Deserving

I work very hard. I deserve to have time to myself. I deserve for the work flow to stop long enough for me to catch my breath. What did I do to deserve being worked so hard? At the very least, I deserve to be recognized for the work I am doing.

Wait a minute. I found out last week that I have been nominated for an award to recognize the work I am doing. I don't deserve that. I can tell there are people who resent the fact that I have been nominated and know I don't deserve it. And they are right. I mean, it wasn't my idea, guys! Hey, you don't have to convince me I'm undeserving.

But, you know, now that I think of it, it's about time someone recognized how deserving I am of praise. I deserve it more than anyone I can think of. Bring it on. You're right, I am pretty damn wonderful!

I feel at the same time pleased and guilty about being nominated for this award. It's as if I have done something illicit, gotten away with something. I don't deserve it and, "if you only knew!" (what a rebel I am in my heart). I really deserve this and, "if only you knew!" (how hard I really work). In my small mind, it's all about my deserving, when in fact awards and honors are almost entirely about the need to celebrate or recognize and are, in the final analysis, also almost entirely impersonal. But it sure is difficult to look at it that way.

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I went to a concert last night and when I went to the bathroom, the guy standing next to me was irate (I mean really irate) because they weren't piping the concert into the bathroom. He obviously deserved to hear the whole thing, even while peeing.

I live in Seattle, which is where the most recent mass shootings happened. What did these young people do to deserve being shot? What did the shooter do to deserve being so beset by demons?

What could God be thinking? What does the universe want?

The person who cut my hair yesterday told me the story of a family friend who died suddenly of cancer at the age of 42. He was healthy and strong and nice and did nothing to deserve an early death.

I live near Mount Rainier. Every year, for years on end, people have climbed the mountain safely. Last week, six of them fell to their deaths. Why them? They did nothing wrong; they did not deserve to die.

I know many people, including very close family members, who are struggling mightily, some with physical health, some with mental health, some with money problems, some with alcohol and drug problems, and all manner of problems in between and otherwise. They don't deserve this. It's deeply unfair that they must go through this.

I worked for 10 years in intensive care units. Some people died and some people survived. Some of those who lived would rather have died; nearly all who died would rather have lived. Five-year-olds with 20% burns died and 80-year-olds with 60% burns lived. Who deserved more life?

How is it possible that good people die young and murderers live to a ripe old age? How can I have behaved so badly in my life and still thrive?

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But here's the thing: where did we ever get the idea that we get what we deserve? Where is it written that life is fair? Is there a misconception here? The whole idea that there is a God who predetermines what happens and allows for all this is deeply offensive to me. This is a portrait of God as asshole, and I don't buy it. Of course, I don't buy any kind of traditional concept of God, but this one just can't be right.

Closer to home spiritually is the idea of karma. I once told a friend who was going through a rough patch that she must have done something at some point for her karma to be screwed up like this. She took great offense at this, thinking I was implying that she deserved what was coming to her, when I meant exactly the opposite: how could it be logically correct that such a wonderful person was having to undergo such trials?

Yes, there is a misunderstanding, and I share in it. We think there is some sense to the way the universe doles out its deserving, but there really isn't. Yes, I believe in karma, but it doesn't mean what most people think it means. I have long thought of karma as being at the same time the most and the least important concept in all of Buddhism.

Karma is unimportant because if we are behaving well in order to avoid punishment or gain good experiences, we are in the wrong religious tradition and doing things for entirely the wrong reason. If we are seeking a particular goal by practicing the Dharma, we are not practicing the Dharma. Because the teachings of the Buddha seek to free us from striving, these imagined rules of behavior are a new enslavement.

Karma is vitally important because when we act in accord with moral and ethical principles, it changes everything for the better; in fact, the well-being of the whole world is improved. One little act of unkindness multiplied by millions of people is a huge unkindness. As one teacher put it, "you can't get away with nothin'" In my personal system of belief there is no cosmic scorekeeper, yet the universe responds to our slightest action. The response a single individual might induce may be infinitesimal, but these small impulses add up to a wave of goodness (or badness, if we choose to go that way) that can overwhelm the world. But the goodness might not come to you in particular, not in the way you wish it would, and probably not in any kind of proportion to the goodness of your deeds. The lazy jerk down the street will still probably win the lottery while you struggle to pay your mortgage.

Global warming is a great metaphor for this. We all think it's a problem (well, those of us who are still sane and awake), but we also feel that our actions are too small a part of the whole to make a difference. (Not my SUV!) Yet, it is precisely these individual actions that add up to the big problem. Thus it is with our karmic actions. When I am impatient, this ripples out to others and if they in turn are impatient and the whole world exhibits no patience, eventually we wind up with a harried world where patience has no hope of thriving. Our actions matter. On a smaller scale, we have all experienced the job where one person—sometimes not even the boss—can make for a toxic place to work. No matter what efforts we undertake to counteract this toxicity, we can't make any headway when a person with a strong will to negativity holds sway. On the other hand, one truly positive person can make the workplace a joy to inhabit.

But the idea of deserving is hard to give up. This idea that if I live well I will die well, that if I behave myself I can avoid the vicissitudes of life, or, contrarily, that if I behave badly I will be punished for it, is deeply ingrained in our world view, especially in the Judeo-Christian culture in which most of us were raised. But it just ain't so. On the other hand, it's not totally random, either. We can invite into our lives more joy or more sorrow, more peace or more chaos, more acceptance or more resistance. But in the end, we must recognize that the universe is mostly impersonal in how it acts—it's not about me, not even close. And how could it be? I may feel as if I am the center of the universe, but in fact I am a tiny mote in a brief moment of time. When I can relax into the reality of what is without trying fiercely to justify or change it, then I am free. And freedom is what we truly deserve.