“To understand everything is to forgive everything.” Buddha
I don’t think it would be a shocking admission on my part to say that my writing is a personal kind of thing. I guess there are some, who go full bore in that direction, but that’s never been my deal. I love my privacy and I’d never truly invade it, certainly not for the sake of a blog post.
One of the reasons why I don’t like to make a big deal about my Zen practice is that it could so easily be misconstrued as something that it isn’t, at least for me. If I have learned anything from the cushion, it is that I know nothing special. The idea of pontificating about anything at all is a superfluity I try not to engage in.
So, I create a word gumbo, mixing the desire for nuclear privacy, without ever losing sight of humility in the search for clarity. I got hit pretty deep and it took me behind the curtain of my life. I can’t lie. I’d say I don’t regret any choices I’ve made, which is not the same as being blind and insensitive to their consequences, however tempting.
It got me thinking how easy it is to think my choices about most everything are right. Now, I am not talking about knit picking every single one either, nor am I implying even a hint of the ghost of genius, believe me. Maybe it’s a reflection of a lazy mind, I don’t know.
God knows, I have done some fairly dumb shit throughout my life. I suppose I have made a choice to feel good about my life, because last time I checked, there’s no room for subtleties at the end. I don’t want any confusion. I know for certain I never purposefully wanted to cause pain for others. It would involve a kind of meanness that has never been a conscious part of my life.
This is where it gets tricky. It doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what people effected by my actions think. This is true for all of us. It is like worlds colliding, because neither one will attempt to embrace the other in their rightness. Is it so important to be right? Parallel energy plunders forward, blinders in place, prohibiting a view of the other’s internal landscape.
I’ve been around for quite a while. I have made countless choices, big and small. I’d be lying if I said I took others into account each time. When I chose to leave NYC in ’87, it was huge for me. The people it was going to effect the most were my two sons. I knew for a number of years that life in NYC was not the life I envisioned for myself. I held out into my early forties, but I was suffocating, physically and emotionally. I made a choice.
After about a week on the road, I pulled up to my snug, little adobe home, tucked away on five acres, adjoining thousands of BLM acreage. Northern NM found me, in many ways just like Kauai, years later. The story of how I ended up in the Southwest is part of the libretto of my life, a story written with my first breath.
Until that moment of liberation in the high desert country, all alone, life seemed to be happening to me, a predetermined scenario and I didn’t even have top billing. Suddenly, I was the star of my own show and it was wonderfully intoxicating.
Yes, I became somewhat self-absorbed, unaccustomed to feeling I was in charge of my own life. I loved the freedom. My whole life, I felt like a stranger and now I was home, for the first time ever. A kind forbearance took hold, a one way ticket passed the consequences of my actions. What could possibly be wrong with the life I had chosen for myself?
My choice to leave NYC was a selfish one. I am not one who thinks that’s a dirty word, believe me. If you don’t take care of yourself, you are of no use to others, at least that was my mantra in that moment and many more to follow. The Buddha was a fan of cause and effect. Everything that you do, everything that is done, has consequences. If you think you are always right, you can’t possibly appreciate the precipitates of your actions.
Ultimately, me thinking I’m right got me stuck in the quick sand of presumption, a very unattractive life pose. It matters what other people think and they are just as right as my self-aggrandized persona. I can beat my chest all I like, dancing to the rhythm of my personal perfection, but it would be blind to the feelings of others.
Honestly, after all this time, the idea of being right has lost its currency for me. Certainly, when it comes to parenting, it is the feelings of the children that matter. Many of them form their set-in-stone ideas when they are very young and they remain frozen, embellished upon over time. It is not their fault.
Years go by and details blur, including the corollaries of your actions. I have recently been reminded and it has been very jarring. What the hell does being right actually mean anyway? As much as I have tried to simplify my life over the years, it ain’t easy, nor does it make it right.
Steamrolling on the fast track of being right is wrong. Being the other is the only way to get a clearer vision of your actions and their consequences. Compassion is a two-way street and one of us has to choose to take the ride for the other.