Samsara at 4:30
Finding practice in the middle of uncertainty
As a rule, I sign on to every virtual meeting five to ten minutes early.
Partly to make sure the technology is working. Partly because it feels like the courteous thing to do.
This meeting mattered.
It was a third-round interview with a VP, and after four months of unemployment, I was starting to think this might actually be the one.
In this job market, making it to a third interview feels like winning the lottery. Hell, getting a response from a recruiter feels like winning the lottery.
Three rounds in? That starts to feel like magic.
Good thing I logged in early.
My camera wasn’t working, so I spent a few minutes troubleshooting before finally seeing my face appear on the screen. I straightened up, put on a smile, and waited.
Four-thirty arrived.
“The meeting will start when someone lets you in.”
No problem. He’s a VP. People run late.
Four-thirty-five.
Still waiting.
At 4:45, I opened my email and found a message from the recruiter.
The interview would need to be rescheduled.
That frustration didn’t just hit me. It filled me.
I’m fairly certain people two towns over could feel it.
Looking for a job right now is exhausting.
Recruiters disappear.
Interviewers cancel.
Resumes vanish into the void of the LinkedIn application tracker.
At the same time, companies seem to expect more and more from a single role while offering salaries that would have felt low ten years ago.
Last week, I interviewed for a senior-level marketing position responsible for overseeing a team managing eighty-five branded medical websites.
The salary was $75,000.
For a senior-level position.
Lately, I’ve had more success with consulting work. The work itself is rewarding. I genuinely enjoy it.
The problem is that consulting doesn’t always pay immediately, and there are no medical benefits attached to it.
Enjoying your work is great.
Enjoying your work while wondering how you’re going to pay for new glasses is a different experience.
When my partner noticed how frustrated I was, she suggested we get outside.
Usually, that’s my line.
The fact that she was the one suggesting it told me everything I needed to know about my state of mind.
We picked up sushi and headed to our favorite waterfall.
No kids.
No emails.
No recruiters.
No canceled interviews.
Just the sound of rushing water, tropical eel rolls, and two people sitting in the woods.
It wasn’t that long ago that she went through her own stretch of unemployment. She understood the uncertainty, the rejection, the way every setback starts to feel personal after a while.
As we talked, I found myself saying something I hadn’t fully admitted before.
I was angry.
Not just about the interview.
I was angry at my former employer.
Angry about everything I lost in my divorce.
Angry that life wasn’t unfolding differently.
The canceled interview wasn’t the source of the frustration.
It was just the thing that exposed it.
Sitting there beside the waterfall, I realized I’d been carrying more than I thought.
This is where Buddhist practice stops being an interesting idea and starts becoming useful.
Losing a job is a real problem.
A loss of income affects my responsibilities as a parent, a provider, and a partner. The consequences aren’t imaginary. They don’t disappear because I meditate or read sutras.
The situation is real.
The suffering I add to it is optional.
That’s the line I’m trying to walk.
The job loss happened.
The divorce happened.
The interview was canceled.
None of those facts can be changed.
What can change is my relationship to them.
If I’m consumed by anger, frustration, and resentment, my world becomes smaller. My thinking becomes cloudy. Every decision gets filtered through agitation.
But clarity creates space.
Not space from the circumstances.
Space within them.
Enough space to respond instead of react.
Enough space to keep moving forward.
The Buddha encouraged people to test his teachings for themselves rather than accept them on faith.
This is the test.
Not sitting peacefully on a meditation cushion.
Not reading books about awakening.
This.
Getting divorced.
Losing a job.
Starting over in midlife.
Wondering how everything became uncertain all at once.
Some days it feels like I’m living inside the Four Noble Truths.
Other days, it feels like I’m failing the class entirely.
Maybe both are true.
The interview was still canceled.
I was still unemployed.
I was still carrying anger from losses that had nothing to do with that afternoon and everything to do with it at the same time.
The waterfall didn’t fix any of it.
The sushi didn’t fix any of it.
Talking with my partner didn’t fix any of it.
But somewhere between the rushing water and finally admitting how angry I still was, something loosened.
Not the circumstances.
Just my grip on them.
Maybe that’s what practice is.
Not becoming immune to disappointment.
Not transcending frustration.
Just learning how to sit beside your life as it is without letting every setback convince you that you’ve somehow failed.
The interview was canceled.
My life wasn’t.
And that’s the real Master Class.