The trap I keep on creating for myself

The trap I keep laying for myself appears again and again, as familiar as the objects on my desk. I tell myself that all I want is equanimity. No more replaying scenes I can no longer change, no more anticipating storms that may never reach my shore. I want to glide through life the way good surfers do—alert, loose, letting the waves carry them forward instead of knocking them down.

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But wanting equanimity and living it are two very different things. Meditation helps but presence also requires an environment with fewer distracting choices. And that is where I seem to stumble every time.

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Take the green jacket. I spotted it online, a shade I convinced myself I didn’t yet own. I hesitated—after all, four green jackets should be enough for any reasonable person—but this one was slightly different. So I mulled and mulled and finally clicked “order,” reassuring myself that I could always return it.

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It arrived this morning in a box far too large for what it carried. I held it up to the light and saw immediately that the colour difference is barely perceptible. Even a trained eye would not detect it. So of course I should return it.

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What unsettles me is not the purchase but the space it occupied in my head. Hours spent circling a decision, hours I could have used to write, or prepare that late speech, or simply walk through the early spring air. But the real loss is subtler: the agitation created by something utterly inconsequential. A wave in the mind where there could have been stillness.

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My greed and vanity took over and created this senseless stir. But it’s also my desire for distraction. The YouTube videos I promised myself I’d stop watching, the light-hearted but unnecessary WhatsApp conversations, the news updates that will lose their relevance before dinner. They all slide into my day disguised as information, but they are variations of the same distraction.

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I say I want equanimity, and yet I keep courting the very things that pull me away from it. Apparently, there is something I resist facing. Maybe it is the quiet itself that unsettles me. Maybe distraction has simply become a habit stitched into the hours.

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There is only one way to know. I have to create calm around me if I want a calm mind.

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But first, I’m going to try on that green jacket one more time. I have a suspicion that with the afternoon light it will look distinctly different from the ones I already have.