Growing Pains

"I hate everybody." - D.L. in Rota, Spain (October, 2002).

Day 183. I am a woman on the edge. On the edge of what, I couldn't tell you. I probably have too much ego strength (not the kind of ego we're supposed to surrender as Buddhists -- the kind of ego strength you get from ten really good years in analysis) to ever go off the edge, since my primary coping mechanism is to get my butt on my cushion. I was all ready to write a dramatic blog about hating everybody and how crappy the world is, when lo! and behold! I log onto my blog, the dinosaur behaves perfectly and boots up in record time, AND I have a new follower!! Gassho to ToTravelThailand, and welcome to my blog. Your timing couldn't be more synchronistic. Gassho to the universe as well. The One always keeps me humbled, off center, and vastly appreciative of the wee spit of nothingness I occupy in the grand scheme of things. Irony always strikes me as a Peak Experience! I don't much believe in coincidence, and I NEVER believe a cigar is, actually, a cigar! Symbolism and metaphor make life so much more interesting!

An unfortunate combination of heat, hormones, and headache has rendered me all revved up with no place to go. Not a good combo for blogging as a sane person. Although, now that I think about it, I didn't commit to remaining sane; I committed to blogging and meditating every day, with sincere attempts at grammatically correct sentences. In utter truthfulness, I believe I've accomplished (to date) my original goals. Sanity is a relative term. The longer I practice as a psychologist, the wider my perimeters of sanity become. For myself as well as my clients. We are all doing the best we can.

I just returned from dinner with a friend I've known since we were ten years old. We met through our piano teacher, who required us to list our initials and the number of minutes we practiced each week on a little card by her telephone when we came to her house for our weekly lesson. Carla and I generally recorded 60 minutes or less, which averages out to (duh!) less than 10 minutes per day. As you might surmise, we were not overly dedicated to the pursuit of our instrument. I fell in love with "C.T." before we ever met. We were comrades in rebellion as we competed with one another for the weekly "least minutes practiced" honor and bonded over our shared loathing of the ass-kissing, 1,000 minutes or more of practice, overachieving students (I realize those two pianists probably went on to Julliard and are now happily employed with major philharmonics. Ahhh, well, to each her own!)

Focus. Carla is engaged to be married to a 68-year-old White Male. She is my age. You can imagine my conflict between a desire to unconditionally support my friend and a conviction that she is making the biggest mistake of her life. She disclosed today that her finance told her in no uncertain terms that if Carla's daughter has a child with her black boyfriend, the "brown" child ". . . is not welcome in (his) home." In my initial response, I deviated wildly from my Buddhist principle of Loving Kindness. I think it came out as something like, "Carla, are you ****ing kidding me? Is he ****ing serious? This is 2010, not 1964! You're really planning to marry this ****ing asshole?" Yeah, not one of my most compassionate responses.

I quickly regrouped and apologized to my friend, reminding both of us that I love her no matter what (including if she decides to marry a bigoted, racist fool). Wow. What a dilemma. I promptly came home and text my bigoted, racist, on-a-break partner. The message was not exactly laden with compassion. This cushion-sitting makes it very hard for me to be hypocritical. The implications of keeping my promise to myself regarding sitting meditation and blogging is proving to have larger consequences than I could ever anticipate. I've looked inwardly, and as best I can detect, I am certain that things are not unfolding in the service of a really good movie script. It is what it is. These are not original archetypes. Growing is painful. No way around it.

I have a pretty good story to relate about the origins of the quote I selected for tonight. However, given the present state of my psyche, I'm opting for getting to the cushion as quickly as I can. Good thing I've upped my time to 40 minutes. I have a great deal upon which to meditate.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc