Both Things Can Be True…

Everyone is fighting.  So much frustration, conflict, self righteousness.

My husband is reading “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama, and since I’ve dabbled a bit in Buddhism, he asked me yesterday, how can we just float along, with rainbows and unicorns? Being ever kind and tolerant and understanding. Doesn’t that make us zombies?

His point is valid. NOTHING is solved or altered or mitigated without recognizing discomfort, injustice, danger, etc. Innovation and creativity are nearly always preceded by destruction or disruption. If we ignore those things, how do we grow?

That is where “the Middle Way” comes into play. A key principle of Buddhism and a very difficult path to walk.

It’s a variation of my current mantra “Both things can be true”. The recognition that everything is not a binary choice; we don’t have to pick between A and B. There is always a middle ground, a middle way. Something that takes A and B into account and melds them as both being valid or both being invalid, I suppose.

So much right now, tries to force us into these binary choices.

For or against science. For or against one party or the other. For or against masks.

There IS a middle way. We can recognize that science is fluid and contextual. We can recognize that masks are definitely useful in many cases, but not all. We can recognize that parties have differing philosophies and look for areas where we might have a glimmer of agreement.

The Middle Way recognizes that life is both upsetting and glorious. “10,000 joys, 10,000 sorrows”. We have to always look to both sides of the path for truths and have the intellectual and emotional maturity to not ALWAYS choose sides.

Our entire society and in particular much of media and social media is designed to force us to choose one side or the other. It’s ALL about binary choices and that’s why we are feeling so epically divided and confused.

We run most everything through our political filters now. Meaning that we give up OUR authority to make decisions and value judgements. We turn it over to politicians, pundits, media outlets, websites, ‘opinion makers’, etc. And we are in denial of these influences.  We KNOW we are right and we can post the link to an article to PROVE IT.

So, yes, as mature grown-ass adults, we have to listen to our internal guides, compass, ethics, values. We have to consciously be empathetic, compassionate, open to other perspectives. If we do that, we can begin to mitigate some of our fear and anger that is in the driver’s seat.

Both things can be true. The Middle Way.

 

Lessons from a porcupine

There’s a porcupine hanging around our house. He/she suddenly appeared the Sunday morning after I returned from my final week on the job in Denver. We were alerted to this arrival when our younger dog, Ember appeared at the door with a nose full of quills.

We extracted them quickly and she was fine, but the varmint remains. My husband immediately suggested getting rid of it. Many friends weighed in with ‘shoot it’. We explored hiring a local guy to trap and relocate, but decided his fees were a bit too steep.

For you city folk, I’ll fill you in on the ways of the elusive porcupine. They climb and eat trees and often nest in them. You may have walked right underneath them on many occasions. They are not aggressive and are quite solitary; you will rarely see more than one, unless it’s a mother and her young ‘un. They move quite slowly, which is why you will see them dead on the side of the road in rural areas and they do not ‘shoot’ their quills, except in cartoons.

Porcupines are actually rather peaceful, little vegetarians, but the quills are a major problem if you have dogs. I know this from personal and expensive experience. Which is why we are struggling with what to do about our prickly, fellow earth traveler.

We have to do a quick perimeter search before we let the dogs out at night and last night, I looked at my husband and said “Who is this porcupine and what does it want?? Why is it here?”

I Googled ‘porcupine spirit animal’ and this is what I found for when a porcupine enters your life:

It’s time to free yourself of guilt and shame and reclaim the innocence that you left behind as a child. Open your heart to those things that gave you joy as a child; remember fantasy and imagination and bring them into your life again. Make sure that you do not to get caught in the chaos of the world, where fear, greed and suffering are commonplace.

Know that you are protected and that protection is always available to you. It’s time to be yourself, and trust that it is safe to be who you are. The focus here is on faith and trust and the knowing that you can move mountains with these powers.

Bam!

Protection, not threat. We live in a time where we seem to believe that we can eliminate all threats, often by killing them. It’s easier than listening or empathizing or trying to find common ground. Thus, the advice to ‘just shoot it’.

I went out last night with a flashlight to commiserate with our visitor, who I found sitting under a huge cottonwood tree. I told him/her that it was time to move further away from the house because we were fearful for the dogs. He/she turned and waddled away and up a tree and in that moment, I felt such a wave of sadness and affection that I had to take a deep breath to keep from sobbing; over a porcupine.

We are so quick to shoo away that which we don’t understand; so quick to see everything that might be different as a threat. There is always danger, but I think that many times, our reactions heighten that danger, rather than dampen it.

There is chaos in the world, protests in our streets. Politics is divisive and the common reaction is ‘just shoot it’ as if that solves everything. How about ‘just talk to it’ or ‘just listen to it’ becoming our go-to reaction?

So, Mr/Mrs Porcupine. Thank you for the lesson. Be well.