Why No Bother

​Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well and encouraged despite …well, so much. Most days, life is a rollercoaster with ups and downs and surprises and habitual motions and thoughts, thoughts that will make us enjoy the rise or be bothered by all the commotion and the unexpected. Surely, the past year and a half had many twists and turns bothering and disrupting what we knew our lives to be.

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Audio: 🗣

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Could there be more reasons to be bothered? Wasn’t it Pooh Bear who often would say “Oh Bother”?! I highly recommend the 2018 movie Christopher Robin - is one of my favorites and a must see. But this week’s message isn’t a movie review, but an invitation to consider the radical idea that nothing bothers us - 
no thing bothers us -
but rather, it is our thinking about a thing that bothers us. 
(Cause to pause?!)
 
Just think about it: without thinking about a thing how could a thing bother us? We need consciousness, awareness of a thing to even form an opinion about it. And notice the forming of our opinion - who is forming it if it isn’t us? I suppose you could just take on the opinions of others, but that still falls within your responsibility; aka, your ability to respond to everything in your environment. So once again, no-thing bothers us, it is only how we think about a thing that bothers us. 
 
Since we have inquisitive minds, no doubt you are looking for exceptions to this idea - I suppose being stung by a bee is a bother no matter how you think about it - the bother is the physical pain, but how much more emotional pain do we experience when we apply a story to the occurrence: I should have been more careful, I shouldn’t have worn bright colored clothing around these flowers, I shouldn’t have done this or that and now look, I’ve been stung. Or even worse, thoughts like: “this always happens to me.”
How about a little Pooh Bear change up from “Oh Bother” to “No Bother”?!
 
Imagine living more with the response of “No Bother”, especially regarding life’s daily nuisances.
This is not to say we should not stand up for our highest ideals, but the more we let nuisances bother us, maybe the less effective we become at living out our ideals; we best influence others by being a living example for them to follow.
 
“Daddy, I can’t hear what you’re saying because your behaviors are so loud”.
 
Yes, stand up to tyrants, but from a place of inner strength nurtured and developed from a place of higher consciousness; a consciousness that notices all the more our thinking about a thing rather than just the thing provoking an automatic unconscious reactive response.
 
This week consider more your thoughts about a thing being the primary bother rather than the thing itself. Oh, and watch the movie Christopher Robin, we can all benefit from viewing a sweet little Bear and considering how peaceful he lives no matter circumstance.
 
Make it a great “no bother” week!
 

Steve Luckenbach