What’s in your rearview mirror?

Meditation is amazing. Recently I’ve been trying to cultivate a new habit. The habit in question? Meditation. Why meditation? Well, for several reasons. The major one being the increase in mindfulness it brings, and with mindfulness comes the added, and more importantly, real benefit that I practice meditation for—to battle feelings of anxiety and depression.

Isn’t meditation just some woo-woo stuff? How does it help in dealing with mental health issues like depression and anxiety?

One would be remiss to wonder how meditation helps in dealing with feelings of anxiety or depression. It’s simple, really. Well, I suppose simple in hindsight, not simple in the moments when you do experience anxiety or depression. The idea is that when your mind goes through these feelings it drifts away from the present reality to one of an imagined one. One in which your worst fears come true; they might not exist in the external world, but for you, they’re as real as the earth is round.

Meditation helps you to observe and take in the world around you, without judgement or reservation and lets you accept everything for what it is, and just let it exist, letting you live in the here and now. Letting each moment enter into the space of consciousness and out.

Why am I describing meditation in so much detail? Well, I had somewhat of a traumatic experience, only that it didn’t end up traumatising me, and it was all because of a conscious choice I made.

An Unpractical Example

Recently, while I was on the road on my moped. I thought I’d try to connect with my present reality as I perceived it, without trying hard to control everything around me. And what I experienced was something akin to a flow state. It felt strangely like meditation. And then, something went wrong. A car that was driving in front of me took a hard swerve to the right…right into me. I narrowly avoided what would’ve been a pretty bad collision. My first reactionary thought was to point the finger and curse at the other bloke, my second was one of heightened fear, or anxiety, the kind you experience after something traumatic happens. The kind that fills you with adrenaline about anything else that can, or will happen to you. And at that moment, I became fully aware as I looked back at him in my rearview mirror.

Let the past remain in the past

What happened to me was already in the past. I might not have had any control over my past, but I certainly did over my present, and that realization helped me dictate my future.

I had a choice to make. I could either be distraught over the past and choose to be uneasy and shaken in the present, or be grateful for that which did not go wrong and reconnect with my present. The present in which everything was seemingly the same as before the incident.

Then what I did next was surprising. I controlled my hurried breath, focused on the present and moved on along my way as if nothing had changed; because truly, nothing really had. And instantly, this change in attitude helped to calm my nerves and senses, even my anxiety had passed, as if the whole thing was imagined in my head. I chose to be a friend instead of a foe.

As I began to ponder over the vehicle in my rearview mirror, I had what you would consider a eureka moment or an epiphany.

You might not have control over the script of your life, but you can certainly control your reaction to your role in it, and that, in itself is true freedom.

So here’s something to think about. What’s in your rearview mirror, and how can you best address it?