Welcome Scaries #23
Because it's Sunday Night 😈
Welcome Scaries publishes on the 2nd Sunday of each month. It started because so many of us experience nervousness on Sunday nights in anticipation of the coming week and all we have to do. The intention is to offer your difficult feelings—your Scaries—kindness, instead of fighting with them, resenting them, or trying to get rid of them. This idea of befriending your feelings comes from an old story about how the Buddha invited his enemy to tea rather than trying to defeat him.
→ Read all the Sunday Scaries in the Meditation with Heart archive!
In our last Welcome Scaries, I mentioned that I had a cold, and said it was “nothing serious, just a winter virus”. But soon after, I was diagnosed with pneumonia, and for the next six weeks or so, I felt pretty sick. Because I have asthma, my breathing was especially labored and shallow, and that’s why there was no Welcome Scaries last month; I was too tired to do much at all.
Struggling to catch your breath is frightening and creates a lot of dread, and this I wrestled with this Sickness Scary a lot while I was recovering. I feared I would never get better and imagined my life as an invalid and felt guilty for burdening my family; fantasized about having to go to the ER and worried if should I go to the local hospital or call Lyft and head into Manhattan; and thought a lot about dying.
One night, I was awake in the middle of the night, struggling in my mind more than in my body. My thoughts were a whirlwind of terror and I couldn’t seem to settle down. Finally I said to myself, “Kim, if death really is imminent, be here for it. You don’t want to miss any moment of this precious life — pleasant, unpleasant, or dull.” I allowed myself to feel all my fear in my tense belly, and the nice coolness of the soft cotton sheets and the warmth of the nearby radiator. I inhaled and felt my constricted chest, aching back, and burning lungs without judgement, and I remembered that many people around the world get pneumonia everyday and were feeling just like me, and I wished us all well. I kept up this practice (mostly) for the rest of my recovery and it made being sick a lot easier.
I’m mostly healed now, but I know that my body — and all bodies — are fragile and not meant to last. The Scary of Sickness will happen again to me and to all of us. So I’m going to keep practicing and I hope you will too. Then next time we’re ill, we can be more at peace, even if' it’s painful, hard, and scary.
May everyone struggling with illness be free from mental and physical suffering. May all recover easily and quickly. May all be healed. May it be so!
And now for our monthly interesting (I hope) and useful links. May they be of benefit:
→ All means all: When most of us hear the term animal welfare, we think of pets like cats and dogs, beautiful wild creatures, or farm animals like pigs and cows. But that leaves out countless creatures, including shrimp. Shrimp make up 51% of farmed animals (cattle and pigs are less than 1%, who knew), and they’re raised and slaughtered in terrible conditions. That’s why Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla founded the Shrimp Welfare Project, to advocate for better treatment of these creatures:
A shrimp’s nervous system, behavior, and estimated welfare capacity all point toward meaningful sentience. The fact that they haven't been studied as extensively as some other animals should not blind us to the evidence we do have, nor to their evident similarities with better-studied relatives.
Read more here. May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May it be so!
→ I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again because it’s a big problem: men are really struggling emotionally. A helpful resource is Blaise Harris, aka the Black Dope Therapist, who offers a donation-based Virtual Support Group for men of color every week. Learn more at this link. And follow his Instagram where he offers messages of vulnerability and self-compassion freely. I hope you’ll share widely.
→ I was recently interviewed by wonderful Raghu Markus on his Mindrolling Podcast on the Be Here Now Network. We talked about our teachers, spiritual paths, and my book, Happy Relationships. You can listen at this link. Or watch the video here. And order the book at this link or from your favorite bookseller.
→ I don’t know if it’s like Burning Man or not but this drone show is mesmerizing:
→ Pursuing happiness is not the same as happiness. Buddhism suggests that happiness isn’t a goal or a particular circumstance, but rather a way of relating to ourselves and life with appreciation, patience, openness and kindness. And now the scientists agree:
Many people now treat happiness like money – “something we can and should gather and hoard as much as we can.” This commodification of happiness may be part of the problem, creating a mindset where we’re constantly striving for more rather than appreciating what we have.
Read it all here.
Many Blessings, My Friends !
Metta+++,
Kim✨
P.S. The theme for April is Welcoming Worry and Anxiety. If you haven’t joined us yet, listen to Week 1 here.
As a person who has struggled with a very serious illness it is scary. Grateful you are feeling better.
i have asthma and i've had bronchial pneumonia several times; it is scary, so i'm very happy you're better, but it does make us think about our fragility.