Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026
THE FIVE YEAR PLAN
“We all enter situations where something irks us, and for a couple of days we may have all sorts of mental conversation about it. If you can put these insignificant things aside without being disturbed in your peace, your sense of harmony and your sleep, you will have taken a great step toward conquering yourself. Many of the things which bother us are very insignificant. We give them a big importance from our sense of perfection, but most of the time our idea of perfection is insignificant. It really doesn’t matter.”
(Swami Sivananda Radha: Time to be Holy, Ch. 34)
What I needed, as I sat down to record this blog, was an antidote to the kind of toxic emotions that come up unbidden when something upsets my inner equilibrium. Something was done that got me triggered, and, once triggered, I have a hard time, as they say, getting the horses back in the barn. One comment, one gesture, and suddenly the whole herd is off and running: old injuries, fresh outrage, the familiar inner script about being misunderstood or disrespected.
Sensing a need to dissipate that uncomfortable energy, I went straight to the pool. For the next half hour or so I tried to release whatever energy was pumping through my body, and prompting all kinds of snappy comebacks — things that I wanted say or do that might convey how deeply offended I’d been. Stroke after stroke, I could feel the arguments composing themselves in my head, all the clever ways I could put the other person in their place, let them know just how inappropriately they had behaved.
As I continued swimming, I suddenly had the epiphany: what might happen if I fast forwarded to five years from now? Would any of this matter in the least? This thought cast a whole new light on the present. It was as if the sun had come out. It probably did — we’ve had a cloudy day — but nonetheless, I was struck by the idea that if I could just transport myself to a future time when this petty little irritation was long forgotten, then I could save myself the time and energy that went into wanting to express my indignation or my hurt feelings or whatever emotions were prompted in the moment. Just that single shift — five years out — and the whole drama shrank to size.
Since then — and this strikes me as miraculous — I have not given it another thought. The mental replay stopped. The speech I was rehearsing simply evaporated. And the best part? I have no lingering energy around it. No simmering, no tightening in the chest, no imaginary re-litigation of the scene while I’m supposed to be doing something else. Empty space where the grudge was starting to build.
I believe that this shift is credit due to the teachers and the teachings that taught me to at least count to 10, taught me to take ownership of my thoughts and feelings, my reactions, and be responsible for the trail that I leave. These tools come from years of studying Eastern psychology, philosophy, and spirituality, Western psychology, all kinds of resources that people have shared throughout the ages. Because guess what? ALL of us have moments that severely challenge our best intentions. Times when we want to believe or feel or do or say things that are absolutely NOT our ideal behavior. The point of all the years of spiritual study and practice is not that we never get triggered; it is that we learn, little by little, how to steer ourselves back toward the enlightened, compassionate and understanding people we have the capacity to be.
So this is my offering today: the five-year plan. Think about anything that might have you triggered at this moment, or has been a recent trigger — and ask yourself, five years from now, is it really going to matter?
PS If that doesn’t work, try remembering what you were thinking, feeling, doing or saying five years ago. Not much there, huh? So we know the five year plan works. We just have to play it forward!
Sent from my iPhone