I was at the dentist recently getting a filling, and as I lay gazing up at the ceiling with the dentist doing her thing, I thought about how much I was looking forward to her finishing the job. Who wants to be totally present for the sound of the drill, the smell and taste of disinfectant mouth wash? Yuck! No, off I went on a mental reverie to anywhere but the dentist’s chair I was sitting in.
I’ve always had a problem with being here, in the now that is. It’s not as bad as it used to be since I started paying more attention, to the itch, as Pema Chodron sometimes calls this sense of dissatisfaction I frequently experience. Queues bring it out in me, so do tedious chores, and people, especially other road users. And I’m only scratching the surface here (pun intended) when it comes to the challenges life presents me with. Before I began paying attention proper to this itch, I just blindly scratched with whatever was to hand. Pema uses the metaphor of a child with scabies who just keeps scratching and scratching because they don’t know of any other way to relieve the itch. More scratching means irritation and inflammation are a guarantee with that idea. Not scratching works for me, but it’s hard to do, at first.
I have found being curious about the itch helps, however it shows up. The other morning it began in a queue (to recycle plastic bottles), it can start with a like thought like “I’m looking forward to”, or “when I get this done I can…”. Impatience, one of the many faces of the itch. In this case I made the choice to employ a Stoic tactic, to ‘resist and persist’, to stay in the queue and not come back tomorrow, and I felt the better for my choice. I didn’t scratch this time.
‘That wasn’t too bad now was it?’ Asked the dentist as I climbed out of the chair, ‘not it wasn’t ’ I politely lied. I couldn’t give an honest answer because I wasn’t fully present. I’d made my mind up a long time ago that anything to do with dentistry was bad, so this was not the time for mindfulness I reasoned when I first got into the chair. Besides, I’m human, and I do like getting lost in the plot of a good story every now and then, so sometimes I think it’s ok to scratch, as long as I’m paying attention and being kind to my future self…
Denis Magee 