Mind The Conclusions

The Conclusion I Wanted to Reach

On a Friday afternoon I drove over to a friend's place to pick up some things. She was working that day. She came out to the curb with two bags, gave me a half hug, said almost nothing, gave me another half hug, turned around, and went back inside.

I asked if she was okay. She nodded as she turned away. I said that it didn't look like it. Then I got in the car and drove home.

By the time I was on the road there was a hole in the middle of my chest. I mean that literally. It was about the size of a football. Hot at the edges, cold in the center, pulsing, heavy, dark. The cold part felt like a piece of my body had gone missing and left the space behind. That night I didn't sleep well. My body ran hot. The next night was the same.

And my mind went to work.

It wanted a conclusion, and it had one ready. Here it is, in the words it actually used: she doesn't value my kindness, my friendship, my company. She doesn't even read my books, the ones I wrote painstakingly.

Then I looked at what that was. The most wounding story available, and my mind reached for it first and wanted to move in and stay. There was nothing comforting in it. It was there to shift my attention from uncomfortable sensation to this conclusive story.

We like to say we conclude to feel good and dodge pain. That weekend showed me something else. I was choosing a different pain. The verdict takes the ache of not knowing and swaps it for the pain of being wronged, and the second one is easier to carry. It has a shape you can hold. Being wronged is a thing you can carry around; being incomplete just sits there and stares at you. And it lets you be right.

So why did I conclude?

I wasn't weak that weekend, and I wasn't chasing comfort. I was watching my mind do the only thing it knows how to do. It closes things. It decides what they are so I can act. It runs all day and it is right most of the time, which is why I trust it. What I saw that weekend is that it cannot sit with an open question. Give it nothing and it will build an answer out of whatever is nearby, and it will even take a painful answer over no answer at all.

A text came in after I got home. She said she hadn't meant to be rude. My mind took that as evidence and kept building on that.

I sat with it. The whole weekend I wanted to file it. I wanted to decide she was rude, or decide I was taking it too personally, or decide the whole thing was drama and put it down. Any of those would have let me sleep. This was closer to holding a door shut than to anything I would call patience. The conclusion kept pushing and I kept not letting it land. It was as uncomfortable as anything I've done in a while.

Then she messaged. Can we chat, if you're free?

Here is where I stop looking good. I didn't call. What I felt was a pull to withhold, and I recognize it now for what it was. The question in my head was whether I should give her my attention and energy at all, after what she'd done. That's a small, deniable revenge. From the inside it wears the face of self respect and self righteousness.

She messaged again. The pull to refuse was stronger the second time. That's the part that tells you what it really was. Patience doesn't get harder when someone reaches out twice. Withholding does.

I called after I'd finished my work and my chores. Perhaps later than I needed to.

She was carrying something heavy. Much heavier than two bags. She didn't owe me an apology and she gave one anyway. We talked. When I hung up, the hole in my chest was gone, the way a cramp disappears.

I want to be careful about what that proves, because I don’t want to sell you the wrong lesson. It closed because she came back. She sent the message. She told me what was going on. That was a gift, and I nearly refused to take delivery of it. If she had never texted, I would still be sitting with the open question, and the work would have been exactly the same work. Staying with something doesn't get you an answer. Most of the time nothing comes back. What staying with it did was keep me from believing my own lie.

That's what I keep coming back to. I came close to never finding out. The verdict was fully formed. It was specific. It included my books. It would have quietly changed how I saw her, and I would have called that clarity.

I don't have a practice for this. But I know what the moment looks like now: It's when the mind has a clean explanation ready and the body is in pain and the explanation would make the pain make sense. That's the moment it's most likely wrong.

The discomfort of not knowing is worse than the discomfort of being wronged. That's the whole reason we conclude. Staying in the not knowing is the work. It feels like refusing relief the whole time you're doing it.