Debatable Insights #1-10
Meditations for ordinary people
What irks you? A baby screaming when you wake? A dishwasher that needs unloading? A load of laundry to be folded? A dog barking at the door? Your partner asking you questions? The day of work ahead? The ant on the counter? The toy on the floor? The hangover? Back pain? Life has no sympathy for your objections to it, no recourse for injustice. Think of the tick looking for a warm, safe place. There is no safe harbor. There will always be a storm and the attitude with which we face it.
There’s a reason momma keeps the cookies on the top shelf. Beware the vendors who want to live in your pocket, selling their yummy snacks or giving them away with fervor. They aren’t concerned with how your story ends. Whether it be food or tech or some other guilty pleasure, keep your sweet treats further than arm’s reach. Place them somewhere where the work you put in to retrieve them is always the more significant part of the journey. See how much sweeter life is then.
If you have been wronged by someone, if they have caused you pain, slighted you, undervalued you, stabbed you in the back, fooled you, embarrassed you, shattered your world into a zillion unfixable pieces, then you are deceiving yourself. These things can only happen to a victim, and you are not that. You are a liver of life. You are suffering, and joy. The more experience you embrace, the stronger you become—if you have the will to expand beyond, and leave behind, your tiny shelter at the center of the universe.
We drink alcohol because we cannot stand how we feel without it, because we believe something external will make us feel better, because we became convinced that what we are looking for is beyond our capacity, but there is a greater fear in that separation we need to face. In Buddhism, they say the difference between heaven and earth is a hair’s breadth of separation. Alcohol—and any other toxin that clouds the mind and is objectively detrimental to health—increases that separation.
Try for a day, even an hour, to do one thing at a time. You take pride in your productivity and your hustle, yet you avoid the more challenging feat. Amidst the ceaseless barrage of colored dots on screens, the mad shouting of lost souls, and the impatient ticking of machines, it is only this—your pure, undivided attention—that makes you human. One thing at a time. This is how you save your life.
“A wicked child is the most beautiful thing in the world” (from Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson). What makes a wicked child ugly? Is it that she does not understand how our rules apply to her? Is it that he does not submit to the embrace of our authority? Or is it that we would prefer this child to share our desires, that in this child we hope to find the acceptance and belonging that we demand? A wicked child challenges the notion that we are in control. A wicked child shows us our true reflection and invites us to see life with them, if we could only reach out and hold that little hand.
Is pornography not a form of sexual misconduct because it does not suit the legal jargon? Is the world sexual confusing? Or misconduct? Can we speak plainly? Or is it ethical to kill a woman for adultery because the law says you may do so? Were any number of atrocities in the course of history moral because of a shortsighted and timid law? You cannot live in the gray areas any more than you can live on the extreme precipices. A path is plain enough. Life is a journey toward clarity. If, like Lao Tzu says, you “have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear,” then these questions will not be so perplexing, and you may finally stop making excuses and start giving your best effort to discover the truth.
Look! There is a man. His name is Quintin. Quintin is making a fool of himself. He has had too much to drink, and he is saying mean things that he thinks are funny. Judging by the eye rolls and the awkward laughter and the squirming, his audience wants to escape him—you among them. Yet, you hold your tongue. You let him charge along without a word of counsel. Does this man not deserve your help? Is it inconceivable that he too may be writhing in some unspoken pain? You might say, “Quintin, I believe you are intoxicated, and your jokes sound mean. I thought you ought to know about it, and I’d like to help if I can.” You could be smoother, but, regardless, would it hurt you? Would it hurt him? Does it hurt to reset a dislocated shoulder? Of course it does, and of course you should, unless, of course, you lack the skill or the courage.
Arrogance. When you perseverate over the need to be right. When you imagine someone apologizing to you, or when you refuse to forgive a perceived betrayal. Arrogance is denial and delusion. You are arrogant, when you judge, when you grow impatient with incompetence, when you believe someone is wasting your time, when you believe the present circumstances do not meet your standards. You are arrogant more often than you would ever care to admit. Can you see it? Or have you censored the truth of the matter? You must discern the knot before you can begin untie it.
You check your email, your stats, your likes, your follows. You hope for subscribers and followers and acceptance. You study the analytics. You comment. You play the game as they tell you to play it. You know the right thing to do: don’t check the messages, don’t pick up the device, don’t pull down on glass that can’t be pulled. And you do it all anyway, again and again, until you find yourself, once again, fuming. And still you go on like this. What earthquake will it take for you to realize the beauty of rejection? You don’t need any more permission than this to go forth and live your life. It’s true. You don’t belong to a fleeting digital maelstrom. You belong to the web of lost and hopeless wanderers. It is there you will find the liberation you seek.