Today, I am starting my junior year of college. My school year resumed later than most, so I’ve had plenty of time to mull over the prospects of my upcoming semester.
I am excited. It’s been a long summer break. I’ve been antsy to return to campus, see my friends, and experience the privileges of being an upperclassman. After getting a taste of “normal” college life my freshman year, COVID drastically altered the reality of the college experience. Fortunately, vaccination rates are rising, and the idea that this semester may be a return to normalcy no longer seems far-fetched.
However, anxious thoughts have flooded my mind as well. “Normalcy” is not guaranteed. I’ve been worried that COVID may once again derail everything I have been looking forward to.
As I start this semester, I am reminding myself to stay balanced. Nothing is “black and white”. Ambivalence is ever-present.
Everything is Relative
As I’ve juggled these emotions of excitement and anxiety, Taoism has reminded me that absolutes do not exist in reality. As my grandmother likes to say: nothing is completely good, nothing is completely bad. One of my favorite verses in the Tao Te Ching comes from chapter 2:
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises. When it knows good as good, evil arises. Thus being and nonbeing produce each other. Difficulty and easy bring about each other.
Beauty only exists because ugliness exists. Everything is relative. We can appreciate good experiences only because we have had bad experiences to which we can compare them. The idea of a perfectly normal semester exists in my mind but will never exist in reality. The same goes for a year ravished by COVID. The past two years have certainly been less than ideal, but the world didn’t end. I still managed to have great experiences in and out of the classroom.
Understanding the concept of relativity has led me to seek a neutral perspective. When I recognize the duality and relative nature of seemingly good and bad things, I can accept them without judgement. I can quiet my mind and let go of the judgements that are causing my anxiety. I can ground myself in reality and lower the high expectations set by my excitement.
Flexibility and Balance
The Dalai Lama believes that being flexible and striving to find balance are the keys to turning our understanding of relativity into a practical approach to living. To be flexible means to be open to different perspectives. To seek out these perspectives is to strive for balance. But the ability to be flexible and find balance is not something that one can just decide to adopt as an attitude out of the blue. Rather, the Dalai Lama says:
Once you’re already in a difficult situation, it isn’t possible to change your attitude by simply adopting a particular thought once or twice. Rather it’s through a process of learning, training, and getting used to new viewpoints that enables you to deal with difficulty.
So, I’ve been practicing. When I feel enthusiastic about the upcoming year, I remind myself to lower my expectations; perfection doesn’t exist. When I feel overwhelmed with anxiety about COVID undermining my college social life, I remind myself that when one door closes, another door opens. And to reinforce these ideas, I work on being flexible with all experiences. When sitting in traffic leads to feelings of frustration, I balance it out by practicing my patience. When I accomplish goals and begin feeling self-righteous, I remind myself of my challenges and the less satisfactory aspects of my life. This grounds me. It balances me.
I’ll Be Okay
Striving for balance is a great way to calm my mind and realize that absolutes exist only in the imagination. But I can’t help thinking, what if the “extreme” scenarios I’ve been imagining do come true? What if the year goes perfectly and all my desires are fulfilled? That would be amazing! Or what if COVID rates spike and this semester becomes a repeat of last year’s fall semester? That would be awful! I don’t want to experience that again.
In an article he entitled The Desire for More, author Mark Manson summarized the results of a large psychological study in the 1980s. Every participant was given a pager and would be paged randomly. Whenever the pager went off, they were told to stop what they were doing and write down two things:
1) On a scale from 1-10, how happy are you at this moment?
2) What has been going on in your life to cause these feelings?
Manson describes the results, writing:
Pretty much everybody wrote ‘7,’ like, all the time, no matter what.
Even when catastrophic stuff did happen — mom got cancer, missed a mortgage payment on the house, junior lost an arm in a freak bowling accident — happiness levels would dip to the 2-5 range for a short period, and then, after a certain amount of time, promptly return to seven.
This was true for extremely positive events as well. Lottery winners, dream vacations, marriages, people’s ratings would shoot up for a short period of time, and then, predictably, settle back in around seven.
In anticipation of the semester, I can rest assured that no matter what happens, I’ll eventually return to a 7. I can live with that.
Gratitude
If COVID has taught me anything, it’s gratitude. People and experiences can be taken away from me at any moment. Being grateful for what I have now is all I can do. I will welcome with open arms all the good that this semester is about to offer. But I will not shy away from the bad either. Chapter 78 of the Tao Te Ching states: The one who accepts the misfortunate of the state becomes the king of the world.
I do not know what to expect from this school year. What I do know is that everything I experience will not be completely good or bad. I know that staying flexible and striving for balance will keep my mind calm. And I know that regardless of what happens this semester, I will end up as at least a 7 on the happiness scale.