Today I was on the subway with my cousin on my 4th day ever in New York City. We were sitting in the corner of the car, minding our own business. After several stops, I grew complacent.

Then at the next one, a dude gets on and starts shouting. “Could I have everybody’s attention please? I’m only gonna say this once.”

Oh crap kebab, I think. It’s really going to happen. Pelham 123 is going to be taken. This man is going to pull out a weapon and cause an Incident. I expect him to turn around and put a bullet in my gut just to show how kidding he isn’t.

He goes on to request donations of money and food for some such charity type deal which I barely understood because blood is just starting to flow back into my knuckles. He exits the train and mysteriously, no one is dead. The doors close and the train starts moving again.

“Do some of the things down here make you uncomfortable?” my cousin asks me.

“I guess.”

“You tensed up pretty bad when that guy came on.”

My cousin is big into martial arts and meditation and controlled breathing and such, and you know what, so is Fear.less. Joseph Ledoux, Sharon Salzberg, Suzanne Matthiessen, Jen Louden… there are myriad contributors that from various points on the continuum between Eastern spirituality and hardcore neuroscience discuss the benefits of “mindfulness” and “training the brain”. Meanwhile my cousin has been telling me for years how getting control of your breathing can Save Your Skin in a stressful situation by giving you precious oxygen for clear thoughts and quick movements. There I was, with my first real opportunity to show him that I actually paid any attention all to anything he had ever said in his entire life.

I PUNKED OUT.

Having turned the moment of truth into the BLOWment of… FAILURE, I was pretty bummed for the rest of the afternoon. I realized just how frequently my mind is somewhere else, my body on cruise control as I just follow my cousin around the city, paying only superficial wow-this-is-neat attention to my surroundings. Mired in my awe at my own uselessness, I began to perform other feats of ignorance like heading for the downtown train when we wanted the uptown one, though I am told this happens all the time.

Ultimately I guess it wasn’t so much this isolated incident that got me down as it was how obvious it had become that I simply nod my head at most things I am told or come across. My focus gets derailed easily.

Overcoming problems requires vigilance, whether you’re an alcoholic trying to sober up, a nine-year-old trying to stop biting his nails, or an anxious person trying to monitor their reactions to stress. Training also requires vigilance, whether you’re a tennis player trying to serve with good form, a blogger trying not to use the same example for anything twice, or an anxious person trying to monitor their reactions to stress. Oops. Anyway, there’s a reason it’s called training. It’s because you’re supposed to track your progress.

(I had more train puns ready for that sentence but I thought it would be preposterous. I will find subway to share them with you.)

Stay on the rails. Eventually you’ll reach the station.

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