Dateline: International World Headquarters Hilton Cabo San Lucas, Baja California.  The La Vista Restaurant, so named as it overlooks the Sea of Cortes… Sure, the scene is lovely…white beaches, blue-green water, palapas, fresh shrimp, fellas in white military-style shorts and shirts, meeting your every need even before you think of it…. “Yes, that’s perfect with shade, another pomegranate margarita?  Certainly. And thanks, you remember I like extra ice….”

If you can’t make it here without complaining….Well, you’re at my level. We wouldn’t make it an hour on the bad side of town.

How easy is it for you to have what’s going on inside your chest cavity, your ongoing sense of well being, shaken by an outside person? 

Doesn’t have to be a stranger.  Could be your special person makes a comment, such as, “That yogurt’s not fat-free, you know…” (heard at the table to my left)… Or, “This is, too, the wrong way to the beach elevator!  But, never mind, you’re happy as long as I do everything your way…” (couple passing by) …

You’ve seen us, the anxious ones… glancing side-to-side, noticing who’s seated where in an expensive café and how quickly.  Which line is the shortest at the bank and the grocery.  We may look cool, but, inside…we’re keeping tabs.  Inside we want, we need, to have made the right choice in picking a line at the bank.  You think not?  You think, no one’s that pitiful.  Just test the theory.  Next time you pick a line that is made up of three people who waited until they were “up” to start their paperwork….and the person in the car with you points out your folly….see what happens.

It’s easy to come across mature when everything is going your way. In clinical training, the phrase is, everyone looks about evenly mature when there’s no stress. Put on the pressure, and it’s a different story.  When trouble starts in paradise, each person distorts the scene as influenced by anxiety. For the lucky few, the new world is only slightly altered. 

For those of us whose Emotional Guidance System can make a catastrophe out of the slightest inconvenience…well, it’s not pretty.

“Which is more real?  The world you can touch?  Or, the world you are responding to?”

Oh, yes. Back to Baja. Here we are overlooking the aquamarine Sea of Cortez, unimaginable and undeserved luxury. I’m floating on air, nary a complaint to be spoken as I roll my laptop toward the fabulous breakfast offering unimaginable and undeserved variety.

And, then…only yards from my destination…still in my cocoon of self management….the anxious lady in the blue bathing suit with the lace cover dress… the spiffy expensive “resort wear” cover  I’d admired in the hotel store but couldn’t bring myself to spring for…comes toward me down the open air tile verandah.  The part about the cover is important because we are more likely to be infected by people we perceive as having something going we don’t…

Anxious people are often lurking in hallways looking for victims.  Did I say that?  Did I suggest that victims are born, not made?

The Devil in the Blue Bathing Suit touches my arm, checks my expression for a clue on how this anxiety transfer is going to go….Am I a willing victim, primed to be infected…so that the two of us glob together in distress? 

I land my best gotta-lot-of-work-to-do stare, which was not nearly as powerful as her well-practiced desire to share her anxiety.  She says, “Pardon me, the bed in your room, is it terribly uncomfortable?”

And, now what’s my move?  I feel her pull.  She wants me to agree.  My Emotional Guidance Systems says, “Surely, there’s some fault you can find with your accommodations so that the two of us can glob together waiting for prey, for other anxious guests to stick onto our blob….

We can quiz them, “Say, how’s your bed?…Ah ha… Thought so.  Me, too.”

And, we’re off from the starting gate. 

How to go?….How to go?….Mañana, baby.

At that moment, my belief that a person can change, that a person can learn to manage anxiety…soared. 

If ever someone was out-of-control and unpleasant the night in the Value Inn, that person was me.  (See previous two entries)…And, yet, the person with me, did not respond to my immaturity with anxiety-driven emotional immaturity of his own.  Instead of ‘going with his emotions’ he responded to me in a differentiated way.

Definition of Differentiation: the degree to which a person can tell the difference between thoughts (fact based) and feelings (anxiety-driven)…and the degree to which a person is able to choose between acting on thoughts or feelings.

Examples:  Prisons are occupied by persons with low differentiation. Low differentiation is in evidence when we are pre-occupied by the way things should be over how they are… When we buy what we don’t need, eat what we regret, cut-off from people who don’t agree with us, ruin a conversation by arguing, insist on being right–all behaviors which I, for one, have accomplished already today…(Not the prison. But I do have to fly again and I’m pretty fragile. Arrest is not out of the question.).

Now, I ask you to return to the horrid motel room described in the previous two parts on complaining.  Picture the even more horrid person, me, compulsively exaggerating and pointing out every unpleasant element to my special person…Who is stretched out watching scores come in on ESPN.  He’s not ignoring me, (He’s not stupid) he’s listening and nodding.  He’s just not into the fireball of “This shouldn’t be happening! This is horrible, terrible, and I can’t stand it!”

He does not tell me to stop my immature behavior. 

He does not claim my behavior has ruined his good time.

He does not remind me of times in the past in which I’ve behaved like a jerk. 

He does not say I remind him of another person in my family. 

He does point out that I have a been jerk to Mr. Sensible and spouse.

He does not suggest I was less than pleasant to the desk clerk at the lovely Lawton, Oklahoma, Value Inn. 

He does not go on about how thousands of people sleep on sidewalks. 

Most important, he does not go nuts trying to take the other side, refuting that each horror I point out is ‘not that bad’. 

What he did: After inventorying the motel room, I said something like, “Okay, fine.  I’m going down to that cafe in the parking lot and order something to go.  Do you want to go with me?”

He asked:  “Are you going to keep on with the bitching?”

I said:  “Yes.”

He hopped up and slid back into his jeans.  He said:  “Well, then.  I’m not about to miss that!”

Jellybeans

Trudging my computer case across the tiled floor of my office and out to my car, I bent over to pick up a Coke can I’d earlier set by a chair…

When the opened box of Ike and Mike’s (tube-shaped jellybeans for those into adult foods) tucked into one of the case’s pockets splattered everywhere… I snarled, I cursed, I bent over to pick up the flying pieces….Of course, in the process, I spilled more as, in my hurry and misery, I hadn’t secured the box. I snarled and cursed some more.

Always ready to take control, my Emotional Guidance System, (search site, if unfamiliar) SAID: “Great! Just what I needed!  I’ve had it!  This is too much. My knees are alreadykilling me, I’m late for an appointment…. Crazy dog will be in here hogging these jellies down any second…and I’ll have multi-colored poop to deal with for days!

This is terrible, horrible, and unbelievable! I drop my computer case…on my foot… “%#@&”… This is just great.
That’s when “the moment” happened without any warning. After years of training in psychology, Eastern meditation, libraries of books, and many hours instructing others in emotional life….

The moment occurred without effort on my part.

Some little creature inside my brain hit me square between my squinty eyes. “What keeps you…from enjoying this moment just as much as you enjoyed playing fetch with Crazy Dog last night?”
What? Is it possible that all those psychologists saying each person is in charge or his or her own happiness…actually have something? And, if they (we) have…why is it so difficult If being alive is being in each and every second?

What is keeping me…you… from enjoying this moment….the one NOW… as much as the favorite moment you are planning this holiday?

I don’t have an answer.  When the ‘moment’ occurred, I felt something loosen.  And I smiled, just a little.
I know, this is heady stuff.   To think all this could come from splattered jellybeans.