Othering and other human habits

Dedicated to anyone who’s had a “maybe I’m the asshole” moment.

This is a reader-supported publication. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and support this work financially, I’d really appreciate it!

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

I’m 26 years old, 7 months pregnant, and on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I’ve attended several Vipassana retreats before this one. My first, at 18, was the most profound, sweeping me through revelations about my human nature. Every subsequent retreat is a gruelling reckoning with my attachment to profundity, craving states of enlightenment and bliss, which is the whole point of this practice: observing reality as it is, not as we’d like it to be—becoming intimate with the nature of impermanence. Noticing how we create our suffering through attachments, working with arising feelings of craving and aversion. 

On this retreat, new motherhood looming, silent and alone with a growing baby in my womb, I am determined to be with reality as it is, to practice, to take this time to be in silent contemplation with this new human who will change everything. What I get instead is a humbling crash course in othering.

I’m at the Vipassana Meditation Centre of BC -- Dhamma Surabhi. The scents are nostalgic. The pre-silence bustle amongst fellow meditators is warm and kind, a collective steadying happening as we orient to the shared space. It’s dorm-style lodging. I don’t expect special treatment being pregnant, I’m here to practice. I’m ready for discomfort. They show me where the kitchen is to get food when I need it. As an old student, I’m not meant to eat after breakfast, but I’m encouraged to place my physical needs and comfort above the discipline I’m here to flex. They give me the bed closest to the bathroom for the twenty-seven times I get up to pee at night. 

The location of that bed kicks off 10 days of hell. It teaches me about the darkness that comes with exhaustion and discomfort. It teaches me about self-preservation and entitlement and how quickly “othering” can happen. It teaches me about fixation, projection and self-righteousness. It’s a bunk bed against a wall, I’m on the bottom bunk. On the other side of that wall is a hallway. The hallway leads to a door. The door leads outside. There’s a sign on the door that says: Please close the door gently. Some people do not close the door gently and I lose my goddamn mind. 

We meditate for 11.5 hours per day. Often in the meditation hall and sometimes in our rooms, on our beds. It’s all very hard and boring. Falling asleep during meditation is common. At this point in my pregnancy, I own and operate a hair salon and have been working long hours transferring my clients to their new stylists. The exhaustion of work, commuting and trying to ensure everyone and everything is ready for my departure takes over. I sleep a lot. Except when someone enters or exits that door. 

I consider the possibility that the way the door bangs and clicks, even if gently, happens to reverberate in a way that’s far louder in my bed than by the door itself. Maybe they can’t hear how loud it is. How rude it is. I’m aware that the sudden interruption of the peaceful silence, jarring in both waking and sleeping moments is an opportunity to practice. But something else takes over. 

“What the fuck is wrong with these women? Can’t they read? Do they have no consideration? Aren’t most of them mothers?! I’m pregnant. Do they not understand the notion of noble silence?!”

The pregnancy card is perhaps the most fascinating of observations. I realize saying “pregnancy card” sounds like I don’t think pregnant people deserve special consideration but I wholly do. And mothers. And anyone doing care work which our dominant culture horrifically undermines and diminishes. What fascinates me though is the way being with child, my child, growing in my body, becomes an ecosystem of self-preservation. Anyone who threatens it becomes other.  

Us and them. Me and my baby against these inconsiderate bitches slamming the door. I can’t get a handle on my agitation. I can’t observe and witness it as arising sensation and aversion. I can’t generate thoughts of compassion or considerations that these actions come from innocent ignorance or even the possibility that it isn’t the sound of the door at all, but the silence around it and what bubbles within me in this novel stillness and silence that’s sending me into insanity. 

In these days of silence, my exhaustion, agitation, fear, grief, rage, ALL OF MY PAIN is because of other people. Other people selfishly going about their business, clicking and slamming and slamming and clicking. I’m not even embarrassed about what I did next because it amazes me. I have to know who is slamming the door. Is it one person? Is it many people? Who is the fraud in the room, joining this space as though they’re committed to loving-kindness and non-violence while violently slamming that fucking door?! I’m boiling with indignance. 

I stand in the hallway, eyes downcast. Like I’m innocently just chilling out, having a stand, nothing to see here, just between sits right now. As we’re meant to be recognizing noble silence, which includes no speaking, gesturing or eye contact, we don’t walk around looking at each other’s faces. I recognize the women only softly, by their gaits in my peripheral, their shawls and wraps, maybe clasped hands at their bellies as they pass, slip-on shoes shuffling as we gaze toward the floor. So my spy game is tricky. Nevermind petty. We know it’s petty. Isn’t it amazing how petty it is? I’m so amazed. Now I’m amazed. In the moment I’m righteous. I’m a vigilante! Noise justice shall prevail! I don’t even know what I’ll do once I sniff her out, but my wrath and judgment will bore into her peace that’s for damn sure. 

The women who walk in and out of that door do so with gentle intentionality. Then it happens. Someone releases the handle too soon and it slams and she jumps and paws the handle as though soothing it will undo her unforgivable mistake. Ah yes, finally, there it is, in the moment I see her humanity, I see the truth. I am the asshole. 

The spell breaks. I laugh. I’m blown away. It feels profound. I see the way “the thing isn’t about the thing”, I see my projections that the other mustn’t be well-meaning, the way I can be gripped by righteousness and contempt when depleted, alone and feeling victimized, even when held in so much comfort and privilege. I see how easily and quickly the mind will turn the smallest agitation, will turn literally anything, into a problem. 

I think about that woman, fumbling with the handle, knowing she didn’t close the door quite right, truly and earnestly doing her best, not knowing another woman is standing there waiting to pounce at the smallest misstep, in the supposed name of justice and non-violence, desperate to blame someone else for the seismic agitation and pain she simply doesn’t know how to be with. 

I’ve thought of that moment so many times in the 16 years since. Strip away almost every external stressor for 10 days and I manage to find the only one to fixate on. This is why I take inner work so seriously. In a world full of injustice and hardship, discomfort and difference, the opportunities for reactivity and othering are endless. I don’t want to be the one standing by the door, tracking other people with opinions and judgement. I want to be the person opening doors while feeling and owning my pain and reactivity with such nuance that others feel encouraged, safe, seen and able to feel and own their pain and reactivity too.