early twenties, wondering if I looked ok, was acting ok, was popular enough, had good enough judgement, things like that.
I mean a general, pervasive, but also (in my experience) often illusive, insecurity: the insecurity of knowing we’re not on solid ground. Of knowing that our life, our very existence, is not guaranteed. Or I should probably say, the insecurity of knowing that not only is our existence not guaranteed, but that our demise is.
Maybe we don’t think about this too much. And then we get a diagnosis or take a fall or get into a crash, or something happens to someone we love. And then the insecurity that was floating, maybe only barely perceptible and well under the surface, rises up to the top.
And is there for us in stark relief, one of the hallmarks of being human: the knowledge that one day, we’ll die. And for us, meaning for mindfulness practitioners, one of the hallmarks of being mindful is that not only are we aware that one day we’ll die, but that we also know that we can’t ever know when that will be.
It’s all well and good if we can let go and simply accept that our existence isn’t guaranteed. Then, there may be the suffering of old age, sickness, and death, but there’s nothing extra. We’re free, and can experience each moment with ease. But what if that third kind of suffering, that subtle but persistent insecurity, is present?
Here are a few of the ways that insecurity shows up for me, in situations where it’s hard to simply let go…even though that’s the instruction.
First, I just flat out don’t want to die right now. I’m having a good time. I don’t want that to change. And while I know it will – meaning I know there will come a time when I’m not having a good time, or there will just come a moment of death – and I can accept that truth (most days) – there’s definitely a wanting that not to be the case, a wanting things to be different and for death not to be part of the equation. And because of that, there’s a low- and sometimes not-so-low-level insecurity…about when death will come, and how, and the fact that I can’t control or solve for either.
Also, it makes me insecure to think about dying because it will bum out a bunch of people. My kid. My husband. My step-kids (I think). My grands, for sure, but they’re little. My brother, now that my mom’s gone and he wouldn’t get the whole estate. Just kidding. He’d be bummed. My friends, my communities. Death is a bummer for the people who don’t die, too, unless the person who dies is very old or is in pain. So I have a desire for death to not be part of the equation because it will cause sorrow for others and I’ll feel responsible. Or I won’t feel anything, probably, but in anticipation, I’ll feel responsible. Which makes me feel insecure, because I can’t help them. (I mean, I can do that letter-writing thing but I won’t be here for anything else).
Here’s another reason I feel insecure when I remember that my existence isn’t guaranteed and my death is, and that I don’t get to know when death will come: there are people I need to call.
I’m pretty convinced I’ve got time, and I know that Mac truck could be coming for me. And I don’t want that because I haven’t picked up the phone. That million-years-ago ex whom I said some unkind things to? My old friend whose sweater I’m still borrowing? That family member I’m not talking to? Knowing my existence isn’t guaranteed makes me feel insecure because I know I haven’t made all of my amends. I want that not to be the case – I want to be amended and clear with everyone. I’m noticing I’m still not picking up the phone.
And here’s another reason I have insecurity and suffering in relationship to the uncertainty of existence: I’m not someone who keeps lists of the countries they’ve already visited and the ones that are left - mostly because that first list is pretty short. But there are places on this beautiful blue planet that I’d like to go before I…go: Nairobi and Zanzibar. The Egyptian pyramids. I want to see a lion in the wild, and a giraffe, and a hippo. I’d love to go back to India. Someday I’d love to see the Terra Cotta Warriors – if you’re an old-timer on the Wake Up Call, maybe you remember they used to be on my website.
I don’t want to get a diagnosis or see the headlights of a semi in my lane before those things happen. And yet I don’t get to make that call. That makes me get online and look around for where to go next…and, feel insecure.
That’s what this third kind of suffering is all about: a kind of low-level or even completely under-the-radar insecurity that we all carry because we’re intelligent beings and know that one day we’ll die and know that for the most part, we don’t know when, and because we’re having fun (or fun-ish) and it’ll bum out our families and friends and we have calls to make and places to go…and we just might not get to.
Here’s how the great Zen teacher Norman Fischer talks about suffering – all three kinds – in a 2020 Lion’s Roar Magazine article:
Dukkha [which is the Pali word for suffering] refers to the psychological experience—sometimes conscious, sometimes not conscious—of the profound fact that everything is impermanent, ungraspable, and not really knowable. On some level, we all understand this. All the things we have, we know we don’t really have. All the things we see, we’re not entirely seeing. This is the nature of things, yet we think the opposite. We think that we can know and possess our lives, our loves, our identities, and even our possessions. We can’t. The gap between the reality and the basic human approach to life is dukkha, an experience of basic anxiety or frustration.
We think we can know and possess our lives, our loves, our identities, our possessions, but we can’t. We think we have time to make all the amends, write all the letters to be opened when we’re gone, see all the hippos. But we don’t know. Ordinary suffering, the suffering of change, the suffering of the insecurity of knowing our existence isn’t guaranteed: the only thing we can do is let go of wishing things were other than they are. Relax, and let go.
Let’s sit.
May you find ease while you’re watching tonight’s debate, if you can watch it.
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY – NO WAKE UP CALL NEXT THURSDAY
