You just saw a movie preview and it looks great! It’s a story that you are familiar with, has actors you like, and you expect it will be an instant favorite. You immediately pre-order a ticket and arrange your schedule to attend the premiere. You arrive early, buy the snacks, and find a seat. As you wait for the previews to start, the theater is playing commercials for trucks and pharmaceuticals. When did theaters start showing commercials before a movie? That’s annoying. You contemplate how much you just spent on popcorn and a soda. That’s annoying. The previews begin and the speaker on the wall just above your head seems to buzz on the deep bass sounds. That’s annoying!
Eventually the movie begins and you seem to relax a little. Your excitement comes back, drowning out the minor frustrations you’ve been noticing. A few minutes in and one of the characters comes into the scene but they don’t look or act how you imagined them based on your familiarity with the story. Perhaps it was a book you read. Soon you notice they skip over what you thought was an integral scene for the story. Movies do that sometimes. That’s annoying. It begins again. By the end of the movie you aren’t sure if you enjoyed it or not. That’s not what I expected.
I think whether or not you enjoyed the movie depends on your level of attachment to your preference. Throughout life we have experiences and form preferences based on those experiences. Subsequent experiences reinforce or adapt our preferences. From Buddhism we hear that the cause of suffering is desire (preference). Does that suggest it is wrong to have preference? I think we can understand the concept without altering the message by adding in the element of attachment to preference. It’s the difference between saying “I want this to happen because I like it” and “I need this to happen in order to be okay.” Attachment in this context means making my sense of well-being conditional upon having a preference met. I think this attachment to preference is the cause of suffering.
Listening to Michael Singer’s podcast lectures over the last few months I’ve been presented with a story I became familiar with through my earlier life as a practicing Christian. In Luke 22:42 Jesus is praying in Gethsemane, about to take upon himself the troubles of all people in order to atone for them. He says, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” I used to understand this as Jesus submitting his will to the will of God, but with Singer’s perspective I now see it as an analogy for living life without resistance.
Jesus starts his prayer with a preference: remove this cup. He then concludes by accepting whatever will come, regardless of his preference. It seems that while Jesus had a preference, he was not attached to it. He could anticipate what was coming without insisting that it unfold differently. He was able to meet reality without resisting it. After this prayer he was arrested, brought before the rulers to be judged, and ultimately was killed. For the purpose of this article, I’m looking at this story symbolically.
It is not bad to have preference. It is not bad to have expectations. It is not bad to have expectations born from attached preference, although this might be the recipe for suffering. A movie hit streaming a few months ago that I had heard mostly bad reviews about. I was indifferent to or unfamiliar with the cast. I find the director to be overrated. But the topic of the movie was very interesting. Based on my experiences and preferences, I expected to dislike the movie. One weekend afternoon with nothing to do I put the movie on. I planned to turn it off if it didn’t immediately hook my attention. When the movie ended I wanted more. I thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of my expectations. I think this is because I wasn’t attached to the preferences that led to my expectation. I didn’t have a high opinion of the director, but could they still make a good movie? Sure. I didn’t know the actors, but could they be great? Sure. People on the internet are saying the movie isn’t any good, but can people on the internet have some wonky opinions? Case in point…
Let go of your expectations, especially the ones that are based upon your preferences if you are feeling like you need them to be met. Wonky opinion? Perhaps, but give it a try. Practice letting reality be what it is. Practice allowing the universe or God or whatever your belief is to unfold before you. Personally, I believe my spirit entered this life for a purpose. I don’t know what that purpose is, but I think it has to do with growth. I believe that a direction was chosen and a gentle push was applied. All I needed to do was to go with the flow, but I didn’t know. I lacked the wisdom to see how painful experiences could be for my benefit, and I developed preferences to protect what I thought needed to be protected. This resulted in me resisting life, holding on to past experiences, afraid to let them go.
Surrendering to life or submitting to God’s will doesn’t mean becoming a victim of reality, it means responding to reality. It means accepting that things won’t always match your preference or expectation, so hold them lightly. Experience life as it is and respond to what happens, rather than demand that it be what you want and react when things go askew. It’s okay to like or dislike a movie. It’s okay to expect a movie to be good or bad. It’s okay to suffer. But if you don’t want to suffer, if you prefer to experience peace, it’s also okay to relax your attachments to preference and release your expectations for reality to be the way you want it to be.
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