Teensy Steps in What One Hopes Is the Right Direction

I was brooding again lately about why I can’t be nicer. I know people who seem to be effortlessly friendly and patient and magnanimous on all occasions, though of course this is the view from my perspective, which misses most of their true thoughts and feelings. (They say in 12-step programs, “Don’t judge your insides by other people’s outsides.”)

I’ve been reading Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, by Lama Surya Das, a warm-hearted soul. After reading the section on Right Effort, I was thinking that I am probably never going to have a personality fundamentally different from the one I have now, and that if I want to make a change, it will require sustained effort balanced with self-acceptance.

I’ve made a million mistakes and I will make a million more. I can’t undo them and beating myself doesn’t help; it hurts. What I can do is decide on some means of heading in the right direction, and try to remember to put my intention into practice. To that end, my new mantra: This person is just like me, and wants the same things I want. (Namely, to be seen, to receive attention, to be treated kindly, to be loved.)

Be being nicer, I don’t mean saying yes to things that warrant a no, or not sticking up for myself when necessary. I mean having a feeling of friendliness and good will. My newest note to myself by my front door says:

“Patience.
Generosity.
If it were easy, everyone would do it all the time.”

It’s not easy. It’s work.

Obviously, perfection will not be achieved. I will do the best I can, maybe going one notch in the right direction as often as possible. For instance, if I can be kind, then I’ll be kind. But if I can’t, I can try to keep my mouth shut. Or if I’m mentally savaging someone, I can try to just drop it, which I can usually do if I remember to.

So maybe it is lucky that my personality is naturally rigid and exacting, because it gives me a million opportunities to practice being kinder, which I am convinced is the most worthwhile goal I could have. I do believe it is absolutely true that my problems are not obstacles on my path, but as Ezra Bayda says, the very path itself.

So now I feel rather liberated: My gosh! All I have to do is have the right intention and do my best! I can do that.

I had mentioned that I almost always do something wrong on my taxes such that they send me some surprise extra money months later. This year, my refund was less than I expected, and in due time, I got a letter saying I had done something wrong in regard to Schedule D.

Well, indeed I had—I had carefully entered my capital gains amount on Schedule D (which gains, by the way, were themselves the result of a mistake I made) but never bothered to transfer the amount to the main tax form, so my taxable income appeared to be less than it was.

That kind of surprised me, because I’ve always had such a tight grip on those kinds of details, but I take it as a sign of general letting go, which is a good thing.

I just finished quite a good book, Colby Buzzell’s My War: Killing Time in Iraq, named after the Black Flag song; I have that album. He holds a rather surprising set of attitudes, and writes with great directness and equability. I guess it’s a quality of acceptance, of himself and of what he sees around him, which leaves him free to describe everything without equivocation. At one moment, he mentions considering throwing a grenade at a baby alligator; the next, he says what a huge fan of NPR he is. More than once, I found myself saying, “I like this guy,” though of course any mention of hurting animals is utterly abhorrent. (They didn’t throw the grenade.)

Ugh, I have to say that yesterday Twisty Faster posted a video of a 17-year-old Iraqi girl being stoned to death in an “honor killing.” I forced myself to watch it and was grateful it was short and pretty murky. The girl is lying on the ground in a shirt and underpants, with her long black hair streaming around her, and rocks the size of basketballs. No one came to help her. It took 30 minutes for them to kill her. I felt gloomy the rest of the day, and again now.

Colby Buzzell started out blogging from Iraq and ended up publishing this critically acclaimed book. His website is still up, and it looks like he is a full-time writer now. I’m totally jealous. But then, he started out by saying every single thing he thought—while he was in the Army in Iraq!—whereas I don’t because I don’t want to lose my job and also my parents read this. So he deserves it. He followed his heart exactly, it appears.