Practice "And How Am I Like This?" when judgementalism, impatience or annoyance raise their smug heads

... with my friend Z, who is visiting from out of town. It’s a laid-back, informal place, and the waiter, a guy in his early 20’s, starts being friendly with Z, who, ever the flirt, responds to his silly comments. After a couple more interactions (where he brings the food, checks in to see how it is, etc. etc.) I start feeling a little annoyed at this guy. My feeling is that for all he knows, this may be a date between Z and myself (which it wasn’t) and he’s butting in big-time. Or, if his personality is of friendly banter, then he needs to include me on this, so it’s not blatant that he’s just hitting on the babe. (Of course, Z keeps encouraging the behavior by bantering back.) It doesn’t ultimately put me off, but I take notice of it. And the question, “And how am I like this” doesn’t really apply here – if I were in his shoes, I’d never do anything like this. What hits me later, though, if how I wish I were like that – capable of doing something like that. Not the hitting on another guy’s (presumed) date, but the fact that he risks and almost succeeds in making a total fool of himself… and I’m a little too circumspect for that. I can’t quite get there – at least not in circumstances such as these. So I admire the guy even if his behavior puts me off. And I am reserved proportional to this guy being forward – and it might behoove me sometimes to be different, more willing to make a fool of myself.

So it was Friday and X was 10 minutes late to the class I teach. I wanted to go over to him at the end of class and say, “X, you’ve been coming to my classes, what, 8 years now? It’s not like you don’t know at what time they begin. And you’re consistently late. Surely you know by now it takes a given amount of time to get here, and surely, by now, 8 years into this routine, you should know when to leave your home to be here on time, right? When I attend someone else’s class, I either make it there by the time it starts, or I don’t come in at all. And certainly not 10 minutes late.”

But I didn’t say anything, because I have no idea what’s going on. Afterwards I reflected that he could have an appointment, or a group meeting (I think he belongs to a recovery group) or something else, and he might choose to come even knowing he’ll be late. In which case, what a compliment to me, right?

Of course, the following day I was 5 minutes late to the class I teach (“how am I like this?”) – and he was there, arriving at the same time I did. Later, when I offered an impromptu meditation class for those who wanted to stay after the regular class (I’ve been doing this fairly regularly lately), he was the only one to stick around. “I really got it last week, in meditation,” he told me. “I really got to that experience for the first time: the mental shift and the feeling of, ‘Wow! Here I am! I’m awake!’”

That also made me feel glad that I had not said anything. God knows that it’s precisely that experience (a very subtle yet very powerful shift in one’s perception) that I’ve been trying to impart on the people coming to those impromptu meditation classes, and that was the first confirmation I’ve ever had that someone truly had the experience that I’d been trying to describe…