As a kid my greatest Disney World love,  the thing that filled me with anticipation before each visit, was the ride  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I remember climbing down to take my seat on the submarine, watching out the window as we traveled deep under the ocean seeing mermaids, and giant squid, and other sea wonders. As soon as the ride ended all I wanted was to get back in line and do it again.

As I got older, my family stopped taking us to Disney and I didn’t go again till I was about 16 years old. The first thing I did when I got to the park was run for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But even as I stood in line, I saw things I never noticed as a kid. There was no ocean, no submarine, you could see the ride tracks just a few feet under the murky water. The ‘submarine’ was  dank and dirty, the undersea wonders just cheap plastic. As soon as I got off the ride I had an ah-ha moment. I told myself, “Alana, never look back, never look too closely at things you enjoy, when you need to, look away. Do whatever you can to preserve good memories,  keep the happy bits and avoid/ignore the suffering.”

Nearly 2 decades later, I am sitting in the car, reflecting on this memory and realize, I got it all wrong.

1. Looking away from something can’t change what it actually is –I thought, if I avoid revisiting my happy places, I can stay in control, things will be as I imagine and remember. It is the same as my tendency to look away from decay, I ignore what I don’t want to see. But whatever my memories, whatever conditions I set around pleasure and suffering, whatever I I I Me Me Me does, it does not change reality. My perception  does not make a ride something other than that what it is.
2. Nothing I do will ever, ever ever ever ever ever ever, allow me to have only the happy side of something and not the suffering — You see, I loved the ride. I loved the snacks in India when they were still fresh in the wrapper, I loved my Wonder Woman body the night of the Halloween party. Then, when these things changed I tried to avoid the pain of loss, to look away. Clearly though, given that I still remember the great ride disappointment of 2 decades before, my tactic does not work. Ignoring decay does not prevent it. Avoiding the suffering that comes with  loss, as long as I still have things I don’t want to lose, is impossible.
3. Looking away has a cost — it’s not just that my idiotic method (i.e. wrong view) of looking away doesn’t work, it actually works against me. Over and over I think that ride, that snack, that body is worth it. Over and over I will suffer to get those thing and suffer to lose them. But things in this world are only worth it until I start believing they are not any more. And the process of believing, of gathering evidence, starts by looking. (Present day Alana says one of the next blogs takes a concrete example, smoking, to explore the process of moving my mind from worth it to not worth it..stay tuned).