Suffering's Curve
Blood loss is a bitch. If you have never experienced it before, bully for you, I certainly do not recommend it. Firstly, you are in pain; you simply do not lose enough blood without a little physical trauma. Our bodies are poorly designed automobiles -- without the correct fluid levels in our system, we are not worth a damn. We cease to run, and if we attempt motion, it is amusing to everyone else in the lot except the driver. It simply is not worth the admission price; however, after the nausea and the pain subside for the moment, you gets this floaty, incredible, did-I-just-stumble-past-Crosby's-driftwood-table feeling. You recall the strangest things and even the carpet, for a brief time, seems an interesting and introspective fellow. Did I also mention the off-topic rambling? Yet, I digress.
I know what my article was going to be this week. It is somewhere in the back of mind. However the Irish is winning out and all I want to do is weave on my soapbox. *leans over to pull crate toward the body and sprawls half over it like a heroine addict*
Buddhists will tell you that we create our own suffering. This is a rather profound, sad but pretty true statement. We create our own trauma, and generally, are the cause of our pain. We all know “that person.” The one that cries on our shoulder, rants to mutual friends, calls at 3 a.m., or the one you sit at a dinner and talk about. Yeah, that person, the one we would actually feel sorry for, and at one point, really did feel sorry for - however now we just consider that person “sorry,” and the escapades that unfold in the cosmic joke of his or her existence is almost considered warranted, maybe even deserving. Yeah, that person.
We all know one or several someones that fit the above description. We may have even been, at one point or another, part of the universal joke that someone is telling at a restaurant somewhere in the solar system. In fact, we may be that person right now. For somewhere along the line, or perhaps not in the too-distant future, we will be, “that person;” the one that should have seen the cartoon boulder coming from three miles off with our carefully made map and a GPS system telling us to avoid the inevitable god-smack.
Sometimes I find that being smacked is easier than seeing the whomp-ee. Especially if the injured, idiotic party in question is someone for which you hold affection. You do not want to see someone you care about to plummet off the cliff, no matter how many signs said, “DANGER CLIFF AHEAD.” When you care, you do not want ever use the band-aids, even though you know a time will come when you administer amelioration to some type of pain. Yet when the band-aids turn to gauze, flesh wounds and you flinch to see their number on caller-id with that sing-song tune, “oh what now,” playing in your head … you begin to think back to your Buddhist friends. You begin to do damage-assessment analysis until all thoughts of freak accidents, bad juju and words like, “odd coincidence,” flee your mind. Other words like, “dharma, karma,” and the old fashion favorite, “what-goes-around-comes around,” replace all those rationalizations for your loved one's happenstance. Yet still, you might be unable to let them go solo on their three-fold extravaganza. You love them, you want to support them, and sooner or later they will learn, right?
Hopefully for you, that is exactly what happens. If that is case, please feel free to stop reading.
Still with me? Yeah, thought so. Yes, people do learn from their mistakes (we hope) some just have stepper learning curves than others, but we are talking about, “that person.” The one that cannot conceive that there is any other way, any *better* way to handle the situation than the way he or she is currently handling it right now. You are now, knowingly or not, deeply entrenched in someone else's karmatic debt.
It may be as simple as burning the candle at both ends; maybe you have even taken several days out of your personal schedule and rearranged them to help the other person out. Everything has a price, and the toll keeper will exact the change, one way or another. You may even accept the mounting debits against the quality of your life because this is what you are willing to do for someone in which you care deeply. Being involved in another person's life demands that you allow room for them, that you rearrange some of your things to accommodate.
When does accommodation become insurrection? When does helping another become enabling that person to the point that there is inadequacy to handle his or her own issues? Is it when you realize the interior of your psyche went through an Extreme Home makeover and you missed the episode; you begin to suffer irrevocable traumatic circumstances in your own life that mirror the life of your loved one or is it when their sad outcomes not only effect you but flood over into someone else's life that you hold deep concern?
It is amazing the amount of trauma someone will allow, with arms akimbo, into their lives. Sometimes it is even startling how much they will allow difficulties to rain down on other loved ones. However, this last forecast tends to be the shortest. Sadly, we rarely draw the lines with ourselves. Yet we certainly draw the line for someone else.
The moment another person's drama seeps past us and into someone else's stew pot we adore, the kitchen of emotional feeding closes. We stand armed with Kitchen-Aid hardware and woad induced battle cries; not only for the other person we ride into battle on our mixers for, but for ourselves. Like backdraft, once the door of the situation becomes unobstructed we feel the flames of righteous indignation for every moment we realized we stood in the way of the learning curve. We feel cheated; we raise two-handed bastard swords and cry, “FREEDOM!”
Although I hate interrupting a good charge into battle, it is difficult not to interject that at this moment, we are what we feared, or at least talked to others about in the restaurants and meeting places. We are, “that person.” We have allowed "that" karma to become our own dharma (the order of the universe). Our enabling and our inaction for ourselves has direct relation to the suffering of another. So our saber rattling becomes two-fold: outward anger toward the individual that we believed should have chosen differently and the inner anger toward ourselves for allowing our own lives to be entangled by poor choices.
Either way, everyone loses, until they reach the curve.
"If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you." - D. Brandon
I know what my article was going to be this week. It is somewhere in the back of mind. However the Irish is winning out and all I want to do is weave on my soapbox. *leans over to pull crate toward the body and sprawls half over it like a heroine addict*
Buddhists will tell you that we create our own suffering. This is a rather profound, sad but pretty true statement. We create our own trauma, and generally, are the cause of our pain. We all know “that person.” The one that cries on our shoulder, rants to mutual friends, calls at 3 a.m., or the one you sit at a dinner and talk about. Yeah, that person, the one we would actually feel sorry for, and at one point, really did feel sorry for - however now we just consider that person “sorry,” and the escapades that unfold in the cosmic joke of his or her existence is almost considered warranted, maybe even deserving. Yeah, that person.
We all know one or several someones that fit the above description. We may have even been, at one point or another, part of the universal joke that someone is telling at a restaurant somewhere in the solar system. In fact, we may be that person right now. For somewhere along the line, or perhaps not in the too-distant future, we will be, “that person;” the one that should have seen the cartoon boulder coming from three miles off with our carefully made map and a GPS system telling us to avoid the inevitable god-smack.
Sometimes I find that being smacked is easier than seeing the whomp-ee. Especially if the injured, idiotic party in question is someone for which you hold affection. You do not want to see someone you care about to plummet off the cliff, no matter how many signs said, “DANGER CLIFF AHEAD.” When you care, you do not want ever use the band-aids, even though you know a time will come when you administer amelioration to some type of pain. Yet when the band-aids turn to gauze, flesh wounds and you flinch to see their number on caller-id with that sing-song tune, “oh what now,” playing in your head … you begin to think back to your Buddhist friends. You begin to do damage-assessment analysis until all thoughts of freak accidents, bad juju and words like, “odd coincidence,” flee your mind. Other words like, “dharma, karma,” and the old fashion favorite, “what-goes-around-comes around,” replace all those rationalizations for your loved one's happenstance. Yet still, you might be unable to let them go solo on their three-fold extravaganza. You love them, you want to support them, and sooner or later they will learn, right?
Hopefully for you, that is exactly what happens. If that is case, please feel free to stop reading.
Still with me? Yeah, thought so. Yes, people do learn from their mistakes (we hope) some just have stepper learning curves than others, but we are talking about, “that person.” The one that cannot conceive that there is any other way, any *better* way to handle the situation than the way he or she is currently handling it right now. You are now, knowingly or not, deeply entrenched in someone else's karmatic debt.
It may be as simple as burning the candle at both ends; maybe you have even taken several days out of your personal schedule and rearranged them to help the other person out. Everything has a price, and the toll keeper will exact the change, one way or another. You may even accept the mounting debits against the quality of your life because this is what you are willing to do for someone in which you care deeply. Being involved in another person's life demands that you allow room for them, that you rearrange some of your things to accommodate.
When does accommodation become insurrection? When does helping another become enabling that person to the point that there is inadequacy to handle his or her own issues? Is it when you realize the interior of your psyche went through an Extreme Home makeover and you missed the episode; you begin to suffer irrevocable traumatic circumstances in your own life that mirror the life of your loved one or is it when their sad outcomes not only effect you but flood over into someone else's life that you hold deep concern?
It is amazing the amount of trauma someone will allow, with arms akimbo, into their lives. Sometimes it is even startling how much they will allow difficulties to rain down on other loved ones. However, this last forecast tends to be the shortest. Sadly, we rarely draw the lines with ourselves. Yet we certainly draw the line for someone else.
The moment another person's drama seeps past us and into someone else's stew pot we adore, the kitchen of emotional feeding closes. We stand armed with Kitchen-Aid hardware and woad induced battle cries; not only for the other person we ride into battle on our mixers for, but for ourselves. Like backdraft, once the door of the situation becomes unobstructed we feel the flames of righteous indignation for every moment we realized we stood in the way of the learning curve. We feel cheated; we raise two-handed bastard swords and cry, “FREEDOM!”
Although I hate interrupting a good charge into battle, it is difficult not to interject that at this moment, we are what we feared, or at least talked to others about in the restaurants and meeting places. We are, “that person.” We have allowed "that" karma to become our own dharma (the order of the universe). Our enabling and our inaction for ourselves has direct relation to the suffering of another. So our saber rattling becomes two-fold: outward anger toward the individual that we believed should have chosen differently and the inner anger toward ourselves for allowing our own lives to be entangled by poor choices.
Either way, everyone loses, until they reach the curve.
"If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you." - D. Brandon