I drink green tea, I meditate, I burn candles and I still want to smack someone.

Despite what the title of this post might suggest, I'm not even angry today.  Not even a little bit.  In fact, I'm actually finding more to be grateful for all the time.  A couple of aspects of my job that had the points of their 4-inch heels digging into my last nerve have been resolving themselves organically, my newness to non-doing restlessness has been settling into a gentle hum of cool awareness and I've been seriously digging my morning practice routine.  


But when I read this, I couldn't help but identify with it.  It is so me!   I can be all zenned out from a killer practice followed by an oh-so-mellowness from a seven-minute shoulder-lowering savasana but then, the first person who sits for a millisecond too long at a green light in front of me on the way to work and I read them the road rage riot act from behind my steering wheel.   


The slight difference from pre-green-tea-meditation-candle-burning Danette to this one that sits in the light of the computer screen now, is that the stories I tell myself are getting shorter.   Building my capacity for attention has increased my ability to push pause on the rant button and just notice what is happening.  Instead of drafting a story that turns into a full-length movie to justify my anger, I can just notice what is happening.  That's it.  It's not rocket surgery!  Just notice.


In the face of irritation, petty annoyances or even genuine injustices, why the reactivity and  rage?  What's the point?  The benefit to me or anyone else?  No judgement of good or bad or right or wrong is required.  It is what it is.   The temporary surge of energy that comes from a good rant is just that, temporary, fleeting.  And yet it becomes a building block for more stories, more reactions, more judgments and less peace.


So I drink green tea, I  meditate, I burn candles and I still occasionally want to smack someone because I'm human.  But when I choose to simply notice the deep desire to smack and not judge it, then I arrive alive and a little less maniacal.