I know this would never happen to you, but it did to me.
I lost a sweet potato in my own home. I had it, and then, I didn’t. It was orange. It weighed more than a pound. And now it was gone. It didn’t turn up in the likely places, the fridge, the compost, the garbage. The moment I realized it was most definitely MIA, an interesting thing happened. I noticed a mental hiccup in my head. Where there’d been merely disappointment and frustration, in filed an accusatory and percussive voice.
“Who loses a sweet potato?”
“The size of a small pet.”
“Nearly neon.”
And, just for good measure, “During a pandemic!” (The implication: it’s hard work foraging for food at this time.)
All I can say is, good thing it wasn’t a small child. Or my computer passwords. Or the nuclear codes.
Triggering events happen all the time—in fact, it’s been a year of them for all of us. But even when we’re not in the throes of the kind of rapid disruption we’ve all just come through, things don’t always go to plan, large or small.
And when they don’t, and when unfortunate things happen, particularly, things that are beyond our control, it would be plenty enough to simply feel bad. But no. Quite a few of us don’t stop there. We go one step further and heap another layer on top. Without skipping a beat, the stories, judgments, and interpretations come out.
There’s a beautiful, evocative name for this feature of the mind: “second arrows,” from Buddhist philosophy. In The Parable of Second Arrows, the Buddha asks a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student replies, “it is.” The Buddha then asks, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?”
Of course, it is.
A super-achiever client tells me he’s not keeping up. He’s watching videos when he should be working—this, a response to three solid days of nose to the grindstone. He’s going down, down, down a deep, dank rabbit hole filled with remorse, regret, and self-incrimination.
“And, if there were no second arrows,” I ask, “what would you know instead?”
He pauses and has an easy answer. “That I’ve been working really hard. That I need a break. Maybe I need to learn how to pace myself better. And, I need more joy in my life.”
Now those are things we can work with. We can gather some resources around. Unpack and find a plan.
An overwhelmed client tells me, “tomorrow’s going to be a nightmare.” But when we look at what’s actually on her plate, she discovers it’s not really a nightmare at all. There are things embedded in a day of tasks that make her excited, energized, and she can see a strategy to move forward.
There’s much that gets lost when second arrows fly. And much unnecessary suffering, including, time wasted, and loss of personal esteem. The trick is to catch those arrows midair and stop them from hitting their target.
That requires slowing down, noticing, and staying with the experience of the first arrow. Which can be quite painful. The loss of a job, for instance. The failure to make an important deadline. An overwhelming schedule.
We live in a fast-moving, always-on culture. We talk about mental toughness, often, about “just doing it.” But what if mental toughness wasn’t about barreling through or steely persistence. What if, instead, it was riding the wave of some truth we maybe can’t initially control? And responding with presence, with kindness, as we would a dear friend?
Sometimes easier said than done. The second arrow is an honest attempt to make meaning of things, but the meaning is frequently wrong and simply adds a whole lot of unpleasantness. But, in investigating the first arrow with skillfulness, research in self-compassion tells us we can actually transform the first arrow faster, get the lessons we need to grow, and find some deeper value. We can stop spinning without resolution. We can move on.
Which brings me to the parable of the sweet potato. Three weeks after it went missing, I was rummaging around in the vegetable drawer, and did a double take. There, nestled among other orange compatriots, was one sweet potato which, to my eye, was impersonating the overlarge carrots it was resting beside—as if it had found its own.
It was a moment ripe for second arrows. But as I caught one, mid-flight, I let the uncomfortable feelings rise, and then, they faded. And that’s when, to my delight, I was both relieved that I wasn’t responsible for the nuclear codes, and, I could find the humor that was there in it all, instead.
I wonder, how do you recognize your own first arrows? What does it mean to be present without a story? In what ways do you move from the story back to the first arrow? Or do you? Or have you never felt the slings and…arrows…?
