Obsidian Sync 2024-12-06 13:47:40

content/daily-notes/2024-12-06.md

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 ### 2024-12-06
 #### Meditations with Mortals Chapter Day Eleven
-Read the chapter titled _Just go to the shed: On befriending what you fear_
+Read the chapter titled _Just go to the shed: On befriending what you fear_, in which the author unpacks the concept of the _gnawing rats_ we have in our lives.
 
 > I learned this way of thinking about avoidance from Paul Loomans, a Dutch Zen monk who explains it in a lovely book entitled Time Surfing. Loomans refers metaphorically to the tasks or areas of life you’re avoiding as ‘gnawing rats.’ But he rejects the conventional advice about dealing with them, which is to man/woman up and confront your rats – to get over yourself, in other words, and to attack the problem with brute force. The trouble is that this simply replaces one kind of adversarial relationship with your gnawing rats (‘Stay away from me!’) with another (‘I’m going to destroy you!’). And that’s a recipe for more avoidance over the long term, because who wants to spend their life fighting rats? Loomans’s surprising advice is to befriend them instead. Turn towards your gnawing rats. Forge a relationship with them.
 >