Hello Suffering, My Old Friend

"If you can't beat em, invite em in for tea" - the Buddha, probably

My eyes snap open like the pages of a book in a windstorm, disrupting what was a peaceful slumber. I can feel my heart frantically thumping against my ribcage as if it’s communicating an urgent message to me in Morse code. I scan my surroundings. Adrenaline is coursing through me as I get my bearings, adjusting to the reality around me, a sharp contrast from the dreamlike state I was in just moments ago. 

A strong undercurrent of "something is wrong" pulses in the background. This palpable tension, a constant hum of apprehension, sets every nerve on edge while the analytical machine between my ears is whirring at a frenetic pace, sifting through the litany of possibilities for what I’m to do next. Every contemplated action assumes an outsized significance. Each one imbued with a gravitas that suggests a misstep could trigger dire consequences. 

You’d think I’m a Navy Seal on a covert mission deep in enemy territory and I’ve been spotted and now need to evade a constant barrage of attempts on my life. 

But no, it’s just Tuesday. 

This is just me waking up in my cozy linen sheets in a 4,000 square foot home turned personal wellness sanctuary in Puerto Rico, to another day in the rather idyllic life I’ve created. And yet, this restlessness has become commonplace over the last few years. 

Call it a morning anxiety. Which feels weird to say because I don’t think anyone would describe me as an anxious person. But it’s this persistent pressure I feel immediately after waking up to do something–to accomplish a task that I know would be good for me, that makes me feel productive. This consistent compulsion is a sustained strain, an incessant insistence that I find the exact task that I should be doing as if there is some obvious, inviolable thing that of course every 29-year-old entrepreneur-yogi-traveler-aspiring writer in my shoes should so obviously be doing because how else is he to lead a respectable life? 

It’s like every day there’s a ticking time bomb I need to defuse lest the world comes to an end. But the defusion is a simple question–what is this exact task with which to start the day? Should I workout? Or do I meditate? Maybe I take an ice bath and go for a walk while in the pristine hours of the morning when the sun can beat down, thawing my frozen body without roasting in the UV.  

I’m not sure where it came from. Perhaps a remnant of chronically oversleeping as a kid, waking up in a startled rush off to school. Perhaps it accumulated over the years after listening to enough Tim Ferriss that I’ve adopted a similar obsession with optimization. 

Seems trivial, I know. But it’s real. 

And while there are problems worse than the seemingly self-induced pressure to achieve and be productive, this morning marauder of inner peace taught me an innate Truth about the human condition, it taught me about the inevitability of negative emotions and how to relate to them. And most importantly it taught me how to find ease. 

Begone Intruder! 

When I first started experiencing this unrest, I saw it for what it was–debilitating and all-consuming and paralyzing and quite simply something I had to get rid of. It’s not particularly enjoyable starting the day thrust into a flight or flight response. I’d love to wake up calm and collected and confident in whatever it is I decide to do knowing I’ll probably choose something that’s good for me, that gets me closer to that VP promotion or 1,000 subscribers or a six-pack or Spanish fluency or any of the myriad of things I plan to accomplish and ideally I do it all the while knowing this decision is really not so high stakes after all.

So I tried to rid myself of this intruder.

Before I’d give myself a chance to engage in the mental ping-pong match, I’d lace up my sneakers and go for a long run, escaping the tiresome back and forth in favor of physical exertion. Focusing on sucking down enough air in the thick Caribbean heat was usually sufficient to distract me from the customary internal chatter. 

Other times I’d take the more zen route, regulating my nervous system with some light breathwork, practicing mindful awareness to recognize I am not my thoughts and these sensations, like all things, are impermanent. 

And if that didn’t work, I’d jump straight into work. Burying myself in my laptop was a novocaine of sorts. There are always things to do, problems to solve in my work life, be it refining the company’s sales strategy, pitching my CEO a new product idea, or clearing out the never-ending stream of incoming messages. This all felt like productive time I couldn’t argue against. 

While these offered a reprieve in their own respect, none of them did anything to proactively eliminate the onset of this anxiety. They were band-aid solutions, treating the symptoms, patching up the uncomfortable sensations I was grappling with. 

Despite my best efforts, the anxiety would always come back rearing its ugly head, exacerbated by my attempts to put it at bay. I would get caught in the loop of thinking which of these solutions should I try now to quell this discomfort–do I push myself to physical exhaustion, do I observe my thoughts in my meditation room for thirty minutes, or do I go be a valuable employee? Or wait, better yet, do I do some more thinking to figure out what I haven’t thought of yet that might just be this magic cure-all I so desperately am hoping to find? 

All this thinking and deciding and second-guessing was exhausting. I felt I was in some kind of anxious quicksand where the more I resisted, the deeper I sunk, and the more this frantic heart-thumping, adrenaline-spiking, tension-inducing, buzz of apprehension wreaked havoc on me. 

Meeting Mara

There’s this story about the Buddha I came across probably in a book or a blog post or Tim Ferriss podcast. At first it was an intriguing idea, one that’d make for a good talking point to sound wise and well-read if I ever felt an intellectual inferiority complex creeping up. But it was never something I thought had much practicality in my life. Until now. 

The story starts on the eve of the Buddha’s enlightenment when he is confronted by the demon Mara, who represents the myriad forms of suffering.

At first, Mara says let me just fuck him up with my demonic armies, sending fire and arrows and other scary shit to invoke fear. That ought to knock him off course. But the Buddha remained unwavered as each invocation of violence turned to flowers before his feet. 

Then Mara figured, well he’s a man and all men have temptation. So he called up his hot daughters to seduce him. Despite their beauty and charm, the Buddha saw the craving arise and recognized it as yet another form of suffering, choosing to ignore their alluring advances. 

The powerful demon, now visibly frustrated, says screw it and takes matters into his own hands, engaging the Buddha directly. “Who are you to become enlightened?” he asks, striking directly at the core of his self-worth, attempting to sow seeds of doubt into his head. But the prince of chill doesn’t entertain the question. Instead, he touches the earth, asking it to bear witness to his right to enlightenment. The ground trembles, essentially validating his merit and proving to Mara once again that he’s failed. 

This story, beyond my snarky recounting, paints a beautiful picture of how we can “do the work” to overcome suffering from fear, desire, doubt, and any other lower-level emotion. But what I found most interesting is that even after his enlightenment, the Buddha is still frequented by Mara. And rather than defeating him in some show-off-y way again, he invites Mara in for tea. 

Even for this spiritually liberated being, these negative feelings don’t just dissipate. Even if you do all the work to get closer to this aspirational enlightened state, it’s not like you go about living your life entirely free of all those icky emotions.  

I’d spent all this time trying to rid myself of Mara. But could it be that he is just an inevitable part of the human experience? And rather than expending effort on the impossible task of ensuring he never pays a visit, what if I just changed my relationship with him for when he does stop by? 

Greetings, Old Friend

Some Tuesdays later, I wake up with a familiar jolt of energy. I’m propelled back into figuring-out mode, instinctively trying to decide what to do. I pause for a moment, seeing Mara take shape. 

Hello, my old friend. I see you. Welcome back. 

I’d like to apologize for my past behavior. I know we didn’t get along well at first–chalk it up to character differences. But I didn’t mean to toil and tussle with you over all those years. I didn’t mean to try and shame you out of existence. It was uncomfortable, unnerving allowing a stranger into my home. You showed up unannounced and in your brash and boisterous manner shook things up. I felt like I was under siege, so I fought back in an attempt to dispel this perceived threat. 

That’s my bad. Knowing what I know now, it’s evident you’re here for a reason. You don’t mean to sabotage me. You were sent to help me. To let me know that what I want in life isn’t going to come easily, that I need to proactively make it happen. What I perceived as anxiety was really just a part of my drive–my desire to be productive, to accomplish great things like building a web3 company from the ground up, materially shaping the future of this industry I care so deeply about, launching a writing career, exploring ideas that have meaningfully impacted my life, and living a rich, exciting life, full of worldly experiences and deep relationships. 

Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You’ve helped me stay in great physical shape. You’ve enabled my career advancement. You’ve afforded me a degree of financial freedom. You’re consistently pushing me towards rigorous self-examination and improvement. So while yes, you tend to come barging through the door, unannounced, inducing a somewhat disagreeable somatic response, I know it’s well-intentioned so I promise to not kick you out. In fact, I promise to welcome you in, like the old friend you are, for so much of who I am today is a result of your work.

And for that I thank you.