feeling the big squeeze

when your dream doesn’t match the current reality

This week in my classes I’ve been teaching on what Pema Chödron calls “the big squeeze” — that place, that moment you realize that your actual behavior does not quite match your ideal, your aspiration.

Maybe it happens in actual meditation. You sit down, imagining the next twenty minutes of peace, your mind steadily calming until the bell rings and you emerge a new being. And then, ten seconds in, all the scattered thoughts of yesterday’s argument and today’s audition and the song lyrics you’re learning come rushing in. “Peace,” whatever that is, is nowhere to be found.

Or maybe it happens in real life, in the car, on the subway, wondering why all these people are in your way, or snapping at someone you love, when you had set that aspiration to be kinder. As Pema puts it, with an example I can relate to,

There is often a discrepancy between our ideals and what we actually encounter. For instance, in raising children, we have a lot of good ideas, but sometimes it’s challenging to put together the good ideas with how our children are, there at the breakfast table with food all over themselves.

Or maybe it happens in rehearsal, in performance. The idea you wanted to try, the imagined soaring high note, doesn’t quite pan out as you had planned. It reminds me of that Ira Glass quote that made its way around the internet awhile back:

I actually think Ira is wrong about one thing - that *I* took longer to figure this out than anyone else (haha). I’m still closing the gap. Still feeling the squeeze.

And thank goodness.

The squeeze is actually the moment of opportunity. Pema calls it “one of the most productive places on the spiritual path” because when we feel that discrepancy, that pang, that oof I really wanted to be better than this - that is a moment we get to wake up and practice.

But it’s only productive if we let it be. It’s only productive if we don’t use the opportunity to blame ourselves for messing up (again). It’s only productive if we feel that productive uncertainty we talked about last time and don’t make meaning out of the fact that we’ve fallen short.

It’s only productive if we can mind the gap. Ira talks about the “gap” between where you are and where you want to be (interestingly, Pema calls it the opposite! being squeezed) but in Buddhist circles "the gap” generally means the tiny space between a given stimulus and our reaction to it. In meditation we aim to “mind the gap” and widen this space, so that we can take the opportunity to choose our response mindfully and thus effect a different outcome than we habitually would.

So if we’re feeling squeezed — ah, crap. I rushed through the moment again and the B flat was just that, flat — we can pause. Here I am again. And instead of making our ideal something to live up to, maybe it can become something to live into.

Being spiritually productive doesn’t mean perfection. In fact I would go so far as to say that the point isn’t even necessarily closing the gap between where we are and where we want to be, although that might result. The rest of Pema’s sentence is “The big squeeze is one of the most productive places on the spiritual path and in particular on this journey of awakening the heart.” (emphasis mine)

Instead of feeling defeated, feeling ashamed, feeling like we’ll just never be able to do the thing (all reactions I have had, and then some) - we could check in with ourselves. How am I feeling right now? What do I need? We could acknowledge ourselves for getting up and trying again. We could send ourselves some metta, some lovingkindness that every being is worthy of, beyond conditions.

Perhaps we’ll see that, even though we may have fallen short just now, we’re not so bad after all. Perhaps we’ll widen the circle and realize that everyone falls short sometimes, everyone feels the big squeeze, even when they’re doing their best. Perhaps our own shortcomings can make us more compassionate, more human.

What could be productive about feeling squeezed is not whether we make sure we don’t make the same mistake again. What could be productive about feeling squeezed is whether we can use it to awaken our own hearts. Whether we can love the heck out of this person who devotes their life to this crazy/beautiful path. Whether we can be our own best friend, right now, when we are seemingly so far away from being the person we want to be, the person we thought we were.