There is no auto-save

Yesterday morning, I sat down and opened the laptop to write for a couple of hours. I wanted to write something for the blog based on a mash-up of a few shorter posts I’d put up months ago on social media. Usually, I do this in the website’s built-in blog writing section, which saves my work as I go along.

I’d written and edited everything – all I needed to do was drop in a zesty complimentary image to add some flavour to the post. I couldn’t have been closer to hitting ‘publish’ when my internet connection dropped out. “No biggie”, I thought - I would just re-connect, reload the page and find my beloved, blog post waiting for me faithfully.

This reminds me of one morning when Vanessa and I decided to make crêpes. We both LOVE crêpes. Whenever we bake in the mornings, it somehow takes longer than expected (or maybe it’s just the hunger). By the time they were ready, my stomach was rumbling and I was all but salivating in anticipation. I popped off to the bathroom before we ate, then returned to the sight of my beautiful girlfriend and our beautiful crêpes awaiting me. She insisted, out of love, that I take the first bite.

Salt. It was covered in salt. I almost wretched. Honest mistake on her part.

Now when I returned to the ‘blog’ section to look for the title of the post, I almost wretched all over again. My blog post wasn’t there. In it’s place was an imposter - “No Title” - a completely empty document which was completely full of disappointment. I must’ve lied to you about the auto-save thing. Turns out, there is no auto-save feature. Lesson learned, the hard way.

I would eventually move on and let it go, but not until I’d finished swearing, blaming the wi-fi, blaming the idiots who designed the blog post interface, blaming the guy who invented the laptop, blaming the guy who invented the internet and eventually, blaming myself. We all go there from time to time, don’t we? This is okay. It can suck when expectations aren’t met. I wriggled within my own skin trying to deal with this feeling as it arose again in waves, throughout the day.

During my journeys through struggle town, there was a part of me which couldn’t really be bothered with it all – which probably could have just let it all go with a shrug or maybe even a smirk of indifference. At a deeper level still was a part which was just glad that I’d sat down and made the effort to write. At least I tried, right!? Beneath that, at my very depths, rested an often forgotten part of me indefinitely lost in laughter at the ridiculous miracle of my existence.

As my day went by, I lived in all of these places within my mind. Reality took on many different qualities. When I was frustrated, I noticed things to be frustrated with, everywhere. When I rested in to my body or reflected on what I had already achieved, things felt easier - safer. When I thought of the future and all the things I would have to do, things felt unsafe. The world was full of colours, bright and dark, many of which I had painted on, myself. I think it’s always like this. Expectations colour our world as brushstrokes colour the canvas.

Whether a moment is sweet or sour depends as much on which taste we are expecting as anything else. In this case, I had set myself up for failure in two ways. Firstly, by making the mistake of not consciously clicking ‘save’. Secondly, by writing for others and not myself. This reminds me of a story told by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk. The story speaks of doing things for the right reasons.

“There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes….

If while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes”. What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.

In fact, we are completely incapable of realising the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future – and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”

Nhat Hanh also says “washing the dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha”. I understand this. The seemingly unworthy moments are equally as sacred as the special ones, because Buddha refers to the pureness of mind and reality which pervades all things. The water is always clean until we interfere with it by resisting the natural course of life. Wishing things were different from how they are is like dirtying the bath-water, because to desire something other than what is present is a form of resentment towards the ‘now’.

If I had been writing properly – for the sake of writing, not for the sake of having written, then there would have been nothing at all to lose. There would have been no need for auto-save because I would have been feeling each moment as richly as it could be felt. It is with a mild sense of regret that I admit this, because it means those two hours weren’t really mine. I had resigned the moment to unconsciousness and missed out on experience.

By writing to only produce, I had treated myself as a machine with no value other than my productivity, when I am in fact an organism – a feeling, finite being – who will die one day. I won’t get get those moments back. I can’t catch up on feelings I haven’t felt, or experiences I didn’t fully taste because I was too busy imagining some non-existent future. Though it’s a bitter pill to swallow, I must swallow it nevertheless and forgive myself for my fallibility. This is just how we are - we humans. There’s no need for extra punishment beyond the tough hand of the lesson itself. Besides, learning is good. Learning is expansion.

Sometimes when I read about mindfulness, it frustrates me. I sense this whiff of competitiveness arise, as if I’m being shown up by someone better at the game. The fragile part of my ego wants to feel like I’m already doing things just as I should be. Is it realistic to spend every moment of our life in complete, conscious presence? Isn’t that a heavy expectation – a resistance to the fact that we spend a lot of time on autopilot? Perhaps it’s fair, perhaps not. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It’s my life. It’s your life.

Comparison is the thief of joy, and nobody’s keeping tabs on you other than yourself. I’m definitely not saying we shouldn’t feel. Things will trigger anger and frustration within us, just as things trigger joy and excitement. All of this is fine. Swear, cry, flail your limbs if you need to – but remember that mindfulness isn’t an ultimatum. It’s not like those tests we had to take at school. We can write a blog post because we enjoy sharing or wash the dishes because we like to have a clean house and still enjoy the lead up.

It seems there is no auto-save on life. Whatever our reason for doing what we do, we should get familiar with the process and not just the outcome. It’s important to be familiar with those moments of being amongst the doing. Nothing really needs to change on the surface. We can just feel out those moments in between the ticked boxes, where life so often sneaks past us. When things don’t turn out the way we expect (it’s always when, not if), we might be able to rest in that deeper part of ourselves that still breathes freely.

 With love,

Jack