Morning coffee, cinnamon toast and home-made apple butter. Today finds me in a somewhat ambivalent mood.
Made a pass at online things during a brief access window this a.m., and in the doing, find a bit of snark sitting in a favorite commons area. The underlying reasons and motivations seem silly at best and ominous at worst.
If you read here much, then you know the things that spin out of my head are not always reality. Most times, they are blends of fiction, non-fiction, and possibilities. Threads weaving and crossing and sometimes even I have trouble keeping them straight. Well, not really… but I write them that way because it makes speaking about them easier for me, and hearing them easier for others.
Lately, it occurs to me how tragic it is that we can never really know what others are trying to convey. The best we get is a sense of it; filtered by our own perspective and experience, inevitably shaped by it.
It makes the process of communication interesting, because if one is paying attention, one can outline the shape of another’s thoughts by comparing what is said, what is unsaid, and the manner of what is said.
Today, the example arrived when someone accused me of ‘trying to seem wise’ and of ‘unloading on them for trying to be nice’. The interesting thing being that the reply given to their initial comment was an extension of the piece being commented upon, but it was (seemingly eagerly) taken as an attack on their comments.
This, of course, points to insecurity of self and a belief that others are looking down at one, or always looking for reasons to attack one. In turn, that points to a life of experiences and beliefs that seems rather sad…. but which also, in the moment of encounter, made me a bit angry. It is not the place of the world to shift and adjust to meet or overcome your chosen beliefs. Nor is it the place of others to forever placate you, play as you wish, or even accord your sore spots ‘extra room’.
The initial comment was innocuous enough, and I expanded upon the piece slightly to explain more of the thoughts behind it. It became readily apparent however that the commenter was more interested in making it personal, since the first opening in which it was at all possible to take things personally, they did so.
I suppose I am not supposed to notice, but I reckon you can figure the likelihood of that.
Instead of the accepted (expected?) dance of justification and placating, I simply bounced back that their need to have it be ‘all about them’ didn’t make it so… and the day that pebbles from a stranger bothered me likely would be the day I give up writing and acknowledge an insecurity that makes being a writer impossible… rather than become someone who uses the cloak of social interaction to cast pebbles about what ‘others wish to seem’ as if they were more than the projections of my own insecurities.
Not entirely unexpected, especially as this person’s return coincides rather neatly with changes in related circumstances that, apparently, make them think they are safe/empowered to approach and peck at others.
Yes, yes, cryptic shit, I know. But that’s the way of it when you’re not willing to embarrass people by naming names and are just hashing it out for yourself instead of trying to play the violin and seek sympathy.
It does, of course, indicate that previous thoughts about how it will all unfold are rather accurate. It will be impossible to maintain contact with the friend now that they willingly leap back into that vortex.
Sigh.
I swear, how they cannot see what they’re leaping back into astounds me. And I suspect by the time they’re willing to admit I had the right of it, they’ll be too embarrassed to do more than mutter it to themselves and remain at distance.
Sigh. Most will, of course, think it’s about ‘being right’. That seems to be the inevitable interpretation. It is not so here, but the track record of folks willing to understand what that means is woefully slim.
Which just makes me angrier… As if I care about the right of it, as if the point has not always been that I wish it were possible to avert it from them. But this is not a power one has over another… nor should they.
I admit, even if I had the power to change it, I would not… it is not my choice to make. But it is a heavy thing to know something and be powerless to do more than watch. All the more to know that attempts to communicate it only winds up burning bridges.
You’d think I’d learn. Some things people have to learn through suffering for trying to make them what they’re not and finding out for themselves how impossible it is… I am too fucking stubborn by far.
Sigh.
My lama once told me that compassion is suffering for the suffering of others. I didn’t need to be told. I’ve known that for a while…. almost all my life. I had asked him how does one avert the suffering of others. He didn’t answer the question, but I think it is because he knew that I already knew the answer.
You never avert the suffering of others. At best, you suffer with them, for the pointlessness of their suffering, by breathing it into yourself, and hoping that the willingness to do any of it lessens even an iota of it… manages to remove any of it.
He did tell me that weeping for it was normal. It made me feel better, because I’ve been crying all my life for things that other people endure. Until I found Buddhism, I knew only the mockery and laughter of others — all too willing to call me mad, foolish, or unstable because the pain I see, sense, read of, or hear, I feel.
I wish I did not need to cry for this friend. But so long as I do, I hope it is one less tear they ever need to shed, one less hurt they or theirs will feel, and one less moment that feelings of despair or hopelessness touch them.
But I admit, seeing it so eagerly taken up already in shared spaces just makes it feel the heavier. I will, of course, give up the shared space. Quietly and without need of saying so other than here. This, a lesson learned from 2006.
The happiness (or at least the lessening of hurt) of my friend is more important than my own rather human wish to take the insights I have into things and teach the immature one creating so much suffering a thing or three about what it is to be shredded with deliberation.
I think bout it… but no, of course I will not do it. But… I do think of it. Then, I set it aside and feel instead that suffering as well. Tong Len and mindfulness and yet another sigh. It’s all suffering, you know. Humanity and ego may rail at the stupidity of losing a friend… but deeper parts weep for not gaining another as well.