Weight of Worries
During an extended Malasana Squat hold in class this week, I reached for my water bottle and posed a question to my students: “How heavy do you think this bottle is?”
Responses varied, ranging from a few hundred grams to a kilo and a half.
The right answer to this question is that the absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold the bottle for. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, my arm will ache. If I hold it all day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the bottle doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.
Our life's problems, stresses, and worries are like that water bottle. Ponder them briefly, and there's no immediate consequence. Dwell a bit longer, and they start to cause discomfort. But if you let them occupy your thoughts all day long, you'll feel unable to take action.
Problems are there to be dealt with and aren’t bad in and of itself. In fact, they can be quite beneficial. Their pressure can catalyze growth. Without a sufficient amount of them, we might not leave our comfort zone ever to produce our best work. How we perceive and manage our problems, however, is where things can start turning negative.
As mentioned above, holding onto problems for a brief period of time isn’t the issue—it’s holding onto them for long periods of time. Why might we do that? Well, we might be procrastinating and avoiding doing important work. We might be “taking our work home with us”. We might be trying to mask or suppress our problems with passive entertainment, social media, drugs, or alcohol, rather than dealing with them, or “putting it down”.
The central message is to hold your problems in your awareness. To look at them spend energy dealing with them, but not so much that they paralyze you. It is absurd to carry them around with you all day every day. This ability to put down your “water” after you spend time with it is the ability to compartmentalize in life.
The concept of compartmentalization is straightforward: be fully present with what you are doing. When you're at work, focus on work; when you're at home, focus on home. Switch your "bottle" from work to home or any other thing you are doing. When doing a Malasana squat, immerse yourself in the squat. While reading a book, lose yourself in the pages, and when lying on the couch, unwind completely. Avoid mixing these tasks. Compartmentalization means to keep tasks separate and in their places to give your undivided attention to each.
Don't overcomplicate this idea. Acknowledge that your life will never be entirely completed, and similarly, your problems won't ever be solved. As long as you keep challenging yourself, problems will always be part of your experience. Embrace this reality, and you'll find it easier to set them aside, knowing that you will have to pick them up again tomorrow.