Hello there.
It's awesome that you are taking the time to center.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope and fair warning,
This one's gonna be salty.
I don't think there's an era that could compete with the 70s for bad decorating decisions.
You had brown shag carpet,
Lipstick red sinks,
Cloying peach walls.
It was also the time of rampant wood paneling,
Which explains why my father's office walls were covered in the stuff.
One day I went into my dad's office to grab a big book that was leaning up against one of the walls and as I reached down with my right hand a sizable sliver from the wood paneling slipped between my middle finger and my flesh.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I cried out.
My mom rushed in and shepherded me toward the bathroom where she used tweezers to pull the splinter out.
At six years old I had visceral knowledge of how this could be such an effective form of torture.
Something else that I found fascinating though is first that splinter must have left behind a little bit of a shell because if you look closely at my fingernail you can still see its shadow.
The other thing that's interesting is our relationship with our splinters.
Those wounds that we've received over the years,
Sometimes we address them seeking out someone or some way to help us remove the painful thing,
Piercing our tender insides.
Other times we ignore them leaving them deep inside where they might begin to fester.
And be honest,
Do you ever poke and prod your splinters,
Wiggling them this way and that?
Inhale.
Exhale.
Something I read recently said that sometimes we circle back toward the negative emotions because then at least we feel something.
The pain brings a kind of weird comfort because we're no longer benumbed in the thick and unending ordinary.
As I was considering existential splinters,
I think the why we go back to them and poke and prod them might be less important than what we do about it.
So the first thing is to become aware what splinters do you return to in your life.
They could be quick sorties,
A flash of thought as you jump back to this sore place in your life.
Or they could be an all out,
I'm gonna poke and prod this fucking splinter until it's good and sore and infected with gross gooey pus.
Inhale.
Exhale.
If you don't know what your splinters are,
Although I bet you do,
But if you don't,
Ask someone.
Is this fun?
Hell no,
I just had this happen to me.
A friend gently suggested that this is exactly what I was doing,
Clinging to an infected splinter and perhaps it was time to let it go.
Well screw you buddy boy.
Inhale.
Exhale.
He was right,
Of course.
Now if there were only an existential pair of tweezers that I and you could use to remove our splinters.
But since there isn't,
I'm gonna suggest we go all Pavlov on these splinters' asses.
Let me explain.
Every time I go back to this particular splinter that my friend called me on,
I have started to say in my mind,
Starfish.
Why Starfish?
Because I'm freaking weird.
That's why I have no idea.
It's absurd,
But that's the point.
I am training my mind first to notice when I go back to this splinter,
But then also to tell myself going back to this splinter is absurd.
And nine times out of ten,
When I go back,
Catch myself and think Starfish,
I give a chuckle,
Turning away from the splinter,
Splinter,
And getting back to whatever it is that I was doing.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Is my method foolproof?
Um,
No.
But so far,
It's doing a surprisingly good job of keeping my mind where my feet are as the saying goes.
So are you up for it?
Finding some absurd phrase to train your mind away from worrying those splinters.
Go for it.
See what happens.
Hopefully you'll get some good results,
And hopefully you won't really be like Pavlov's dogs and start to drool every time you go back to your splinters.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Namaste.
