Working with difficult emotions

One of the things you hear a lot about mindfulness meditation is that it is supposed to be good for "working with difficult emotions" -- that when you feel angry or spiteful or scared you can treat it as just one more part of your practice, as an exercise, and work with it.  There's no promise that you'll feel instantly better, but the thought is that over time you can ease into a better space than you were in before.

Gosh, it sure is nice to be given an opportunity to exercise.

Actually as difficult emotions go, I suppose this morning wasn't that bad.  Wife finally (after almost two months of dithering and delay -- whoops, was that me being spiteful?) started reading and commenting on my proposal for dividing up the assets.  You may remember that she had said the only thing she disagreed with was how to handle her insurance policy.  I now conclude that this means she had never read the rest of it [oops, there it is again] because she started nickel-and-diming it, ... all by text message.  And actually if I stop posturing to make myself look put-upon, I knew she would do so from the beginning -- which means I knew she hadn't really read it before.  There were things I put in there out of spite as a kind of petty, impotent revenge against her manic spending during the twenty-five years that we shared a bank account.  If she was going to go out and spend $1600 on a watch (which she did once) then I was going to make damned sure that I counted the watch in her assets as worth $1600 and didn't let her depreciate it or wrap it into something else.  I also estimated the value of our books higher than it probably really was, and she took twice as many books as I did.

Anyway, she started sending me gripes this morning by text, that there's no way she owns $6000 worth of things or $12,000 worth of books.  She added "I think they [the books] should all be thrown out of the calculation, and if I have some you want come get them."  I couldn't help feeling this was a little ironic, given her attitude towards the books when we were moving out of the house, but hey. 

All I actually said was, "Make a list of the things you truly believe it is worth our time to argue about, & we'll go over it systematically. I'm not going to argue onesy-twosy. Also there may end up being some decisions that aren't perfect but that we live with because they are nickel-and dime stuff." 

Wife:  Fine. Give me a while.

Hosea:  You've already had 2 months but fine, whatever.

Wife:  And $6000 isn't onesy-twosy to me by the way. Much less $12000. That's a huge amount of money.

Hosea:  G2G

Wife:  Expected you would. 

Yes, I was being snotty, petty, spiteful.  All of the above.  At least at that point I shut up, allowed her the last word, got up from my desk, and went for a walk.  And of course it helped:  the walk, the change of scene, the fresh air, clearing my head.  It all helped.  I felt better.  I also spent some time repeating the metta-meditation to myself as I walked, with emphasis on the third verse:

May even those I have difficulty with be filled with loving kindness.
May they too be safe from inner or outer harm.
May they too be peaceful and at ease.
May they too be completely happy.

Did it help?  It didn't hurt....