Day 190. This quote was shared with me by a client today. She is a friend of the boy's grandmother, who phoned her from the E.R. Monday evening to tell her about the dog attack. The little boy was badly injured, primarily in his face, but he is going to be all right. Physically, and I have a strong hunch emotionally as well.
When I heard the quote I knew it would open tonight's blog. Not because I am being dramatic or morbid. The quote reverberated because it so powerfully reminded me of the indomitable human spirit. Our capacity for survival is unfathomable. In the midst of the terror of a dog attack, this little guy had the resourcefulness to literally protect his jugular (probably saving his life) and save his eyesight. Gassho to Animal Planet for providing instruction on what to do if attacked by a dog. Especially in a manner understandable to a three-year-old.
I desperately needed to be reminded of the strength of the human spirit. It is tempting to feel overcome with rage and hostility and hatred. Those emotions, however, make me too strongly identified with the people who gunned down Tom and his colleagues. The third credo in my father's arsenal of parenting platitudes was, "Two wrongs don't make a right" (originality was not the man's forte). Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. These are not inconsistent lessons from history. When I pause to reflect on the revolutionary changes in technology in the past couple of centuries, I marvel at the lack of evolution in humankind's skill set at resolving conflict. At the macro level, we suck at it. The premise remains the same: bite and kick and hit and kill and take. I am pretty sure these methods were firmly established even before the Cro Magnons clashed.
The means through which these ends are accomplished have changed dramatically. Killing implements have certainly evolved faster and more impressively than advances in maternal health care. At the risk of stating the obvious, these improved methods of destruction don't seem to be advancing the well-being of our species very effectively. I doubt they will change until societies attach more value to compassion, patience, negotiation, intellect and compromise than they do to large, uh, guns.
I'm on one of my academic tirades. The ones that signal I am coping by waxing cerebral, i.e. I am avoiding painful emotions by residing in my prefrontal cortex. It's effective, and served me brilliantly while in graduate school, but it's not the kind of writing I want to do on my blog. In the interest of authenticity, I'm stopping myself and heading for the cushion, where it is virtually impossible to dodge what is really occurring within.
Reality bites sometimes. A lot of the time. But I'm going to keep trying to stay in touch with it anyway. Because it's not going anywhere. No matter how hard I try to disappear into my gray matter.
Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc
No comments:
Post a Comment