Let’s fix this mess…..

It’s become a mantra. “The world is a mess”.  We hear it and say it over and over.  The world is dangerous, it’s chaotic, it’s unpredictable, it’s a horrible place to bring children into.  All true, I suppose.  But, it’s always been that way.

Life on planet earth is all of those things and I’m pretty sure it was the same, even BEFORE all of us highly intelligent and highly evolved humans showed up.  It’s fascinating how nature and science are so orderly and rhythmic and yet life is so chaotic.  But, alas, it is.

We see this disorder and randomness in our lives everyday, but we never can quite grasp it as the natural order.  We still believe that if we follow the rules, eat right, brush and floss and pay our taxes, we’ll be okay.  All of those things won’t hurt, but if we’re honest and awake, we know that as the old bumper stickers used to warn us, “Shit Happens”.

The key is how do we react to ‘shit happening’?  I’ve often thought  that I live a charmed life.  Things just seem to work out for me and I look around and see so many people that have had really awful things to deal with.  My parents are still alive at 92, my siblings are alive and healthy.  I am alive, healthy and professionally successful.  What on earth do I know about suffering?

Well, I’m a recovering alcoholic and I’ve been on and off the wagon several times.  I spent time in jail…in two different states.  The drinking was very damaging to me and to numerous relationships.  I’m sober, but never quite in the clear.  My husband was diagnosed with cancer 8 years ago and lost one of his kidneys in the process.  We got through it and he is cancer-free.  I’ve battled almost crippling self-doubt and self-hatred.  I’ve gone through several rounds of counseling and dealt with abusive co-workers and a hostile work environment in one of my first radio jobs.  So, there’s that. Charming, eh?

So many people that I know and don’t know have been through and are going through way more brutal things in their life, but my point is that we all suffer as humans.  Nobody really has a ‘charmed life’.  It’s all in how we deal with it and how we react to the inevitable pain, setbacks and trauma that will happen.

The first lesson is to realize that nothing lasts.  Life is impermanent.  The pain of this moment will subside, as will the joy.  Life moves on and very soon we’re on to the next thing, good or bad.  When you stub your toe going to the bathroom at night, it hurts like hell, right?  For about 2 minutes.  Then, it passes.  Even if it’s broken, it heals in time.

Secondly, practice compassion.  We’ve all been ‘that person’ who is rude in line, cuts someone off in traffic, talks loudly on a cell phone, doesn’t pick up after their dog, etc.  It happens.  Be patient and realize that person may be going through something extremely painful; they may not be themselves at that moment.  Understand that we are all flawed and capable of turning into an asshole in an instant.  Silently wish them well and let it go.

I guess my point is that if the world is a mess, it’s up to us to clean up our own.  We leave little human messes in our wake all of the time.  I certainly have and still do.  In trying to temper our reaction to events, we can make the world a tiny bit less chaotic and painful.  That’s all we can do.  We can’t control other people, despite our delusions to the contrary.  But, we can cut them some slack and even wish them well on their journey.  We all suffer together in our humanity.

Stay connected.  We can help to clean up this messy world, one person, one act at a time.

What is your path?

I’ve been trying to muster up a post for a couple of weeks.  The problem is that I’ve been working on emptying my mind and letting go of my need to comment and opine so constantly.  That doesn’t work so well when you have a blog and a radio show, so I’m beginning to learn how to rope off areas where I am more circumspect in my running commentary and still able to have a perspective that is entertaining or informative and not holier-than-thou.

I already addressed my plan to cut back on the Facebook time, which has been successful.  I check in sporadically and will post this on my FB account.

I am deepening my meditation practice and have been studying the hows and whys of a type of Buddhist meditation, which is bit different from meditation designed for stress relief.  I’m a big proponent of the latter, by the way and found it very helpful for me in terms of cutting some of the chatter in my brain.

But, I want to go a little deeper into the spirituality, ritual and philosophy of Buddhism and that requires pushing the re-set button on many of my ingrained reactions to life.  I’m starting to see that I can be committed to Buddhist concepts and still be an effective communicator.  I can be happy and funny and entertaining, while trying to stay on course.  Spirituality doesn’t HAVE to mean no sense of humor, although often the newly spiritual seem to think so.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Buddhism here in the U.S. and I shared them until I began to study a bit.  Having said that, I am by no means an expert.  The Buddha became enlightened 2500 years ago and teaches us that as humans, we all suffer.  We suffer from our egos, our cravings, our lack of compassion for ourselves and others and most importantly we suffer because we deny the impermanence of all things.  Bottom line:  when we try to control the uncontrollable (our lives), we suffer.  What’s gonna happen, is gonna happen and so we might as well learn to deal with it; to develop some flexibility and yes, a sense of humor about the randomness of our lives on earth.

That is where meditation comes in.  We use meditation to train our minds to let go of the stuff that we can’t control.  We sit and we learn to focus on our breath and when the mind takes off on a tangent of worry, anger, fear, planning, analyzing, etc. we bring it back to the breath.  Over time, we can begin to calm the runaway train of our minds.  We learn that everything is fleeting in life; good times come and go, bad times come and go and we carry on.  For me, the realness of knowing that we all suffer the same difficulties and in the end, the same fate is not only comforting, but a source of energy and joy.  We’re all connected in our humanity and in our suffering, as humans.

I know a lot of my friends think I’m on some airy-fairy trip and that I will soon be chanting in my robes at the airport, so here is my message to you:  that’s not my plan and why should you care if it was?  I’ve often wondered why in a country that was allegedly founded on “freedom of religion”, we are so closed-minded about anything that isn’t Christianity?

The old me would have gone on a rant about that, but the new me will not; I will go sit on my cushion in my little basement sanctuary and focus on my breath.  We all choose our own path, which by the way, we can reverse at any given moment.  Are you on the right one?