The Most Mindful People Still Lose Their Cool

You slipped. Now what?

I love my apartment.

It’s located on the third floor, tucked quietly into the back of the building, and features a cozy sleeping loft, a large window that frames a tree-lined city view, and a calm atmosphere that feels like it’s blocks away from the busy boulevard at the front. It’s my refuge.

But a few weeks ago, a new neighbor moved into the unit underneath. Their blaring music started immediately, persisted for hours each day, and usually carried late into the evenings.

The first few days, I put up with it, because hey; that’s apartment life. And honestly, they had great taste in music.

But eventually, the volume grew so loud that the lyrics could have come from my own living room. The pictures on the walls vibrated. Noise-cancelling headphones were useless. And as someone who works full-time and is currently enrolled in a 12-hour semester, the cacophony killed my concentration.

Now, old Derek—the one mired in a decades-long depression, with an extremely short fuse, and who instantaneously reached terminal anger at the slightest trigger—would have gone ballistic, retaliated in fury, and later regretted my actions.

However, a couple of years ago, after my negative life approaches ultimately shattered everything I held dear, I forced myself to face these emotions, trace their roots, learn their lessons, and release my clinging to them.

Shattered: Life 2.0

Now, I’m much more measured when it comes to confrontation. I don’t necessarily avoid it, but I always pause, breathe, and sit with myself as long as I need before reacting to the world’s “unfavorable” stimuli.

Therefore, after some consideration, I begrudgingly decided to write them a short, polite note and tape it to their door: “Please turn down your music. Thanks.”

Perhaps it was too brief, though, since the next evening, I didn’t hear a peep, which caused me to reconsider my approach. Cessation definitely wasn’t my goal, because as a fellow music lover, I didn’t want to interrupt their daily decompression.

I just needed them to turn down the dial a bit, you know?

By the next evening, however, they replaced their silence with banging on the ceiling (my floor) a few times a day.

At first, I rationalized it as hanging pictures and other decorations. I thought that was feasible, because 99% of the time, I wasn’t moving around. I was always sitting at my desk, eating at my dining room table, or laying on my couch. In fact, many times, I wasn’t even downstairs, and was instead relaxing in my loft.

But eventually, the banging became too persistent, and increasingly angry. It was clear that they heard something above them, and they now labeled me as the excessively noisy neighbor.

Unfortunately, they never left a short, well-intentioned note on my door to help me understand their perspective.

So, as the days progressed, I sat with their persistent behavior—and my growing frustration.

Then, this past Sunday, things escalated.

Around 9:30 pm, I was enjoying some pizza at my dining room table following a day of homework, when their pounding started. They were clearly furious.

Even though I hadn’t moved from my spot for at least half an hour, I froze in place.

Finally, they stopped. Seconds later, I heard the door connecting the hallway to the stairwell fling open and slam against the wall, followed by multiple enraged knocks at my door.

My heart pounded. My muscles tightened. My thoughts raced.

“Was this really happening?” I wondered. “What in the hell am I doing that’s led to this point?”

They knocked again, this time more insistent. I briefly considered answering.

However, while the complex was built in 2023, its developer, for unknown reasons, didn’t install peepholes in any of the doors. Therefore, I had no idea what awaited me on the other side, if there was more than one person, if they had a weapon. . .

A million possibilities flooded my brain, none of them good.

After 10 or 15 seconds, I heard the stairwell door fling open and crash against the wall again, followed by an encore performance from their apartment door underneath me. This time, it slammed so hard that my floor vibrated like they’d resumed their music. Then, they screamed at the top of their lungs and began slamming their fists against my floor.

After weeks of this nonsense, I was exhausted, frustrated, confused—and now, intimidated. I just wanted my peaceful corner of the world to return, but felt backed into a corner and was far past my limit.

Like triggering an automatic nerve response after touching my hand to a hot stove, the emotional cocktail slipped past my usual mindfulness protocol and manifested in furious recompense.

I returned their yell.

My feet lapped around my apartment, stomping as loudly as possible.

I drove my legs into the floor like I sought to crack the support beams underneath. I wanted them to pay.

And when I stopped, I was—finally—met with silence.

Even now, a few days later, I still haven’t heard a peep from them.

However, while my quiet external environment has resumed, I’ve since encountered a deep sense of regression following such a lengthy break from the shame, regret, and revulsion that “old Derek” experienced after these emotional outbursts.

But after mindfully sitting with these emotions, my newer, more self-compassionate version has much clearer vision, viewed through the lens of these three core truths:

Truth 1: Separation is an illusion.

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” - Edgar Allan Poe

My downstairs neighbor isn’t my enemy.

They’re me, holding up a mirror to myself, trying to get my own attention. Their anger is mine, reflected back to me. I’m both the guru and the student.

Because while we might feel we’re isolated entities bumping into one another like marbles spilled from a jar, experience tells me we’re more like waves in an ocean, each rising and falling from a single consciousness.

Seen through this lens, there are no fingers to point, no blame to assign, no hate to shoulder.

There is only the acknowledgment that we are, in more ways than not, one another.

Therefore, I recognize that the fury I felt pounding through the floorboards was the same fury I’d spent decades refusing to face, and consequently, dumped onto the world around me.

Hadn’t I already quenched this red-hot inner flame, though?

Truth 2: We transcend through repetition.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

After stomping around my apartment, my first thought was: “I’ve failed. After all of this work, I’m back at square one.”

But then, I remembered that’s not how growth works, especially when it comes to retooling old patterns. After all, these life approaches once worked, however dysfunctional. And after we jettison them for healthier approaches, they seek relevance any chance they get.

In this way, whether knocking on our doors, banging on our ceilings, or screaming through our floors, they’re expecting us to pick them up, place them back on our shoulders, and carry them forth once again.

Therefore, falling back into my flames wasn’t a sign of failure. Instead, it’s part of the curriculum. The lesson lies in encountering old patterns, and choosing different responses to them.

Seeking Peace Among Our Flames

In this way, I quickly regained control, prevented a downward spiral, and avoided drowning myself in shame for days. My body felt it, I moved through it, and my mind learned better regulation from it.

And that’s messy, human progress.

Truth 3: We must love ourselves before we can love others.

“To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful. Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us. You cannot stay away from yourself forever, you have to return, you have to come to that experiment, to know whether you can really love. That is the question—whether you can love yourself, and that will be the test.” – Carl Jung

For most of my life, loving myself was painful (if not impossible), so I was equally incapable of providing the love anyone else deserved. Because loving meant sitting with all of my aspects, facing their ugliness, holding them with compassion instead of judgment, and curiously seeking their wisdom instead of casting them aside with condemnation.

However, once I had no choice but to meet my suffering with tenderness, miracles happened: I gained the skill of extending that same grace to others. Because I recognized that they’re also suffering, fighting invisible battles, doing the best with what they’ve got, and wholly worthy of love.

Self-compassion isn’t selfish, it’s mandatory. Until we pause, turn, and face ourselves, we continue projecting our unhealed wounds onto everyone we meet, blaming them for our pain, and expecting them to do the impossible: quell our suffering.

In this way, Jung wasn’t being dramatic. When we finally turn inward, wrap our arms around the red-hot iron of our suffering, and hold on until it cools, we emerge capable of a love we never knew existed. One that we can then extend to others.

Consequently, the path to forgiving my neighbor ran directly through forgiving myself.

Thank You, Neighbor

I don’t know what’s going on with the person downstairs. Maybe they’re seething in silence while plotting their revenge. Or, maybe they’re doing their own inner work, processing their patterns, and facing their flames.

However, I do know that my setbacks don’t define me. Instead, my response to them does.

Old Derek would have let that outburst spiral into weeks of self-destruction. He would have numbed the shame with substances, directed the anger outward, and used the incident as proof that mindfulness was a waste of time.

New Derek sat with the discomfort, processed it, learned from it, and most importantly, extended compassion to the version of himself who slipped.

And that’s the whole practice.

We fall. We face it. We grow. We fall again, usually in smaller ways, sometimes in bigger ones. But each time, we have a choice: collapse into who we were, or rise into who we’re becoming.

And I am deeply, imperfectly grateful for the opportunity.

Thank you, neighbor.

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