I\u00a0once had a dream about a judge. He was dressed in a long black robe, sitting at\u00a0his bench, his hand on his gavel. I was the only other person in the courtroom,\u00a0playing and replaying mental scenarios that had occurred at different times in\u00a0my life. When an image came to mind, the judge banged his gavel and said,\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s good.\u201d Or \u201cThat\u2019s bad.\u201d With each verdict, I went on a roller coaster\u00a0ride, feeling good and bad intermittently.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0became exhausted and I addressed my critic. \u201cI don\u2019t need your help right now,\u201d\u00a0I said. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go to your chambers and have a brandy? If I need you,\u00a0I\u2019ll call you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u00a0looked disappointed as he rose, left his gavel on the bench and disappeared\u00a0through a door behind him. My mind softened and I relaxed into a welcome\u00a0silence. My thoughts drifted like clouds, dissolving at the edges, floating\u00a0easily in the atmosphere. I slowly inhaled and exhaled. No thought was more\u00a0important than any other, and I basked in a sense of relief – – – until my mind\u00a0went off on a tangent again. Guess who came rushing back in. \u201cDo you need me
now?\u201d he asked. He reached out to grab his gavel but before he could bang it on\u00a0his desk, I said, \u201cThanks anyway, but I still don\u2019t need you. Go back to your\u00a0chambers.\u201d<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I woke up from that dream, my mind was unusually clear. I carried an\u00a0understanding into the day that letting go of \u201cgood or bad,\u201d would make me feel\u00a0better. The image of the judge remains in my consciousness and when I start to go\u00a0off the skids, I try to remember him and send him away. Sometimes it works and
sometimes it doesn\u2019t but I keep in mind that he isn\u2019t all bad. He\u2019s a tool for\u00a0survival, he keeps me out of danger and he helps me make beneficial decisions.\u00a0But just as often, he wreaks havoc, he shames me and I have to exorcise him\u00a0from my mind.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0live in a society of judgments. We \u201clike\u201d comments on social media. We give something\u00a0a thumbs up or a thumbs down. We threaten to give someone a \u201cbad\u201d review if\u00a0they do something we don\u2019t want them to do. Or if they don\u2019t do something we do\u00a0want them to do. We even feel badly about feeling badly. We rate, categorize\u00a0and compare ourselves to other people. \u201cHer hair looks good and mine looks bad.\u00a0She looks thin and I look fat.\u201d When we do this, we always lose because we\u2019re\u00a0trying to live up to impossible standards and we\u2019re depriving ourselves of one\u00a0of our greatest teachers \u2013 making mistakes. If we accept them as part of our growth,\u00a0if we become curious about our mistakes and try to learn from them instead of\u00a0hating them, feeling ashamed of them or trying to banish them, that\u2019s the
gateway to clearing our hearts and minds of self-loathing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pema\u00a0Chodron, a Buddhist nun whom I quote often, says, \u201cIf we learn to open our\u00a0hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.\u201d\u00a0She goes on to explain that letting go of good and bad is giving yourself the\u00a0grace to see that things are simply happening and they have nothing to do with you.\u00a0They are neither good nor bad, so why waste time and energy judging things that\u00a0you can\u2019t change?<\/p>\n
When\u00a0we judge other people, we think we know better and maybe we do, but no one\u00a0wants to be told what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong. That\u2019s something different for\u00a0everyone. We all have to make our own decisions, and no one wants unsolicited\u00a0advice. This is what cults are made of \u2013 someone saying to you, \u201cI know you\u00a0better than you know yourself so do what I say and you\u2019ll be enlightened.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u00a0all need and benefit from a compassionate listener who doesn\u2019t tell us what to do,\u00a0who doesn\u2019t evaluate our actions but rather, mirrors us and sees us as capable\u00a0of making our own choices. When we\u2019re open to that, we just might learn\u00a0something about ourselves. I have a friend who told me she had too much time on
her hands and she was bored. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you learn to play the guitar?\u201d I asked\u00a0her. \u201cYou love music and it would give you something to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u00a0shook her head. \u201cAt this stage in my life,\u201d she said, \u201cI can\u2019t tolerate being\u00a0bad at anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
For\u00a0me, trying something new is not about being good or bad. It\u2019s about delving\u00a0into what attracts me, seeing what\u2019s there and starting from scratch. Whether I\u2019m\u00a0good or bad at it has nothing to do with it. When I started ballet lessons at\u00a0eight years old, I could barely balance, I couldn\u2019t do the splits and my feet\u00a0seemed to have a mind of their own. But by the time I was accepted into a\u00a0ballet company at sixteen years old, I had taught my body to do what had seemed
impossible. It took time and effort, but the more determined I was and the more\u00a0I practiced and trained and didn\u2019t give up, the more my body learned to obey my\u00a0mind.<\/p>\n
Have\u00a0you noticed that life becomes more vivid and hopeful when we have something to\u00a0look forward to, when we find the courage to try something new and really suck\u00a0at it. Or not. But even when things don\u2019t work and we have to start all over\u00a0again, we can feel inspired and keep on trying. The artist\u2019s life is made up of unfinished ideas, flashes\u00a0of memory and a search for inspiration that seems unreachable. Moving forward\u00a0takes determination, stamina, more stamina and a mighty desire to express\u00a0yourself, no matter how it looks or whatever medium you use. Writing. Painting.\u00a0Dancing. Practice doesn\u2019t make perfect but it makes you better. Surrealist
painter, Salvador Dali, said. \u201cHave no fear of perfection. You\u2019ll never reach\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seeing things as good or bad is asking for\u00a0pain and sorrow since in any moment, good can become bad and bad can become\u00a0good. The only way to face this dichotomy is to shower yourself with loving
kindness, no matter what you think. Life has taught me that good and bad are\u00a0not really opposed to each other. They are a part of each other, each of them\u00a0has value, and in this world of duality, they exist side by side. They always\u00a0have and they always will and if we make space for all of it, they merge\u00a0together and help us feel like a whole human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u00a0once had a dream about a judge. He was dressed in a long black robe, sitting at\u00a0his bench, his hand on his gavel. I was the only other person in the courtroom,\u00a0playing and replaying mental scenarios that had occurred at different times in\u00a0my life. When an image came to mind, the judge banged his gavel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions\/2473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}