Does Your World Feel Upside Down?

There is a famous Zen saying that I think of a lot these days: The whole world’s upside down. I came across it in a wise book on compassion by the scholar, poet, and Zen Master Norman Fisher more than a decade ago, but it feels more and more true each day. I promise that I won’t veer off into politics. What has interested me in these times is how mindfulness and compassion can help when our lives have been turned upside down. And they stay upside down.

I’ve been spending much of my time going to memorial services these days: for my mother, for two beloved mentors, and for a mother-in-law. I was recently at a service for a family member who died too young. The children and grandchildren were disoriented, on edge, and irritable. There was tension about how to plan the service, where it would be held, and who would officiate. This was not what anyone wanted, and the tendency was to want to control the situation, as if anyone could control death.

The guests left at the end of the day, and we went to get pizza for those who were still there. In the car, I thought of the meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein, who writes about how her car’s GPS helps her during hard times, when she takes a wrong turn or says something thoughtless in a relationship. She uses this as a way to underscore one of the basic tenets of mindfulness, that you can always start again. You can always recalculate.

But today, our GPS was acting strangely. The road we were on was under construction. The GPS went berserk. It was like the GPS was one of our relatives. It too seemed disoriented and confused. On the screen, the cars started going backward. I’ve never seen that before. Yup, backward. Almost manic, frantic. The GPS thought we were going the wrong way, when actually, things were just under construction; things were changing on the road we were on.

It seemed like a metaphor for our life. Everything was topsy-turvy.

“What is going on with the GPS?” I asked my husband.

“It thinks we are driving North, not South,” he laughed. “Look at the big picture. The larger perspective helps. The roads come back together in a few miles.”

It is unusual for my husband to sound like a Zen master teaching patience and endurance.

No need to fight it; don’t force everything to be back to normal. As the Zen masters would way, “Right now, this is the way it is.”

If you are going through an experience where everything seems upside down, try this brief meditation;

When Things Are Upside Down

• Let yourself settle, sitting, standing, or lying down.
• Let yourself soften.
• No place to go, no one to be.
• Just here, just now.
• Let your eyes soften, let your jaw unclench, let your shoulders drop from your earlobes.
• Take a few moments to let yourself rest.
• Think of a situation that is testing your patience—work, family member, life event.
• Weave in some self-compassion.
• Add a phrase of kindness, “Right now, this is how it is.”
• Or, “All beings experience this.”
• Be kind to yourself, don’t fight it.

When you are ready, return to your day, hopefully with a little more perspective and resilience.

Feel free to share this with family, colleagues, and friends.