Tag: dogs

Equalizer

alone man person sadness
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As I have said many times over the last many years, pain is the great equalizer. Yes, each of us has a pain threshold that differs from the next person. However, when we experience it, it shows us really what we’re made of. Some people live with chronic pain and others experience acute bouts of it. The point is, that everyone will at some point feel pain in their lives. It could be emotional pain, or physical, but nevertheless, it will happen. That is what I mean by “equalizer”.

The Buddha, while he was still Prince Siddhartha, witnessed pain, suffering, old age, and death when he escaped the palace and went into the village. He realized in those moments that we will all experience these difficulties. After this eye opener, he was determined to find the path out of suffering. Without getting too in depth, the path to ending suffering is ending attachment. That doesn’t mean that one doesn’t care. Quite the contrary. Instead, it removes the need to attach yourself to the outcome. It compels us to all be compassionate, but not attach our feelings and mental state to how things turn out.

This is a tall order when we are pack animals, with deep ties to our friends and families. Even more so when we are so distracted by social and traditional media outlets. We are constantly presented with opportunities to be outraged, shamed, heartbroken, saddened, and so many more emotions. And in many cases, we should be those things and try to alleviate the sufferings of others. But, damn. It’s exhausting. It’s really difficult in the modern world to care, or to care without attachment to the things we care about.

When people around me are hurt or upset, it’s my natural instinct to apologize for their suffering and to offer to help in some way. In many cases, that is all we can do. Even if there’s nothing practical that can be “done”, I still put out the offer.

Today has been the great equalizer in our home. There has been a lot of pain in the last 24 hours, both physical and emotional. It’s hard to say what will make it better. Currently, there’s nothing to bring ease to the sufferings. But as my friend said, we will figure it out. We always do. I don’t know that I’m able to find 100 more words for this entry. Tomorrow is another day, I suppose. Now, to remove myself from the outcome.

Thanks for reading.

 

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Long Division

How does one separate something that has taken years to build? It could have taken 2 years, or 20, but each day you added bricks and build a foundation, walls, windows… it develops into a fortress to protect you from the world. This fortress is supposed to be impenetrable. It shields all the inhabitants inside. So how, and where, does one even start to take it down? Do you burn the drawbridge? Trebuchet the shit out of the exterior? It’s hard to know, I guess. Circumstances often dictate the destruction of your fort.

But what do you do if you’re not mad, but have simply decided that this fort is shit, and you don’t want to live there anymore? Do you attempt to keep the status quo until arrangements change? Do you still burn the drawbridge and trebuchet the exterior? What about a volatile situation? What then? When inside the fortress is nothing but pure chaos, and there’s fires everywhere? How does one process getting everyone to safety? What does safety even look like, when you’re bed is in flames? Are there really any survivors? Nobody escapes totally unscathed, right?

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And there’s the long division. Strangely enough, if you never unpack, it’s easier to move. But now, we must sift through every. single. thing. to determine what belongs to whom, or who gets it in the dividing process. Then, there’s the others in the fortress… what becomes of them? The friends? You know everyone chooses sides, whether or not they consciously chose a side. Even family chooses sides, despite best efforts. It’s like we drew a line, and everyone decides which side they’ll forever stand on.

What I’ve determined is the worst of all, is the feeling of sudden emptiness. Loneliness. You once had a sounding board to share in your trials and triumphs with. Now, there’s friends or family, but it’s not the same. I want to share my joys and sorrows with someone who is in the fortress WITH me. We are fighting on the same side, in the same battles. People outside the fort, they just can’t appreciate the inner workings of your brain and heart, without first having to explain yourself. That is fucking exhausting. Constantly going over the same stuff, all the time. I just want to have my heart safely in the hands of someone I don’t have to “preface” with. New is positively exciting. Electric. But old, it’s comforting, familiar. That’s not to say I want a damn thing to do with this decaying rubble, but there’s something to be said for the familiar.

My heart aches for what it doesn’t have. My mind longs for a simple life. My intuition knows that this has expired and that it’s no longer home for me. Now what do I do with myself?

 

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Fight or flight

It has become increasingly difficult to focus on my day job. Not only am I bored by the tasks and lack of opportunity for growth, but I also have so many other things in the works. I am working on becoming my own boss and business owner and trying to maintain some shred of hope, given the political climate in this country.

I’ve never felt such a direct and opposite “pulling” force between my fight and flight sides. Part of me wants to try and keep some semblance of the life I lead, to not lose hope, to fight the good fight and create the life I am meant for. But on the other hand, there is something strongly pulling me away from all that, telling me that my family is more important and getting them the hell out of this dumpster before it blows sky high. I just want to run away somewhere safe and hope there’s a life to come back to in four years.

Between social media and the mainstream media, I’m overwhelmed and saddened. The alternative media is equally disheartening. We are living in a very sad time for human rights and social responsibility. It can be paralyzing, and right now, I feel paralyzed with glimmers of motivation and action. It simply weighs heavy on my heart that the world is not shaping up to be a place where people are free to love and marry whomever they choose, that health is only for the wealthy, and that life is largely not affordable for those that work for a living. It is saddening. And those of us that were working toward those things, hoping beyond hope for those things, are devastated. The feeling is real.

Finding happiness in the destruction of everything we hold dear as a nation borders on impossible. The only thing keeping my head above water is my physical and moral obligation to not fuck up for my kid. She knows nothing of the world, of politics. She is content being a toddler and little else. She loves her parents, her pets, eating snacks, and good music. If only everything were that simple. But her smile makes my day worth the struggle. What else is there? My husband, gardening, pets that we care for… they’re the crux of my life. They are the catalyst to happiness, since happiness comes from within. My family makes me want to be a better person, to keep waking up every day, and to be happy when it’s appropriate.

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Efforts in futility

I first want to begin by saying, I am not an animal hoarder. I say this because my honey and I each had two dogs and then we moved in together, which brings us to four dogs. Granted, two of them are Chihuahuas, there are still four of them. A few months ago I then had the bright idea that I missed having a cat, since my former cat was struck down by a car one night in front of my old house. It took me several years to come to terms with that and move on to wanting to bring a feline friend into our home.

This brings me to my topic this fine Phoenix morning. Futility. As I’m 100% sure parents of small children and others with packs of animals can attest, there are daily reminders in our lives that our efforts sometimes, are futile. Point in case: as one can imagine with four dogs of various ages and sizes… ranging from 10 years old and 65 pounds to 4 years old and a whopping 7 pounds… there’s politics. Especially when they’re all boys, save for the big, old Mama dog, all of our pets are boys. All but one of them are neutered (and that will be remedied in the near future), yet there’s still this godawful instinct to show dominance in the form of urine. I cannot explain this behavior, I’ve tried. We have literally tried everything short of outdoor quarantine, diapers or making a frantic phone call to that blasted Caesar Milan.

Parents that I know agree that cleaning up after young children is similar to cleaning up after dogs. JUST as you manage to pick up the last Lego, your little bundle of energy manages to have dragged out their Play-Doh or watercolors and has already made a mess. That’s kind of how I feel as I’m mopping in true OCD fashion at 5:30 in the morning. I’m sorry, but there’s something absolutely wretched about stepping in any liquid with socks on, let alone pee. Just saying. Add in a 6 month old kitten to this manic cleaning, and it’s a recipe for disaster. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to not smack the cat with a wet mop every time he crosses over the spot that I JUST CLEANED in an attempt to attack said mop, especially when my honey is blissfully in dream land in the next room. We live in a small house and noise travels pretty readily.

So as I’m furiously mopping the floor (shout out to Nature’s Miracle, Clorox, and my new string mop), there are dogs strewn about the floor and furniture and I’m just going around them in a feverish attempt to “just get the big areas” so that I can focus on getting ready for work, and here comes the cat. He’s stalking the mop, behind the leg of the coffee table… then pounces! Behind the leg of the bar…. then pounces! Behind the stove… then pounces! All the while tracking dirt through my freshly cleaned (though panickedly so) floors. This my friends, is futility.

A good friend of mine, rest his soul, years ago was talking about when he first came to Buddhism. It was after he was hired as a security official to protect a monastery in the western outskirts of Phoenix where there was a horribly tragic rampage where several monks lost their lives. He was raised Baptist and was Agnostic at best at this time in his life, but found something in this temple that brought him to the Dharma. He began attending this particular temple after his duties as security were over. One day he was raking the rock garden there and every time he raked the whole garden, there were still more leaves where he’d just raked. He went to the leaves and raked them up. Then there were still more leaves. He raked those. And more. Rake. And yet more. Rake. One of the monks came by as he was feverishly raking for at least the fifth time and in a fit of frustration he asked the monk what to do about the leaves. The monk replied, “The tree has leaves. They will fall. This is karma.” My friend: “What do leaves have to do with my karma?” Monk: “Maybe it’s not just your karma.” My friend took a moment to contemplate that statement and then put the rake away.

Futility. There will always be leaves. Do your best and move on. Breathe.

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