A Propensity To Be Triggered

Pema Chodron is a Buddhist nun whose writings I really like. She’s insightful and she’s also funny. I always think of Buddhists as being kind of above normal human foibles. She disproves that. In one of her books she talks openly about her own “propensity to be triggered”. Most of us have certain things that trigger us and if we are aware of those things ahead of time, maybe we can head them off at the pass and avoid stupid behavior. For example, and I’ll use myself here. The other day I was longing for nachos. If I couldn’t have nachos, I would have settled for almost any other form of junk food. Seemed like a reasonable thing to me, to occasionally long for something not healthful. I made the mistake of mentioning it to a friend who immediately and seriously informed me that junk food isn’t good for me. Well, duh. As if I were not aware of that. I’ve been interested in nutrition since home economics class in high school and I know what constitutes healthful. (My adult children still razz me about slipping wheat germ into their scrambled eggs.) My knee-jerk reaction was to instantly be annoyed that someone would think I was that dumb. That’s my propensity to be triggered. For someone to assume I don’t know something that I consider myself to be really clued in on. Then of course I kind of wanted to have the junkiest food I could find and inform my friend I did that. To be that childish. Instead I fixed salmon and a salad for dinner and felt self righteous. But I’m still craving the nachos.

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