📿 I feel strongly about this.

Strong preferences and the "neutral person" in Loving-Kindness meditation

YOU CAN LISTEN TO ME READ THIS POST, ABOVE (IF YOU PREFER)

IMAGE ID: This notebook and this pen, ONLY. Aka: my strong preferences in neutral colors.

Hello you, Adreanna here for this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

I’m here to admit that when it comes to preferences I have strong likes and dislikes for basically everything. 

I feel very strongly about writing with a certain type of pen (Muji, .5mm) and just as strongly about what type of notebook my pen is writing in (Kraft cover, spiral, 8x6”, lined)

If you ask me what I’d like for dinner I will likely have a preference on the type of cuisine, the brand, market or restaurant it comes from, and how I like it prepared. I have a preferred type of sheet set (Oxford cotton, washed a few times and broken in) and a way that I like my towels folded (longways, into thirds). 

By and large, my strong preferences are totally harmless, if a wee bit neurotic. I once had someone comment on my opinionated nature that I’m a “woman who knows her own mind” and I thought that was a kind way to put it. Though I do have to keep an eye on holding my preferences so tightly that they solidify into right and wrong. 

You may also be familiar with this mental tumble where preferences calcify into a sort of moral rigidity: The way that I DO THINGS is right, of course, and if you do things differently you’re wrong. I even have a body of evidence as to why my way is objectively right (it’s safer, more hygienic, more aesthetically pleasing) and I’m ready to offer you my talking points until you see the situation my way. 

A large part of my meditation practice through the years has been to find humor in how strong my preferences are, while giving my opinionated self some grace. 

I would say that my practice is “letting go” of my opinions, but that might not happen in this lifetime. (Sorry. I’m a woman who knows her own mind.) If I’m genuinely meeting myself where I’m at, the best that I can hope for is to massage my opinions open into a slightly looser grip. I’ve seen the alternative bubble up in myself and it doesn’t feel so great. I don’t want to move through life tightly wound and ready to pounce on those who see things differently than me. 

I think this is why I find the neutral person in Loving-Kindness meditation so compelling. In some ways, Loving-Kindness picks up where mindfulness leaves off— a continuation of massaging our most rigid bits open.  In mindfulness meditation, the instruction is to regard our experience (as much as possible) without our usual hair-trigger judgement. Instead we’re encouraged to view whatever is present through a lens of accommodating curiosity. 

In Loving-Kindness meditation we’re encouraged to visualize our preferences — our likes and don’t likes — in their breathing, embodied state. There is the person that we like, who we offer sentiments of good will towards (easy). There is the person that we don’t like, or who rubs us the wrong way, whom we offer the same good will (difficult). And then there is the middle category of the ambiguous “neutral person,” who might be the most difficult of all, in the sense that they’re difficult to locate. This person is someone we neither like or dislike, the personification of our neutrality, no strong preference one way or another. 

Of course it’s likely that we’ll still have some preference— even if our preference is not to practice Loving-Kindness towards “neutral people” at all. I’ll never forget the woman who raised her hand after a meditation class to ask, bravely and baldly, what the point was of extending well wishes towards total strangers. (I admire her frankness. If one person says it, more people are thinking it.) Or the 1-on-1 meditation student who confessed that she skips the “neutral person” all together. They don’t hold the same charge as the people we like and don’t like, and so “neutral people” don’t seem as important.

I think of the importance of practicing Loving-Kindness towards the “neutral person” each time I read the comments section on a social media post. The raw polarization often makes my eyes pop. It’s become a customary way of relating to one another in our online spaces; strangers slinging insults, opinions and preferences calcified into “sides.” If you agree with me, then I like you and if you don’t agree, then you’re trash.

In a social climate that feels increasingly divided, I wonder if there’s some benefit in relocating (and redefining) what it means to feel somewhat “neutral” towards other people. Maybe by way of massaging our tightly held preferences open, the “neutral person” in Loving-Kindness practice can offer us something important after all. 

I also wonder if the instruction for mindfulness meditation offers some clues as to how to do this. Notice how quick we are to hair-trigger judgement. Adopt a lens of accommodating curiosity: I don’t know why you don’t fold your towels into thirds, but I’m open to understanding why. Or even — I notice that you don’t fold your towels like I do, but I don’t have to make that mean anything about you, or mean anything about me. 

If we’ve been in the same room together and haven’t formally met, there’s a good chance that you’ve been my “neutral person.” I like to scoop people up in yoga class and bring them home into my practice. I pick people up in the grocery store line, the coffee shop, people pumping gas in the car in front of me. If we haven’t met and you see me gazing at you from across the room, I might just be tucking you into my proverbial pocket so that I can offer you Loving-Kindness later. 

The trick, I’ve noticed for myself, about keeping “neutral people” neutral is that they don’t stay neutral for long. As soon as we’ve had an interaction, there’s a really good chance I will like you. And now I have a preference. Bloop. Just another chance to find humor in how strong my preferences are, while giving my opinionated self some grace.