The School of Life: An Emotional Education

by The School of Life

Key to the practice is regularly to turn over three large questions. The first asks what we might be anxious about right now. We are rarely without a sizeable backlog of worries, far greater than we tend consciously to recognize. Life, properly felt, is an infinitely alarming process even in its apparently calmer stretches. We face a medley of ongoing uncertainties and threats. Even ordinary days contain concealed charges of fear and challenge: navigating through a train station, attending a meeting, being introduced to a new colleague, being handed responsibility for a task or a person, keeping control over our bodies in public settings – all contain the grounds for agitation that we are under pressure to think should not be taken seriously. We need, during our meditative sessions, to give every so-called small anxiety a chance to be heard, for what lends our worries their force is not so much that we have them but that we don’t allow ourselves the time to know, interpret and contextualize them adequately. Only by being listened to in generous, almost pedantic detail will anxieties lose their hold on us. At almost any time, within our minds, a chaotic procession flows which would make little sense if recorded and transcribed: … biscuits to the train why earrings deal they can’t do it I have to Milo phone list do it the bathroom now I can’t do, 11.20, 33 per cent it a 10.30 tomorrow with Luke why invoices separately detailed why me trees branches sleep right temples … But ...