Episode Details

What does it mean to be still while everything around you is a storm? Picture a bar brawl, and one man at the end of it, quietly drinking.

That man is not asleep. He is more awake than anybody else in the room. Reaction happens underneath us, fast, before the compassionate part of the brain gets a look in. So stillness is not detachment, it is being connected enough to see the trigger arrive. If somebody presses a button and nothing happens, eventually they stop pressing. At eighteen I broke my neck in a swimming pool. At forty I was sat in a wheelchair in a supermarket doorway with maxed out cards, drinking myself to sleep and blaming the dog, the neighbour and the president. Everybody except me.

One thing to try: Next time somebody presses your button, notice the gap before you react. That gap is the whole practice.

In this episode

• (1:42) The brawl, and the man at the end of the bar
• (3:09) Reaction happens before you get a say
• (3:46) The compassionate part of the brain arrives late
• (7:43) Forrest Gump and the dog mess
• (8:59) The fire brigade has two jobs, not one
• (11:29) Press the button and nothing happens
• (14:34) Christmas lunch, politics, and letting them be right
• (16:28) Eighteen years old, and the swimming pool
• (17:44) The supermarket doorway and the maxed out cards
• (20:02) Everybody was to blame except me

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

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