8 August 08

Tonight, I got mildly ticked off – several times – little irritating, unwanted interferences in my plans for how the evening "should have been" …"stupid" drivers, road closures, not speaking up for myself (it was a little thing – asking for change), etc. I know from experience that the loss of my peace of mind is entirely self generated. That is both the good news and the bad news.

Here’s the bad news, and it has two parts. Since the loss of my peace of mind is self generated, then I cannot blame anyone else for that loss. Dang! I soooooo much want it to be somebody else’s fault that I’m ticked off, or hurt, or sad, or whatever. I want to blame the guy (yes, it was a guy – ok, it was really a girl) who stopped traffic in 2 lanes because she wanted to turn right from the middle lane (!). I want to blame her for my bad mood. I want to blame the signs that blocked My lane of cars for my being late. I want to blame the waiter for assuming my cash was his tip – I really want to blame him for my not speaking up about it. Don’t ask me to make sense of that last sentence. It makes sense when I’m mad. When I’m not mad, it sounds like non-sense, which it is.

The second part of the bad news is that it takes away my justification for my own bad behavior. If it’s not her fault that I’m in a bad mood, then I can’t justifiably be rude to her. If it wasn’t really the road closure that caused me to be late, then I can’t justify honking my horn or otherwise acting hostile to other drivers. If the waiter didn’t give me change, because I didn’t say what I wanted, I can’t justifiably act snotty to the waiter. I want it to be somebody else’s fault that I behave badly. Yep, bad news.

The good news: if the loss of my peace of mind is self generated, then I am not the victim of anyone or anything at any time! I am not at the mercy of anything that happens. That gives me the control over my own response-able-ness. I’m still not in charge of what happens – drivers do what they do, roads and traffic patterns are subject to change without any notice to me, and people make assumptions about me that are not true. I am not even in charge of my immediate reaction. The time lapse between what happens and my reaction is almost instantaneous. However, I AM in charge of how long I dwell in that reaction and my resultant behavior. I am not a victim, I am response-able. There is a tiny downside to this. It means it’s up to me to behave responsibly (able to respond in a way that is congruent to my true nature), instead of reactively (e.g., spoiled brat cuz things aren’t going my way).

So how do I make all this right with myself? I have a deep intention to be responsible for the quality of my life, and I have a PhD in blaming and fault-finding. I have been working on a critical mass shift in this see-saw of behavior. I have achieved that shift in many ways. And while I didn’t honk my horn or drive hostilely, or act snotty to the waiter, my stomach tightened slightly, my heart toughened a bit, my jaw lost its ease. I felt mildly feral.

The way out? Always it’s about telling the Truth…not my personal truth, but THE TRUTH. Know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free. If I’m not free, it’s because I’m not telling THE TRUTH. THE TRUTH is that the woman, the road closure, the waiter were not how I thought they should be – she shouldn’t have stopped traffic, the road closure shouldn’t have been there, the waiter should have asked. None of that happened. I held on to "it should be MY WAY" in spite of the fact that LIFE’s WAY was different. In this contest of realities, mine ALWAYS loses – unless it’s aligned with Life’s.

Here’s the secret. Once I’ve noticed there is a difference between how I think it ought to be and the way IT REALLY IS, I can either keep insisting that Reality meet my demands (and suffer the impotence of those demands), or I can just ‘get it’ – understand the lay of the land – which allows me to move forward in very productive ways. OK, the lady wants to turn right from the middle of 3 lanes – what part do I want to play here? It’s not like I’ve never done that sort of thing myself. OK, there are road closures I didn’t know about. Now what? OK, the waiter didn’t bring back any change, and I didn’t ask. What do I learn about ME here? It smacks of old behaviors. I will visualize myself going up to the waiter and asking for change. (I’ve done that many times before, why not tonight? Probably because I was already on a downward spiral of negativity with all my previous demands of "how it should be" – demands that weren’t met.) My history tells me that if I don’t notice the little discrepancies between my demands about how Life Ought To Be and how Life Really IS, the discrepancies magnify, until I Do notice.

The Truth – Life Is As It IS! Always! I am as I am – as ever changing as Life is. You are as You are – and it’s all a grand and glorious mix of evolving consciousness. Fascinating!