Dharma Train

Blogging on the tube again. Taking a late train back to Harrow after attending my second Buddhist meditation class. After each class there is a short informal chat over tea. Tonight, one of the topics of discussion was how to maintain these ideas in the harsh reality of the workplace, where people are much more likely to be harsh, angry, etc. Certainly I've had some experiences with this and hard as it is, I do think mindfulness helps. It's just not always easy to be mindful when the world is digging at you and goading you to contract.

My own source of contraction at the moment is fear. It continues to crop up as 'job season' moves from ripe to rot and I haven't yet been harvested. I really hate the process of applying for jobs. It really is exactly the sort of thing that is almost perfectly designed to shred the soul. First, there is the unavoidable statistical fact: most of the people in my position who have trained and worked for years to get a position in astronomy, don't. Most of us will run out at some point and run aground. There just aren't enough chairs and someone gets left behind. That leaving behind stings. It's hard not to take it personally. After all you are the product you were trying to sell and you were what they didn't want.

So you spend your time writing these applications, and spend your money to send them out, knowing that 90% won't even result in an interview. Then when you get shortlisted, it just ups the stakes. Now you feel like you have a shot, but you have to apply even harder. To succeed, you really have to see yourself in that position because if you don't, they won't either. But in that visualization attachment is so easy, which just makes it sting all the worse when they turn you down. It's the job that you thought you really might get that hurts the most when you don't.

Meanwhile the pressure is still there from all the other sources, and it's ever so easy to get lost in the craziness. It's so easy to contract into the fear, and the juggling act, and the rejection. And in that contraction come all the shadows projected from your fear into the world. You can see enemies and competition and missed opportunities everywhere. Staying positive and mindful in the midst of this is not easy.

I keep having to try and come back to probably the wisest thing that my thesis advisor Rob Fesen ever taught me (and he taught me quite a lot of really important things that I've only really come to appreciate many years later). Quite early in my career as a grad student at Dartmouth he told me that what we do is a privilege. It is a truly remarkable thing that we get supported to just look at the universe and think about it and tell people what we think we see. We don't produce anything pictures and the stories that go with those pictures. And that fascination with the cosmos is what pays my rent. But it's a privilege that doesn't come with any guarantees. So enjoy it while it lasts.

That's good advice. It's just hard to hold on to that wisdom when faced with the potential death of a lifestyle to which one has become accustomed. It hurts to lose something cherished. But focusing on the joy while it lasts for however long it lasts is really the only sensible answer. Anything else is just going to make you unhappy and won't change the outcome anyway. So keep the faith, where the faith is not hope for the future, but joy in the now. Enjoy it now, the future will come regardless. Enjoy that when it's the present.