Test

Looking forward to our trip next month. We'll be able to meet up with N. Our friend who'd gotten stuck here, feeling like he had few choices, got a nasty shock, deprived of his job, and is moving out to the city he has yearned to live in for years. He has support from family there, and no worse job prospects than here. Amazing how, when one circumstance changes, what seemed like an unbearable weight can just roll away. When only one path is open, when you have to take it, it turns out to be pretty steep, but not nearly as hard in reality as it was in imagination. The further he pushes through, the more opportunities are opening up for him. We'll miss him, but we mostly want to see him happy in his life, in his work.

Often, when we feel most stuck, it is because we just don't want to look at a real, fundamental, solution. We just want to keep doing the same thing over and over, as it becomes a grudge match to make it work. Or we want the people around us to stop doing what they are doing, and everything will be just fine. And they simply won't cooperate. That is when anger becomes the most self indulgent trap, because it justifies our own cowardice and lack of imagination to step back and act differently, think in a new way, chose to feel calm in the midst of chaos. I've been in that trap, I know it well.

There is a story of a man at one of the lunch counter sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. White bigots mass around and tell the man "We're gonna do to you what you do to that chicken!" And the man picks up the piece of chicken, and kisses it.*
(Dick Gregory, thanks to Sky. )

The best way not to lose a rigged game is simply not to play. Let those caught in the game win. Let others have the last word. Choose "Other" and fill in the blank yourself. Resist every easy choice, and take the hardest test. It's not pass fail, it's always just a way to learn. Even when you get every answer 'wrong.'

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a sure sign of self trapping. We are all susceptible to addictive behaviour. Positive feedback loops are very destructive.

I've loved the Tao Te Ching from my first exposure to it. And when I read that it was given to children in school as an exercise to reinterpret, I thought about trying that myself. And have not yet done so. Perhaps it is time I begin. Alternating with entries from Brewers.

It's a test for me.


*If you have any other information about this story, please let me know. Dick Gregory, link above. (Sorry it took me so long to add.)