Been a while since I’ve posted. Please pardon the rust!

One of the first things I do in the morning after brewing coffee is to check my weather app. I use WeatherBug, whose tag line is “know before” which I find compelling and ironic. I’ll check the hourly forecast and adjust accordingly. Raincoat? Shorts or pants? Good time to mow the lawn? Beach day?

Sometimes I check the radar to see what might be heading in my direction. I’ll check the next few days out too. I find the app is fairly reliable out 1-3 days. I start to get skeptical though, when it tries to tell me what the weather will be like in 7 or 10 days. Maybe it’s my years as a coach or a fisherman that’s baked in this habit of mine.

Or maybe my mind just wants to know what’s going to happen in the future.

As a student of mindfulness and a meditator, I’ve learned to observe my mind. I’ve realized that my mind seeks certainty. It wants to “know before” what’s going to happen. It wants to judge things and put them into neatly organized categories. It wants to know why things happen. It predicts who might win the match and wants me to choose a side. At times it might even imagine what someone could be thinking about me even though there’s no way of knowing that. While I was coaching my teams, my mind wanted to know if we were going to win or lose. I’ve also learned that this is yet another distraction that pulls me from the present.

Of course, we can’t ever know what’s going to happen in any moment further down the road of life. And while we can try to predict it, try to find certainty out there, that’s a hopelessly flawed task. Life, we know, is full of surprises, and whether those are good or bad ones depends in part on how attached you’ve become to a certain future outcome. If you’re banking on it to be sunny tomorrow, and its not, you’ve just manufactured some disappointment for yourself.

One of the key concepts in mindfulness is impermanence, the notion that everything is always changing. This will always be so. The gardens that bloom now in the height of summer will no doubt retreat and wither in the winter. The warmth and sunshine of a morning gives way to afternoon thunderstorms under the ever changing cloud formations moving across the sky. My body slowly decays. A child was born while I wrote this word.

When the athlete enters the arena, she can’t really be sure of the outcome. In working with teams, I realize how much the mind wants to know the outcome even days before the game is played. Because of this, an athlete might predict a loss based on what happened previously. When this happens, sometimes we say the other team just “has our number.” In fact, we create the outcome in our minds long before the game is even played. This not knowing the outcome - this creates anxiety out of nowhere . . . And of course, it happens off the field more than on it. Life mirrors sport.

“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

The practice of meditation requires the meditator to simply notice what arises in the moment - physical sensations, sounds, sights, thoughts, moods. Through meditation, it’s easy to notice that everything is always changing. The practice asks one to allow for whatever comes up, observing its arising and its departure moments later. The allowing for things to simply pass through without clinging to them or pushing them away. Moreover the practice calls for not judging things as good or bad, simply being with what is.

Since we can’t change what’s happening in the moment we’re in, being OK with whatever is happening in the present - even if it’s uncomfortable - is a way of being in harmony with the changing nature of experience. It’s a way to be happier and at peace. And that doesn’t preclude us from working in the present to change some future outcome. The athlete practicing in solitude at perfecting his craft exemplifies being present while training for future resilience.

It takes courage to resist our mind’s inclination to find certainty in the future. It takes courage for the team to take the field without knowing exactly how things will go. It’s not easy to do. In the end, it’s not the outcome that’s important, it’s how well we’ve engaged with the moment we’re in right now. And fittingly, when we engage fully with the moment we’re in right now, the outcome becomes the best it can be.

Understanding and accepting the notion of impermanence paves the way for appreciation. In relationship, knowing that life is so precious and fragile, we might begin to better appreciate time spent with others. We might better appreciate a lovely sunset, a perfect rose, or the smile of a child knowing that it all will soon change. It also provides the faith in knowing that if our circumstance now isn’t good, that it will change for the better.

So muster up your courage to be OK with the uncertainty that comes with living fully. Cultivate it even. Try to drop the tendency to predict outcomes, to manipulate the future. Train yourself to be prepared to handle anything that might come your way by being flexible and open to the ongoing change that is this life. And when you catch yourself predicting and judging, that’s OK. Just notice that, reset, and start over again!

It requires courage. You have plenty.

Thanks for Reading.

The Practice is a labor of love. It’s free of ads and paywalls, and always will be. If you enjoy reading it, please consider making a contribution via my secure business Paypal link here to support my work. Old school? Consider sending a donation to me at my address: 306 Front St., Marion MA, 02738. Know someone who might like to read this? Please forward this to them and suggest they subscribe. - Thanks, Pete