Is your business or family suffering right now?
Some think that to maintain inner calm, to maintain equanimity means to be without passion.
But it is your passion for a better life that got you here.
It’s like saying that in order to maintain a loving relationship you shouldn’t have feelings about your partner.
Nuts!
Well, maybe it’s because of the way we define passion.
The Latin root for passion, pati, means to suffer.
So we define passion as suffering from our strong emotions.
But suffer is an old word whose Latin root is sub mean from below + ferre to bear; to bear from below.
To me, that is very different. What to bear? What to carry?
You see, the issue is what you choose to carry.
You can carry negativity or you can carry positivity.
Maintaining equanimity is about recognizing that nothing lasts forever. It’s about not getting carried away… Not about not caring.
Don’t get carried away, or hold on to unpleasant situations.
Don’t get carried away, or hold on to pleasant situations either.
It is, after all, they are just situations. Pleasure is just a sensation that you interpret as being positive. Pain is you associate as being negative.
Get 10 people in a room and you’ll discover, quickly, that what is painful or pleasurable may not be universal.
Sure! enjoy pleasant things, and also recognise that they will pass.
Let go of your negative emotions when an unpleasant or undesired situation arises – remember it will not last.
And passion?
Well, I think of it this way; If you plant an apple seed and water and feed it every day, eventually it will grow into a seedling, and then a tree, and (with proper care) it will bear fruit over and over and over.
But, if you are soooo emotional that you are constantly digging it up to check the roots, cutting at the leaves to examine their growth… eventually you’ll kill it.
Did I mention that you might have to wait 5 years to see the first fruit? So yeah, you might need a little passion to stay motivated for five years.
I am passionate about my family, my business, my friends and my community. And I work to maintain my equanimity… to not be carried away to the point that I harm any of them, or myself, by requiring a particular outcome to be ‘happy’.
I work toward their well-being consistently, and I respond to changes while accepting that I cannot control everything.
So how to put this all to work.
You can think about your passion like a fast car driving into the night. Your meditation is the headlights illuminating the road ahead. Your equanimity is your calm decision making about where you are, what lies in front of you and which maneuver will get you the in the time and manner you want, or even you should abandon the trip altogether.
So be passionate. Maintain your equanimity. Good and bad will come. You got this.
It’s ok.
Be happy, be peaceful.