life

When you make your bed, make your bed for God

At night, my wife is always cold and I’m always hot. We used to try to share blankets, but inevitably, one or both of us was uncomfortable. For this reason, even though we sleep in the same bed, we sleep with separate blankets. This is our low-tech way of adjusting our personal heat settings. 

Because of our schedules, we both wake up fairly early, but I tend to wake up earlier. In fact, if my wife wakes up and I’m still in bed she knows I’m either exhausted or sick. In these rare instances, she is kind enough to just let me be and she gets our daughter ready for school, which is usually a task that we share. 

Each morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, the first thing I do is get on my knees to pray. I thank God for another day, I ask him to remove the things that are blocking me from being of service to him and my fellows, and I ask that he guides my thoughts, words, and actions so as to bear witness to his love, power, and way of life. 

After my initial prayers, while trying to remain quiet as to not wake my wife up, I fold the blankets on my side of the bed and go downstairs. This morning, however, when I looked at the blankets, I simply didn’t feel like folding them. I got up, looked at them, and turned to walk away, but then the thought popped into my mind, “When you make your bed, make your bed for God.” 

With this thought, I was overcome with a sense of great peace. For a moment, it was all so clear. Whether making my bed, brushing my teeth, cooking breakfast, washing the dishes, or giving my daughter a goodnight kiss, if done in a prayerful manner, it is all prayer. 

By setting my intention toward God and focusing my attention on the task in front of me, I’m no longer just folding of a blanket. I’m participating in an act of thanks, praise, and supplication. Maintaining this attitude of constant prayerfulness is not easy, but acknowledging the possibility and desirability of such a posture is a step in the right direction. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

These are the only moments like this that we get together

Sometimes, all of the things my daughter needs from me can feel like a nuisance or a burden. Sometimes, she asks too many questions and I just want some quiet so that I can do my work. Sometimes, I don’t want to listen to Taylor Swift or Blackpink in the car. 

But then I remember that someday, my daughter won’t need me anymore or at least not as often. Someday, she’ll live on her own and won’t be around to ask me questions all of the time. Someday, I’ll be driving in the car by myself missing her and wishing I could have this time back even if it means listening to Taylor Swift or Blackpink on repeat for hours at a time. 

Sometimes I get frustrated with my daughter or impatient with her. I’m only human and I have a limited amount of energy and attention, and sometimes I give so much to others or to my work that I have very little left for my daughter. But then I’m reminded just how fleeting these moments are, and just how precious they are. 

These are the only moments like this that we get together. God willing, there will be more moments together, but these are the only moments like this. And we don’t them back. What we get is what we get. There are no do-overs and there is no rewind button on life. Every single interaction is unique and special, and I can either push them away or embrace them

Someday, my she will ask me for a piggyback ride for the last time. Someday, she will ask me to do her hair, to take her to a school dance, and to put her to bed for the last time. For these reasons, and many more, I pray to treat every time like the most important time. I thank God for my little girl every day and I’m beyond grateful that I get to spend the time with her that I do. I know it will not last forever and that makes me appreciate her even more. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Being upset on behalf of others only makes matters worse

Something I have noticed over the past year or so is that a lot of my spiritual and emotional unrest occurs on behalf of others. I have porous emotional boundaries and, when someone around me is upset about something, I find myself getting upset about it as well. It’s not even that they are asking me to be upset. I just take it upon myself. 

Ever since I can remember, even if I don’t act like it, I’ve been extremely sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of those around me. I can feel what others are feeling and it affects me deeply. While this sensitivity may be useful at times, it is also a hindrance to my own peace and emotional integrity. 

I don’t know how or why I developed this sensitivity to the feelings of others. At some point in my life, I’m sure it served as a defense mechanism of some sort. If I could sense what others were feeling before they acted on it, if I could anticipate their needs, I could then either defuse a potentially volatile situation or protect myself from whatever was coming my way. 

The problem is that I can’t shut this sensitivity off. It’s like my emotional feelers are turned up to ten all of the time and it’s exhausting. If I’m around people who are happy, it makes me happier. If I’m around people who are at peace, I’m more peaceful. If I’m around people who are hurt or angry, I’m also hurt or angry.

For this reason, I often crave solitude in order to recharge. If I’m going to be around others, I prefer the intimate company of one or two people at a time. Or, if I have to be around a lot of people, I need to know that there is a way out in case I get overwhelmed or overstimulated. 

Where I run into trouble, however, is when someone close to me is angry, hurt, or disturbed by something. Whatever they feel, I feel it too. If they are mad about something or at someone, I find myself feeling the same way, even if I wasn’t mad before. If they are hurt or saddened, I become hurt or saddened as well. It’s not even helpful. In fact, it tends to make things worse. 

My being upset on someone else’s behalf, when they didn’t even ask me to be, has caused me way more grief than gain. It has gotten me into arguments and fights I had no business in and it has cost me a lot of joy and peace. This is not something I’m proud of, but I used to be. 

I used to think that I was doing other people a favor by getting upset on their behalf. I was their ally and I was fighting for them so they should be grateful. As it turns out, however, amplifying negativity doesn’t improve anyone’s life, least of all my own. 

I’m not entirely sure what the solution is, but I know that I’m not solving any problems by getting upset. In fact, I have made many situations and relationships much worse by adding to the conflict instead of being an example of peace and harmony amidst it. In some circumstances, it has cost me or nearly cost me important friendships. 

I know that Jesus expects more from me than this. Being sensitive, being empathetic, is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. In fact, it is kind of a superpower. Like all superpowers, however, it can either be used for good or for evil. Jesus loves me exactly as I am, but he also commands that I “be perfect, therefore, as [my] heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48, NIV)” which means that if this trait is causing me problems, I must be willing to “cut it off (Matt 5:30).” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Work is good, creation is good, and rest is good also

This Saturday, my daughter competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament in Pennsylvania, about two and a half hours away from where we live. She had some really tough matches, but came away with a silver medal in one division and a bronze medal in the other. It was a submission-only tournament, so there was no way to win by points. Someone has to tap. 

In this particular tournament, if no one submitted in regulation time, the match goes into an overtime cycle. The overtime cycle consists of several positions intended to put one competitor in an advantageous position from which to submit the other. For the kids, if no one wins in the overtime positional rounds, the match goes to a sudden-death takedown round where the first takedown to a pin wins. 

Of the four matches my daughter had, two in the gi and two in nogi, all four matches went into overtime. Her and her opponents truly battled it out and showed immense amounts of heart. Their grit and determination was so impressive that there were multiple spectators unrelated to either child watching their matches and cheering on the kids. 

After a long day of competing about two and a half hours away from home, we drove back and stopped for dinner. We let our daughter choose where she wanted to eat and she chose Ethiopian food. So we stopped at our favorite Ethiopian spot in Baltimore, had dinner, and then went home to unpack, shower, and go to bed. 

This morning, before church, we went to the jiu-jitsu academy so that my daughter could work with a couple of the coaches and one of her friends on the weaknesses the tournament exposed in her game. This was her choice. She wanted to go and, with the help of a good training partner and several generous coaches, she got a lot done in the hour and a half we were there while still having fun. 

After church, we went to my wife’s sister’s house to have lunch and relax for a while. On the way home, my daughter asked if we could go for a bike ride when we got back to the house. Even though my wife and I both agreed it was better to rest, my daughter continued to ask if we could go for a bike ride and told us, in spite of her physically, mentally, and emotionally draining Saturday, she wasn’t tired. 

I explained to her that, even if she doesn’t feel tired, it’s important to rest. “But resting is boring,” she said. 

“Maybe,” I replied, “but resting is necessary and resting is good for you. Do you know what God did after creating the heavens and the earth?”

“He rested,” she said begrudgingly. 

“That’s right,” I said. “From the creation story in Genesis, God teaches us three things: work is good, creation is good, and rest is good. Yesterday and even this morning, you worked really hard and that is good. You also got to enjoy creation by doing jiu-jitsu and using the body and mind God gave you, and that is also good. But now it’s time to rest because God tells us that rest is good as well, and it is good for you. God willing, there will be other days to ride our bikes.” “Okay, daddy,” she replied. 

After this, we went home to curl up on the couch, hang out, and watch a movie as a family. Moments like these are as important for her as they are for me. Through her, I learn how to do better because I want the best for her and have a bad habit of accepting less than the best for myself. Together and with the help of God, we make each other better. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

God got my attention today

I’m not a very patient person. Well, that’s not altogether true. I’m not very patient when it comes to waiting for other people. When it comes to me and my responsibilities, however, I’m more than patient. In fact, I’ve been known to take my sweet old time and wait until the absolute last minute to get things done. 

If I’m being honest, I have a plethora of double standards. It seems as though, as soon as I become too full of myself, God shows me the truth, which is that I’m just as flawed and broken as everyone else. By a Godly standard, I have no leg to stand on when it comes to judging or being impatient with other people. 

In spite of this, I’m still not a very patient person. This evening, for example, when my daughter and I got home from jiu-jitsu class, I got out of the car and started walking toward our house. I was hungry and looking forward to taking a hot shower and having dinner. But when I looked back, my daughter was still in the car. 

I immediately grew impatient. I stood there staring at her, wondering what was taking so long. Then, right as I was about to say something, I suddenly turned away and looked up at the evening sky. As I did, a peace came over me and it’s as if time slowed down. 

I stood there staring at the fluffy white clouds floating by atop a light blue backdrop and everything just felt okay. I was no longer agitated and I was no longer in a hurry. The only thing that existed was that moment, the clouds, the sky, and my awareness of them. 

I’m not sure how long I stood there, but it felt like both an eternity and an instant. Then, I heard my daughter scuffling around and I turned back to see what she was doing. As she got out of the car with her jiu-jitsu gear, her backpack, and her viola case, she said, “Daddy, can you help me shut the door?” 

A few things occurred to me in that moment. First, God is good and he is always there to remind me when I need to simply be still in his presence. Second, my daughter probably would have gotten out of the car sooner if I had offered to help her with her stuff. Finally, it’s really not that big of a deal. 

Sure I was hungry and sure I wanted to take a shower, but these selfish concerns were not and are not more important than being present to both God and my daughter. I can’t promise that I’ll do better next time, but the when next time comes, which it will, perhaps I’ll remember those clouds, that sky, and my daughter’s sweet voice asking me to help her. God got my attention today and I’m willing to change for his sake and hers. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Isolation is not solitude and God is good

One of the reasons the c-vid lockdowns were so hard on me personally is that it is very easy for me to stay home for extended periods of time without leaving the house or interacting with anyone else. Isolation is my default state. And it’s simply not healthy. 

It takes a lot of effort, and has taken a lot of spiritual work, for me to want to be around other people. Left to my own devices, I would much rather hide. With food, water, and electricity, I would gladly stay in the house for long periods of time with no interactions with the outside world. In fact, the longer I stay in, the less I want to or am capable of going out. 

I’m not talking about solitude. Solitude is a healthy spiritual state wherein a person seeks God in the quiet, alone times. I’m talking about isolation. I’m talking about turning my back on God and my fellows. 

Isolation is not about pursuing one’s spiritual depths in a quiet place. Isolation is the unhealthy practice of disconnecting with the world in order to be alone with oneself. In solitude, I practice transcending self. In isolation, I obsess over self. 

The c-vid lockdowns, for me, were about forced isolation. They exacerbated my anxiety, i.e. “self-centered fear,” and amplified my fears and insecurities around socializing. Perhaps most importantly, however, the lockdowns gave me an excuse to revert back to the agoraphobia and paranoia I had spent so many years trying to overcome. 

Outside of the spiritual work I had done, which by time c-vid hit I had largely fallen away from, martial arts, specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu had become a major social outlet for me. In addition to being great exercise for the body and mind, jiu-jitsu was the place I went to be around other people and to connect in a healthy, positive way. But just like that, I was no longer allowed to do jiu-jitsu and I began withdrawing back into isolation. 

Before I had to stop doing it, I don’t think I fully comprehended how important jiu-jitsu had become to my life. It was where I pushed myself physically, stretched myself mentally, and where I saw and interacted with my friends in the second most intimate way I believe one person can interact with another. 

As soon as I realized that our academy was going to be shut down, I began to feel my old self creeping back in. My life started to feel like it was collapsing in on me, my connection to the outside world was being broken, and I started having anxiety attacks. 

I can honestly say that emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, the lockdowns were one of the most challenging times of my life. So much of the spiritual and psycho-emotional progress I had made over the previous years all seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. But it was not all bad. 

The lockdowns forced me to take a look at myself and where the foundation I had built for myself in previous years was not as sturdy as it needed to be if I were going to thrive into the future. If I’m being honest, it broke me, but in this brokenness, I began to pray. I began asking God to take away the things that I was holding onto that were blocking me from being the person he wanted and needed me to be. And God answered my prayers. 

Over the course of several years, what was at first brokenness turned out to be exactly the spiritual death I needed in order to be reborn as God would have me. I began seeing a therapist who helped me reconnect with my spiritual path. I reconnected with the religion of my childhood, Christianity, in a new, deeper, and more personal way. I refocused my efforts on being healthier, both physically and mentally, being a better husband and father, and being a better teacher and mentor, both in jiu-jitsu and in other aspects of my life. 

As the result of this transformation, now when I am alone, it is not isolation, but solitude because I know that I am not actually alone. God is with me and much of my alone time is in pursuit of a better relationship with him. But I also appreciate even more the time I get to spend with others, whether it be at jiu-jitsu or with my wife and daughter. 

In the end, as much as I resisted the lockdowns, everything that caused them, and all of the consequences of them, some of which we are still feeling, they helped me to see that God is ultimately in charge. He uses even the worst circumstances to draw us closer to him if we are willing, and his love does not stop pouring out into our lives simply because the world shuts down. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Please use your inner voice

My daughter had a dance performance at school to day. It was the result of a week-long special program brought into her school where the kids were taught different dance styles from the 1900’s, spanning from the 1910’s through the 1990’s. I have to say, having been born in the late 1970’s, hearing people refer to that era as “the 1900’s” definitely made me feel old. It’s hard to believe that there are twenty five year olds who were born in the year 2000, but I suppose that is how every aging person feels at one point or another. 

Where was I? Oh yeah. My daughter had a dance performance at school today which my wife and I were planning to attend. My sister-in-law was also going, and my wife and her were going to ride together because they had plans to go out after. 

The performance wasn’t until early afternoon, so I went to jiu-jitsu class in the morning. When I was leaving class, I got a text from my wife that said her sister was at our house and she was taking a nap in my daughter’s room. She then sent me a text that said, “When you come home, please use your inner voice.” 

English is my wife’s second language and, while she speaks, reads, and writes it as well as most Americans, sometimes she mixes up slang or common American sayings. In this case, she clearly intended to say, “When you come home, please use your inside voice,” and I knew what she meant. Still, her actual words caught my attention. 

While it is sometimes necessary for me to be told to “use my inside voice” because I can get rather excited and, with that excitement, my volume tends to increase without me realizing it, I can honestly say that I’ve never been told to “use my inner voice before,” at least not in those words. That said, if I’m being honest, it felt less like a typo or misunderstanding, and more like a sign. It’s something I needed to read and it’s been on my mind all day. 

We could all do well to use our inner voice more often. I know I could. There are so many instances every day where that quiet whisper of God is drowned out by the world or by my own selfishness, pride, fears, and desires. Temptations are loud, obtrusive, and easy to give in to. 

We don’t have to practice listening to temptation. It will gladly impose itself on us without any effort on our part. Listening to our inner voice, on the other hand, requires a great deal of discipline, effort, and time. This is why practicing silence is so important, why meditation or contemplative prayer are essential components of the spiritual journey. Without making time for silence, without making time for listening to God, we may find that our inner voice is too quiet to hear when we need it most. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul

I’m supposed to be writing my graduate school admission essay, but it’s hard. It’s hard because it matters. It’s hard because it’s personal. It’s hard because it’s about me and that brings up all of my fears, insecurities, and self doubt. 

Doing something like this brings me face to face with the stories I tell myself about my worth and my worthiness, about what it means to be accepted, and about what it means to be loved and received as I am, not as I pretend to be. 

Writing about myself, why I want this, and why I am the right candidate and this is the right school for me terrifies me because it exposes me. It exposes me because I refuse to give them only part of me. I don’t know how, and that’s not what they are asking for. It terrifies me because, if I give them all of me, what if that is not good enough? 

This fear, this paralyzing, mind-numbing, soul-shaking fear is how I know it’s important. It’s how I know it’s real. It’s how I know that I have to do it. The fear tells me where to go, even if I don’t want to go there, even if I hate the feeling of moving forward. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul. It won’t leave me alone. It calls to me. It draws me nearer. It’s an inevitability. With every passing day and every toll of the bell, I can feel the pull toward the work that I must do. Even as I write this, seemingly in avoidance of the call, it has brought me one step closer to finishing the hard work of facing myself. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

A perfectly imperfect reminder of our perfect imperfections

A couple of years ago, my mother gave my daughter a four-pack of friendship bracelets. My daughter gave me one of them and somehow lost the other three. They were supposed to all say, “Best Friend,” which is kind of strange if you think about it. Is it really possible to have four best friends? We are lucky to have four good friends, let alone best friends. But that’s not really the point. 

Anyway, all four bracelets were supposed to say, “Best Friend,” but I noticed that the one my daughter gave me actually said, “Bsst Friend.” It took me a while to notice it, but when I did, I asked her about it and whether it had special meaning. My assumption was that it was meant to be that way. 

She told me that it was supposed to say, “Best Friend” and that “Bsst Friend” was a mistake. I told her that I loved it anyway and, in fact, I liked it even more because it was unique. “I bet no one else has a Bsst Friend bracelet from their daughter,” I said. Her response took me completely by surprise. 

She said, “I guess your bracelet is just like us.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Well, it’s imperfect, but it’s still beautiful, just like we are still beautiful even though we are imperfect” she replied. “Nothing is really perfect anyway. So your bracelet is kind of like a reminder of that. Right, daddy?” 

“Yes, dear,” I responded. “No one and nothing is perfect except for God and, even though we do the best we can, we will always fall short. But that’s okay because we are still beautiful and God loves us even in our imperfectness. Thank you for the bracelet, my dear. I’ll wear my Bsst Friend bracelet proudly to remind me of you and how much I love you.” 

“I love you, daddy,” she said with a big smile and gave me a hug. 

I still wear my Bsst Friend bracelet quite often. I sometimes get funny looks because it’s a rainbow bracelet and I am a pretty big, rather imposing looking guy with a bald head, a beard, and signs of cauliflower ear from years of jiu-jitsu, even though I’m actually just a big, gentle panda. I think a lot of people assume it has some hidden meaning, and I suppose it does. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Driving in the moment

I’m old enough to remember driving without a GPS. In fact, when I started driving, computer programs like MapQuest and the like did not yet exist, so we couldn’t just type our location and destination into a computer to print out our route. We simply had to know where we were going. If we couldn’t figure it out, we had use a map or ask for directions. 

As a teenager, I don’t even think I wrote directions down. If I didn’t know how to get where I was going, I’d ask someone and then I would just go. If I got lost, I would either find my way or I would ask for help, usually by calling someone from a payphone to guide me in the right direction. Once I went somewhere, especially if it was somewhere local, without even trying, I could get there again from memory. 

When I traveled through different states, I would pick up the state map at a welcome center or a rest stop and stuff it in my glovebox in case I needed it. For years, I traveled up and down the east coast visiting family with nothing more than my memory, a set of handwritten directions, and a handful of free state maps. My friend and I even traveled to the deep south multiple times a year for blues festivals, putting tens of thousands of miles on my car and, except on a few rare occasions in new places, almost never got lost. 

This all changed when I became a commercial coffee-equipment repair-technician fixing espresso machines and such in and around Washington DC. I was only on the job for a few days when I realized I was in over my head. I had to travel from store to store fixing coffee equipment, in and out of the city, and time was of the essence. 

Now, I was driving for a living in an unfamiliar and confusing place, and especially if I wanted to get home at a decent hour, I couldn’t afford to get lost. GPS units had been out for a while at this point – I remember my father showing me the one he had – but they were still very expensive. After driving in circles between DC and Arlington, VA one day for about an hour trying to figure out where I was going, I finally broke down and made the investment. 

That was nearly twenty years ago and I have been using a GPS in one capacity or another ever since. I’ve been through several dashboard or windshield mounted units, but now it’s simply an app on my phone. Specifically, I use an app called Waze these days because it offers free, crowdsourced traffic, police, and hazard updates which are updated in real time. 

Waze is great and I am sure that has helped me avoid many hours worth of traffic jams, as well as tickets from police speed traps. For this reason, I have found myself using it even when I know where I am going and how to get there. I realized recently, however, that this convenience does not come without its cost. 

At some point in recent years, I started having anxiety about being stuck in traffic, in tunnels, and in any other situation I feel like I can’t easily get out of. It’s something I’ve been working through in therapy and also with my prayer and meditation practice. In spite of having made an amazing amount of progress in this area, I still have moments here and there when my anxiousness gets the best of me. 

One such incident happened a month or so ago when we were meeting some friends in the Baltimore for dinner. In order to get where we were going, we had to go through the Harbor Tunnel and, having never been to this particular restaurant before, I had Waze up on my phone to tell me where to go. It was getting late, it was dark, and I was exhausted from a particularly long week. 

As we approached the tunnel, I began getting anxious. Recognizing whet was happening, I started to think through the situation a bit in an attempt to overcome this feeling that was welling up inside me. Then, the thought came to me, “Is God anxious about driving through tunnels?” 

What this really meant, at least in my mind, was, “What part of you is anxious about driving through the tunnel? Is it the part of you where God resides or is it something else?” I then said a prayer asking God to give me the courage to get through this moment and he did. My fear began to fade, I drove through the tunnel, and we got where we were going. 

After a nice dinner with friends, we got in the car, and I began driving home. As we approached the Harbor Tunnel this time, I could see on Waze that there was traffic building up inside the tunnel and, because of this, the average speed in the tunnel at that time was around 20mph. I immediately panicked and pulled off the highway onto a side street. 

I don’t know what it is, but the thought of being trapped in traffic in the tunnel was simply too much for me and I decided to find a different way to get home. Waze rerouted me and I ended up driving through the city, eventually finding myself entering the Fort McHenry Tunnel which had no traffic backing up in it. This unnecessary detour added at least thirty minutes to my drive home, not to mention what it did to my dignity. 

Over the next few days, I stared to notice a pattern, however. Everywhere I went, I put Waze on to get there. If it showed delays due to traffic, hazards, or whatever, I would start to get anxious. This happened even when I wasn’t in a hurry. 

Then it occurred to me that I was doing this to myself. I was causing myself unnecessary stress by using Waze to look into the future and then obsessing about problems I didn’t even have yet. I was using my GPS to take me out of the moment and it was messing with my peace. 

So I decided to try an experiment. For the foreseeable future, I would go old school. I would stop using Waze, or any other GPS, to get to places I knew how to get to. If I was worried about traffic, I would simply have to leave earlier to account for it, but other than some initial GPS withdrawal, a funny thing happened. I stopped worrying about what was up ahead, and I started focusing on what was in front of me. 

My GPS was taking me out of the moment. It allowed me to abdicate responsibility for my timeliness and even my speed, and, instead of using it as a tool, I had started relying on it to make decisions for me. I was serving my GPS more than my GPS was serving me, and it was distracting me from being present to what was actually going on around me. 

I’m not blaming Waze for my anxiety. Anxiety is a complex, multifaceted issue. However, one of my main anxiety triggers is projecting too far into the future. I have a very strong imagination and when I predict the future, it’s always the apocalypse. I am, therefore, happier and more at peace living in the present moment whenever I can. As silly as it may seem, in addition to my meditation and mindfulness practices, driving without a GPS unless I truly need it is just one small way I can help myself do that.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.