MY OWN WALKING - October Journal 2025

 

In an online talk by American Zen Buddhist teacher Jisho Sara Siebart, she remarked that we shouldn't always be - ' looking for drama to keep our minds active' - that - 'if things are not in alignment with the true Dharma, then we should pivot - and can we do that?'  As a person whose not been averse to indulging in a bit of self stoked melodrama over my life, these comments struck an embarrassing chord. I'm finding it useful to checkout my motivations with this question - Is this Dharma or Drama? 

There are categories of personal drama, each with a varying intensity. There's the Historical Drama, the Melodrama and the Psycho-drama. All dramas, regardless of our level of investment in them, are founded on some very common elements of pleasure or pain, gain or loss, fame or infamy, praise or blame. The Buddha designated them as Worldly Winds, that would buffet you around like a ship on a storm tossed sea, if you let them. These are the sort of elements present in all novels, theatrical plays, movies and TV Soaps which thrive on exploiting there dramatic potential. 

Due to there always being a degree of fictionalising, of scene setting involved, in how we recount our personal dramas. We are mostly retro-fitting our present experience into this readymade semi-fictional tale. One through which we tell ourselves who we think we are, what we are capable of, what we can and cannot do, what we believe the world is like, why other people are behaving in the way they do towards us, etc. You can spot these because they usually begin with - This is how it always is with me - I never get (this that or the other) - I seem destined to be (this that or the other). Basically, an element of fatalism is present.

This is what I'm labelling Historical Drama. Explaining every new experience through the narrow optics of a much rehearsed personal history.  Its an ongoing reinforcement, of a usually detrimental self view. There was a period when I would regularly experience a sense of being trapped in a situation. And that was rarely actually the case. I was more often than not feeling imprisoned by me. There were options, ways out, but I'd not take them because I didn't think I could pull them off or was actively risk averse towards, or scared of the consequences. 

At other times I'd feel a sense of meaninglessness or lack of direction, usually because I was resisting making a clear commitment to an action, and the entropy summoned up, just dragged my mood downwards into a pit of despondency. And that despair completed a self reinforcing negative cycle from meaninglessness to despair and back round again.  Whether I overcame any obstacle I encountered came down to how much initiative, confidence or esteem I believed I had. Even my recounting and attempts to reframe them here, is a form of re-fictionalising, re-editing and re-fixing the story. Tweeking it to show a certain level of retrospective self awareness

There is a difference between Historical Drama and Melodrama and it comes down to how long you are prepared to actively wallow in this state of squandering your time. To intensify the self dramatics and allow yourself to passively flounder and flail. Whenever I've experienced my susceptibility to melodramatics, its been executed as a clearly conscious act. In the fading embers of a love affair, whether the love was reciprocated or not, the tendency to play the tune of 'woe is me' proves irresistible. 

I remember living in my one room bedsit on the Great North Road in East Finchley in the 1980's, donning my headphones and listening loudly to The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time. There was nothing like a melancholy Morrissey lyric to turn up the self pity to tearfulness, in this gay man's romanticised pose. You desire company when you wallow. So lacking a friend, a bit of fellow feeling coming at you through the music deck, makes you feel less completely alone with it. Cranking up the music and the lyrical poetry, would often fulfill that need for me. But, you get my drift, melodrama does require you to over act, to ham it up, to indulge in the melancholy, and to do so with all the self conscious languor you can muster. It delays or conceals any personal necessity to snap out of it, under a comforting duvet of mushy emotionality.

Up to this point all the Historical Drama and Melodrama has largely been an internal conversation within oneself. One that affects one's outer life to a degree. We think certain things, but at the same time we know this is just us, and will prove to have little to no substance if exposed to reality. The Psycho-Drama, however, starts to believe in the reality of those internal misconceptions. Becoming obsessed with the Worldly Winds to an exaggerated extent. Fixating on perhaps one of these - pleasure or pain, gain or loss, fame or infamy, praise or blame, and begin to lose a grip on sanity through it. I personally have no experience of this. Though I guess like many of us, we can sense, even in our internal small talk, the seeds of something unhealthy, that if given too much credence and belief could potentially unhinge you. We, might instinctively back away, but some sadly tip right over into it. 

Then it comes to the concluding part of Jisho Sara Seibert's comment -'if things are not in alignment with the true Dharma, then we should pivot, and can we do that?'  In the 1980's when I found myself in trough's of despondency, I'd eventually tire of myself being in this state, with its incessant wallowing and pivot out of it. Usually I found a new direction to move in, beginning some new project or pursuing a fresh interest, but it could sometimes be simply changing the furniture around in my flat, or more dramatically moving to a new town, or starting a new job. 

At some point I came to realise any nihilistic tendency only went so far before an equal and opposite force kicked in. That somewhere inside of me I had hope, a confidence in the possibility of things becoming better. The nihilism never fully accords with my core beliefs. This positive resilience, a faith in the good, though hard to hold onto is worth reminding oneself of. It does not permanently solve anything, you will undoubted have further dark nights of the soul, you're human after all. I personally have found practicing Buddhism has helped me immensely, in moving away from becoming too involved in internalised Historical Dramas and unhelpful worldly concerns. And I imagine other faiths may provide a similar direction for someone to reorient themselves towards. Learning how to pivot towards whatever is positive and real, is a life skill worth acquiring.