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A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

~Rita Mae Brown
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

~Alfred Adler

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Saturday
Jun182005

The Bigger Questions

It's funny, you know, I was writing an email to Matt (and really, how do you write those sorts of emails?) and it came to me that I'm not so upset about this. Yeah, it hurts and yeah, it really hurts and yeah, it was scary but there's this dividing line between what throws me for a loop and what doesn't.

It seems to me that dividing line is fault. Or, rather, perceived fault.

Putting the dog to sleep? My choice, I could have *not* done it. Matt? I wasn't good enough. Cancer? Force of Nature. A car accident? Well, that's an Act of God.

While those things may very well not be true at all - that's how thisJen places them on one side or the other on the life-trauma scale.

It's weird the things we realize about ourselves sometimes, isn't it? And sometimes, we learn them at the strangest moments.

Which made me look back at something I was reading in "The Art of Pilgrimage" on Saturday afternoon. And that was this....

The art is to learn to master today's unavoidable situation with as much equanimity as we can muster, in preparation for facing its sequel tomorrow.

In the course of this training we come to see quite plainly how essential it is to have a purchase on our surroundings by being centered in ourselves, not somewhere in the outer world. The person who is always expecting consolation from without is like a swaying reed or a boat on a stormy sea. It seems as if in some uncanny way the surrounding world, the cosmic maya, senses this and loves to play with us - without malice to be sure, yet with a touch of mockery.

To catch onto this trickery is a mark of sanctity.

Huston Smith

So, there you have it. The universe quite obviously decided that I needed teaching a lesson, with a quick wink and a nudge, and, in hindsight, signs of it are everywhere.

Dilaudid was obviously invented because someone, somewhere knew that someday I would need to not be able to feel my face and I am off to do just that for a couple of hours.


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