When the sirens go off

When the sirens go off

The weather has been really beautiful lately, so I’ve had the windows open quite a bit more than usual.  Where I live, that means city noises,  and since I live near a hospital, that means sirens.

I’ve noticed though, that the sirens outside are no more of a distraction from meditation than the sirens that often go off inside: insistent, distracting, repetitive and alarming.

To think I can get good enough at focused meditation to not hear them any more seems like a recipe for failure, and that’s the quickest way to give up.

So this is the strategy that I try to remember to call on:  since I “hear” the sirens, internal or external, I move my attention in that moment to my other senses – what I smell, the feeling of my bones and my muscles touching the surfaces where I sit, maybe what I see or taste.  The other sensations that ground me in the moment and break the focus on the noise.  To stop the internal conversation about what it may mean – is it a fire truck or an ambulance?  Does it mean trouble, or does it mean someone is being saved? Am I in trouble?  Is someone I care about in trouble, are we all in trouble?

It doesn’t work every time, but every time I don’t remember to try it, the sirens win.