There was a new toy on the playground, a bright shiny red fire engine. At first everything seemed fine, but then a little boy ran up to the fire engine, hit the child who was playing with it, and grabbed the toy for himself. As I restored the peace, the little boy’s mother said, “It’s all because of that fire engine. You need to get rid of it.”
Wow, I was stunned. It was the fire engine’s fault? Evidently both toddler and parent needed some schooling.
It was easy to see how ridiculous it was to blame the toy instead of the behavior, but it started me thinking. This demonstration was on the playground of the outer world, but what about the inner world? We so often focus on a thought or a feeling or a situation—If only I didn’t have that mean thought, if only I didn’t feel this way, if only that situation was different… I could see that my attitude toward thoughts I wanted to push away was the same as the mother’s attitude about the fire engine. It’s all the object’s fault—move along, nothing to see here!
Of course, distracting a child or moving our attention to a different thought or a different object is one way of handling it. And it can be a valid way. But there are other levels of possibility as well. One level is to let attention sink down below the surface agitation into what’s beneath the thought, whether that’s a deeper feeling sense in the body, or a prior thought. Sometimes the thought we’re worried about actually covers a feeling or even an opposite thought underneath the surface. And looking at that, feeling into it, can give you useful information.
And yet another way is to let it be – let the fire engine be – and just let the thought be there, not pushing it away, not pulling it in, not getting involved with it, just letting it do its thing without doing anything with it. We have a choice how we respond or don’t respond to any thought, any feeling, any situation. We don’t need to give it significance one way or the other. We don’t need to either believe it or disbelieve it. We don’t need to identify with it or reject it. Restoring the peace is not about getting rid of what triggers our reactions. Restoring the peace is not about the fire engine. Restoring the peace is about taking a different attitude toward the playground of experience.
Art: Red Fire Engine and Collage, photographed by Soleg
