1 July 2008 Coastal Wash

The other day a friend gently pointed out that I hadn't posted anything recently. I wish I could use the weather as an excuse. Today turns out to be a perfect day to spend a few hours at the computer ... no sun reflecting off the screen ... too wet to do much outside unless you're a duck. So I started editing my photos from our trip to Southeast Alaska earlier this month. I'm probably misusing an art term, but I call these washes -- sky and land reflected imperfectly in the ocean.

My life typically feels like an imperfect reflection of how I want it to be ... how I treat other people, my contribution to my community and passions, the artfulness of my existence, how lightly I live on this earth. On the trip I read a small booklet that relates Buddhism to Quakerism. I found the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path* to be very encouraging as a mental and spiritual framework for making my life more accurately reflect my vision of it. The First Noble Truth is that sorrow and suffering exists. To be born, to live, to die, I will have to suffer. Some pain is beyond my control (so try to accept it); some is my own making (so try to figure out how to prevent it). The Second Noble Truth is that the latter suffering is due to desire or craving. I am not very materialistic but I certainly have desires that can make me unhappy.

Sometimes friends give insight that it would take years to figure out on your own. I took some quiz that concluded I was a perfectionist, which I didn't accept because my house isn't the cleanest, I forget to get a haircut, etc etc. So I was saying how the quiz was stupid and my friend John said "you're a perfectionist in that you want everything to proceed perfectly." And I realized he was right. I want everyone to operate in the way that I've defined as correct for a happy society -- to be polite, kind to children and pets, clean up after themselves. Soon I also concluded that my need to control situations to achieve that version of perfection often made me anxious and unhappy (suffering for me) and annoying (suffering for others).

Insight can help you understand yourself but change often comes slowly. The Noble Truths are another way to look at what I already know and have been working on for over a decade -- let other people be, help as I can, but don't think I can control anything outside my own body.

Sometimes controlling what's happening in my own mind and body seems to be beyond my control. That comes back to that first kind of suffering ... whether it be the physical aches and pains from getting older, melancholy on passing 40, or the heartache of losing a faithful companion. These are parts of being human and may be peculiar to the genes and chemistry that make me who I am both physically and emotionally. I don't know which of the emotional sufferings are beyond my control (chemical) and which are self-induced (craving). Which is why the Buddhists would say to meditate and the Quakers would say to seek the Light to answer those questions. In my own imperfect way, I'll keep trying to sharpen that reflection.

* Scroll half way down this page to read the 4 and 8: www.oldpathsangha.org/3.html