I have a lot more to learn about zen. I can tell because I used “Against the Stream” to assassinate a mosquito in the kitchen tonight. (as an aside, I have to say that although I feel weird about Brad Warner writing for Suicide Girls, I like his style of Buddhism more than Levine’s. I’ll have more to say about this later)

Early this morning (from around midnight to 4 am, to be exact) I practiced active listening so hard that I talked myself hoarse. Here’s something I need to learn about listening and curiosity questions: Saying “do you think it might be time to consider doing x x x?” is the same as saying “What you need to do is X X X”. To my extreme confidence in my patented way of living, sprinkle in my tendency to overshare, and I’m not sure I’m effective in any conversation.

And also: When making a case or an argument, only the important information belongs in the conversation. “Celexa is generic now and costs 4.00 a month, and it works well for me” gives just the right amount of data. “Celexa is the old version and some people use it as an appetite suppressant and when their patent ran out they reformatted the drug and called is Lexapro so your doctor might try to sell you on that but it’s not really any better according to the internet and it’s much more expensive so you might want to consider trying the cheaper one before you take Lexapro” is the opposite of simple.

There was an urban myth around 12 step meetings about 20 years ago that a sponsor once made a sponsee walk around with a raw egg in his mouth, so that every time he felt the need to speak he’d have to remove the egg first, which unless you’re a pretty big dude can take a minute. I never did the egg experiment, but for a while there when I was first “in recovery” the image of the guy with the raw egg splattered across his teeth was enough to get me to self-edit here and there.

On my mothers board I routinely type a long, eloquent, wordy piece about whatever topic gets my knickers in a bunch that day. Inevitably before I hit submit, half the piece will go the way of bad words and misplaced colons, and often the entire post is wiped out when I say to myself “there is no purpose in these words. Step away from the window” and click away.

Many times during everyday conversation I long for an edit button. Perhaps it’s time to put the egg in my mouth.