Right now

I admit to struggling a bit these days. Grief has come to our house for a visit. From past experience I know it has a tendency to stay exactly as long as it feels it must (as opposed to the few minutes or so I want to face it). Kathy and I are busy and a little worn down. We have a fully committed weekend, just when I think both of us would rather hunker down and rest (it's not the kind of commitment that is really optional). I am also struggling with the fact that my friend who is dying and my parents who are aging are hundreds of miles away while I am all the way up here in the upper left-hand corner of the continental U.S. My heart feels almost literally torn. (However, today I saw a George Burns quote that made me laugh: "Happiness is having a large, close knit family...in another city". No, Mom, I don't mean it. But it's funny).

Oh, and there are stressors at work and things to do at home that don't get done and the world is a mess and my laptop...well, now, let me say something about my laptop. Does it drive anyone else crazy that tech people always blame the problems they cause (or may have caused) on the user? I am fairly certain there is a vow taken by all of them that the words, "Oops!" or "I'm sorry" or "My bad!" or (god forbid) "That was our error. Let me fix that for you right now for free" will never pass their lips. Or even, "Well, that seems unlikely, but if we broke it, we will take responsibility". Even when the issue was clearly not present before they got their mitts on my computer and is there when I get the thing back, this can never, ever be their problem. Case in point: I had some bad RAM replaced (who knows how it strays from the straight and narrow, that RAM, but somehow it went rogue, I guess) and when I tried to play a DVD a week or so later, the program didn't work. When I went in, I was told that replacing RAM has nothing to do with the DVD program. I'm not an idiot, I know this, but one must admit that the temporal proximity is a bit suspicious. The technician took great umbrage at the suggestion that anything they may have done in the process of replacing RAM could have created the problem. I have determined that this is actually a religious issue. Since God (technology) is infallible, then his priests (technicians) cannot err. And we know how well that philosophy has worked out for religion over the centuries. OK, end of rant.

These past few weeks I don't feel particularly skillful in dealing with stuff, either. Once again, it is Pema Chodron who comes to mind, reminding me that this will happen over and over again, that as soon as I feel I am on the path to fully waking up, I will stumble and fall and wind up (as she says) on the path with mud on my face. Aren't I supposed to be ever ascending? Well, no, I'm not, actually. That sort of goal-oriented, merit badge-earning way of viewing the dharma is more self-defeating then simply not practicing it at all. When I can entirely open my heart to the suffering in my day-to-day life without closing down and without any preference to have it otherwise (the struggle is the suffering), only then am I moving into freedom.