You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto

“Passion is a positive obsession. Obsession is a negative passion.” –Paul Carvel

I know several people who have read my blog.  I have gotten one of two reactions:  “I’ve learned something about you I didn’t know before” and “I have read over and over your stories.  I feel you were saying mean things about someone I know.”  A person’s response is a great litmus test to how they take the emotion elicited by my blog and transform it through their thoughts. 

The fixation generated about reading a few stories that I equate to life lessons and my desire to share them.  Other than one person, I don’t use actual names to identify anyone.  Some of my life events occurred anytime between twenty years ago and up to recent times.  People who weren’t there wouldn’t have a clue about who was there with me through my life lessons.  I have heard people tell me, “So-and-so said they couldn’t believe you wrote about them in your blog for the world to see.  There is a good reason for what they did.  You just misunderstood their actions/their words.”  My thoughts are this.  Why isn’t so-and-so asking me out right about my blog?  Why is so-and-so talking to others about what they assume to be my truth?  Why is so-and so spending so much energy telling others my life lessons misrepresent what really happened or what was really said; “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

The enthusiasm generated about getting to know a bit about me through stories I normally would not disclose over coffee.  This is the other side of the same coin.  The same emotion my blog creates as it runs through another’s psyche, another’s filters.  My blog is a catalyst for discussions about how I got to be this person at this point in time.  And it shows people they are not alone in stepping on landmines as they navigate this life.  My blog also shows people they can recover with their sanity intact from the damage inflicted by such landmines.

Why I consider the reaction to this blog as a litmus test is simple.  If you fixate on a few stories that you believe are an injustice for me to put out there, I think there will not be any common ground for us to meet.  Well, other than your sense of self importance.  If you read, reread and reread again my blogs, then accuse me of being unfair to others without having been a firsthand participant, then I know you have come to plead for another’s case.  Which I begin wonder if you have already approached me with bias and another’s agenda at hand.   If you read my blog with the desire to help me celebrate how far I have come in this life after almost being aborted, well then you get it.  You understand the story is not about the people, me or others, but about the celebration of realizing we are infallible beings. 

I have a right to express myself.  I have a right to share what has happened to me.  I choose to use this forum to send out to the void what I see as my truth.  If you don’t agree, fine.  If you agree, fine too.  You have a choice to keep coming back to read this blog.  Or not.  Simple.

Being Grateful

“If you don't think every day is a good day, just try missing one.” --Cavett Robert

I was asked to today: “Are you a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty person?”  After a slight pause I answered, “I’m a grateful-to-have-a-glass person.”

Personal Standards

“Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own.”  --Jean Toomer

I had a kick ass time at The Floating World this year.  It wasn’t because of the actual event itself.  It was because when I expressed an opinion or shared a personal belief, people did not counter with the words ‘you oughta’, ‘you coulda’  or ‘ you shoulda’.  At TFW2011 I was heard without people trying to convince me to change myself to fit their idea of a ____.  (Fill in blank with any word: Domme, woman, kinkster, old fart, short shit, sexy lady, attendee, chunk punk, femme.  Really, any word at all.)

We can get caught up in unconstructive patterns that lend themselves to messy relationships.  I used to invest a lot, and I mean *a lot*, of time with heated debates.  I would be casually chatting with someone, we’d get onto a topic, and then I’d express an opinion or a different perspective.  When I would receive a criticism or a ‘that’s just plain wrong’ response, I would try another way to explain myself.  I was coming from a place that they just weren’t getting what I was saying.  Since I was totally committed to being understood, I would keep trying to explain myself.  I now realize I don’t need to be understood by everyone.  I don’t need to be listened to.  I don’t need to sway converts to my standards.  I don’t need feedback that signifies my opinions are valued.  I just want to be heard.

I was a bit dense in my younger years.  I have this callus right here on the right side of my forehead (pointing to it now).  Too many episodes of banging my head against a wall.  Today I am not as dense.  And I don’t like the idea I can be any type of dense.  Alas, perfection evades me.

Today when I hear ‘you shoulda done this’ or ‘you oughta done that’, I’m getting better at recognizing that the person I’m talking to doesn’t like me for who I am.  And they want me to behave differently so I can exist in their carefully designed world.  Hell, they *need* me to behave in a certain way so I don’t upset their apple cart of reality.  My critical error of my youth was to keep insisting that if I were to ‘should’ and ‘ought’, then what I said would not affect my position.

It has taken me years to realize nothing I say to the other person will matter.  And if I enter into any type of long-term, life-connecting relationship with a person who frequently uses ought, could or should when communicating with me, I will either have to change my  behavior just to survive the relationship OR I will drive myself to self-induced psychotic depression.  Either I play-act while keeping grounded in a reality I keep to myself OR I adopt the other person’s idea of reality and lose myself, my own standards.

I tell someone I didn’t bring a strap-on with me to the play space.  I tell them I left it behind.  If I hear, “Well what did you bring?  Whatcha got in that satchel?”, then I know I’m talking with a person who likes me, the real me.  And I want to have this kind of person in my life.  If I hear, “Josh, golly gee Sergeant.  You should never leave that behind.  Why come if you aren’t going to bring your strap on?”, then I know I’m talking with a person who probably will always find something disappointing or lacking about me.  And I don’t want that.

August 1, 2011

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” –Maya Angelou

Kyoki told me most people ‘find Buddhism’ once they’ve hit rock bottom.  And most people stay with the Center or in active practice for about three to five years.  She said nothing more about the subject.  I can understand how one believes after a few years they no longer need to sit and then choose to ‘lose the training wheels’.

In the beginning one is learning about themself.  It is natural to develop positive life patterns as a response to self-reflection.  New practices equate to new choices and experiences.  One goes along for a while; everything is hunky-dory.  Then the boredom of just sitting sets in.  And one stops sitting.  Stops practicing.  Because they’ve done enough work to break the old, unhealthy patterns.  The question is:  After stopping the practice, what is the recidivism rate for going back to rock bottom?  And how many will not return to Buddhism because it ‘failed’ them?

For me the practice of being still is not about developing a method to deal with feelings of hopelessness.  It is about creating an active practice to keep me from hitting rock bottom again.  It is about me coming to peace with the kinkster in me.  It is about me keeping the twinkle in my eye, a wiggle in my walk and a giggle in my talk.  Oh Baby, that’s what I like!