Centipedes and Irrationality

I am seriously disturbed by centipedes and millipedes. The deviation from 2 legs to something more strange is the justification for many people's fears. Some people get upset by the lack of legs (snakes), others draw the line at 8 legs (spiders). My bar is quite a bit higher, but it exists. I am also seriously disturbed by the thought that one day everyone important to me will decide they've made a dire mistake in associating with me, and immediately depart my life, leaving me to die alone.

There was a centipede in my shower today. Technically, on the ceiling above my shower. If you were to ask me on any given Thursday what I'd most like to do upon encountering a centipede, I would be extremely unlikely to say "take off all my clothes and stand close to it for awhile." But I really wanted to take a shower.

Mindfulness and meditation experts teach that instead of engaging our thoughts as they go whizzing through our minds, we should merely acknowledge them and carry on. Like clouds floating through the sky, or waves seen from the bottom of the ocean. Those are the most common analogies.

When presented with a centipede, my options are limited. I can't do battle with them, because they might jump on me and invade my personal cone of serenity with their many legs and turn me into a raving lunatic. It was tempting to let the presence of the centipede and its excessive legs run me out of my own bathroom and send me to work dirty and unhappy. Instead, I showered anyway. As I stood there, with no walls or clothing to protect me, I would turn from time to time to check the status of the centipede. Mostly it stayed in the same place, right over my head and slightly to the left. It didn't actually do anything, because centipedes (at least the kind in the U.S.) can't actually hurt me.

I know the thought can't hurt me, but sometimes when I imagine disappointing someone important to me, I lose the ability to walk through doors. The thought scurries all over my brain with a million evil legs, and I am overcome. My life stops.

By the end of my shower, the centipede and I were comfortable companions. I was happy to leave him (her?), but I didn't have to run. If I hadn't sat down to write this all out, I'd have forgotten about it by now.

Shower with it, sit with it, it's all beginning to seem the same to me. We have a million opportunities to be courageous in a day.