My job can get pretty hectic, and Saturdays are the most busy, so over time I've dreaded coming to work on Saturdays and have actually prayed that my coworkers will show up. Least that's the way it used to be.
Then something happened. I previously had developed, over time, many coping strategies for handling my work situation, these strategies coming with varying degrees of success, until I hit upon the one thing that seems to work like no other technique I've tried.
Forget about long term goals, they don't help much in an intensive situation. What works for me, and instantly creates equanimity, is the planning of an upcoming vacation, or the proximity of vacation.
When that is on my mind or showing on the horizon I breathe a whole lot easier. Everything I'm faced with starts to fade from view. It's still there, but 'vaca' diminishes it, dilutes it, for I know that I will soon be free.
Then I get to wear the 'Oh Hey Vaca' T-shirt.
Yes I heard you
Volc Xia- Unsplash.com
Because vacation is what I truly need. I don't need the money that comes from working overtime. I don't need to spend some relief time working in a different department. I don't need to hear (even if they're sincere) any more customer "Thank You"s, or have my coworkers be in good moods and pulling their weight. It also doesn't help me a whole lot if the managers are on top of things or that the weather isn't so blasted hot or that I get more day shift. Those are minor, trivial, non-satisfying things. Vaca, on the other hand, is a light that shines like a mighty beacon, beckoning me towards The Promised Land, a land that I will soon enter and once therein, leave all of my troubles behind. I can feel the glow of vaca long before it arrives, I anticipate it, and in doing so "Bam!" my mental chatter slows down or actually ceases altogether. I am the Buddha. I am 'cool wit it', all of it, nothing rocks my boat and if it does I resume non-attachment status within minutes. I just can't go to where work or life agitates me. Im-possible.
You could put me in the most worstest of conditions- a crowded train station, babies crying all around, people unexpectedly and erratically shouting, the smell of kimchi in somebody's luggage in the air (which actually happened yesterday) and I am Zen, bro, I am above the fray. Vaca is x many hours, x many days away and I could care less about whatever is happening. I am in the bubble, in the zone, and beyond reach. My inner peace runs super deep. I'm still there, witnessing, and maybe reacting, but what you're seeing is only the outer 'me' because there has to be an outer. The inner, though, is without a ripple. It's pure, untouched, and un-sullied by the roar and din of The World. Things might happen that would startle the ordinary person not so near to vaca but to me, on the very cusp of vaca, such things are only curiosities. Mere trifles. I might turn my head to look at them, to see what all the commotion is about, but this is done almost mechanically, because everyone around expects you to react, I guess. You're there, part of the scene, you should, and I do. I meet those social expectations, then return to being the still pond.
I'm - where am I in this condition? I don't really know, mentally, where 'vaca' is at, it's not a 'state of mind', it's more an overall immersion into just being cool with whatever. What-ever. It's like you can't be touched. You're beyond the reach of whatever might normally affect you and that is the sort of feeling that you relish with the greatest of satisfaction.
This must be what power feels like and why power is so juicy to some people, despite all of the karma that that approach tends to generate. Vaca Mind, though, doesn't generate any karma. It just IS.