Not me. I couldn’t for the life of me ever get into a full lotus. Also, I’d have to lose fifty years to be her.
I was sitting on my cushion, meditating this morning, when it came to me that I wanted this Wobbly to be about discipline. The difference in habit and discipline, maybe. And the limits of each one.
For many years, I had a very strong meditation discipline. When that began to feel no longer necessary, I stopped altogether. A while back, I re-started my practice, but this time for only 30 minutes a day. My original impetus (which includes all the more mundane reasons, relief from emotional suffering, etc.) was to see what I had been ignoring. The impetus now (I think) is to steady my mind to help alleviate back pain. To keep my mind steady, in general. But also, it continues to be an interesting exploration.
Discipline, I guess, is what you do deliberately. You have a reason, a goal, whatever. Habit is what you fall into by repetition. Here I am, typing away at the moment, as I do every morning.
At this point in my long writerly life, I feel edgy, uncomfortable, irritable, if I don’t have writing time. It’s both my habit and my discipline. It’s nice when they work together.
My morning thoughts on this: discipline is a framework. A scaffolding. Not necessarily a climbing upward. It might be discovery, climbing sideways, swinging on monkey bars. It feels good, to have something to hold onto. Without it, you’d be a blob of jelly. The danger of too much discipline, or discipline for the sake of discipline, is rigidity. You miss a lot of your life because your eyes are always on the goal. Take writing (you knew I would). For those of us who write a lot, our discipline is simply writing stuff. No matter what, no matter its shape or direction. Just the words.
There comes a time, in the middle of all this discipline, whatever it is, if the gods are with you, when you fly off the rails. You haven’t willed it. That doesn’t work. You’ve simply chugged along the track, and suddenly you’re airborne. It’s when your writing surprises you, when your meditation opens a door, when your tennis game leaps forward.
Habit is mostly good, I guess. Brushing my teeth is a habit. Turning left at the bottom of the stairs is a habit. But habit is suspect. The nature of habit is to ignore, to shut down, to become unaware. It’s possible to live your life sleepwalking, moving from one habitual action to the next. Or moving from one habitual phrase to another. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Have a nice day.
You may mean those words, you may actually offer a prayer, or sincerely hope the recipient has a nice day. But those words rise like a shield between you and genuine feeling. In this sense, habit is robotic, empty, even dangerous.
I could go on about how parents aren’t teaching discipline, which I think contributes greatly to the anxiety and depression of our children. I think this is true. I have a tendency toward anxiety and mild depression. I realized way back in high school, in my chaotic life, that if I made a homework list and followed it, if I kept neat notes, I felt better. These days it’s get up at a certain time, do my exercises, meditate, write. I can name you dozens of writers who say their work has saved them from the pit of despair! Well, if my memory were better, I could.
You need, I need, we need structure. Poetry? In the best contemporary poems, the whole history of form is contained in what may appear as loosely structured verse. The best poets understand blank verse, sonnets, villanelles. They know poetry’s history. They hear the rhythms of speech because they’ve studied them. They may strike out in new directions, but underlying the new direction is a feeling for the way sound works in a line, and for the way the line itself works.
The P.S. . . .If you go here, you can read two new springish poems in Blackbird: https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v21n3/poetry/brown-f/index.shtml
I’m at Interlochen Arts Academy this week, as Writer in Residence at their brilliant Writers’ Retreat. I’ll report on that next time.