There was a session where Sam Harris told us to cast our minds back to a time when we felt emotion or sensation strongly, this emotion could either be good or bad.

Here’s the task:

Try to look back at some point in your life where you were either really sad, worried, fearful, happy, excited, or elated. Now examine your life in the present. Observe how these feelings no longer mean anything to you. Take note of the transitory nature of experiences and episodes in your life.

The thing you were either happy or sad about, no longer means so much in this present moment.

You probably don’t need to think too far back, observe your life in a 24hrs range, see how thoughts, feelings, and experiences come and go with ease.

In the past week, my friend asked me, “Kelvin when do we stop worrying in this life?”.

I remembered that meditation session and gave him a thoughtful reply:

I don’t think there’ll ever come a time where we stop to worry, anyone who tells us that is either lying or fundamentally misunderstands the human condition.

What we can do is to always be mindful of these experiences and be aware of how transitory they are. You’ll start to feel less hurtful and less worried if you’re mindful of the fact that your present feeling won’t matter in the coming days, months, or years.

You can’t feel or be worried about a thing for too long, if you’re always conscious of the transient nature of feelings and experiences, it helps you to escape your present suffering or worry.

This changes the way you react to experiences and emotions, either good or bad. Knowing they won’t matter in some time to come, makes you at ease and a little bit less frightened.

This post was first published on June 12th, 2021 in my old blog.

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