The Pencil Sharpener and the Trash

This morning, I went to empty out the over-full electric pencil sharpener. There was so many pencil shavings in it, it had solidified in several places. I had to empty it in stages, putting my finger in to the mass, and coaxing it out slowly. Then, I had to bang it forcefully against the trash can to get the shavings out of the grinding mechanism.

I was pretty proud of myself for getting it all emptied out without cursing or getting frustrated that it was so difficult. In that state of pride, I went to put the cover back on, piece the top together with the latch, and stuck a pencil in the sharpener.

Nothing. It didn't work. I think I broke it.

So I look at it closer, and I notice a gap between the bottom of the cover, and base of the sharpener. There's also a little button that needs to get pushed to complete the electrical connection to the device. It was missing a piece. The piece that fit under the cover, and pressed the button.

I didn't see a piece fall out, I didn't see any other bits. But it was obviously missing. There was a quarter inch gap, and the sharpener wouldn't work without that piece. So I went back to the trash where I dumped the shavings, and went through the trash bit by bit. Ew.

Still, I managed to not curse, not get mad. Just go through the trash, just go through the trash. It had to be there somewhere and cursing or getting mad wasn't going to make it easier, I told myself. I remembered the monks who use cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors as practice. Just go through the trash.

After going through a bit of the pile, I reached last night's meal of burritos, refried beans, and salsa. It couldn't have fallen this far, could it? But it wasn't anywhere else. Plus, I didn't even know what I was looking for, since I didn't remember seeing the piece fall off. I imagined what the piece must look like, and kept digging around. In the muck. In the goo. Ew.

But after much digging, and several mantras later, there was no denying it. The piece just wasn't there. Or, I simply wasn't seeing it. I started berating myself - how could I have been so dumb to drop that in the trash? Why couldn't I find it? Now it's broken, and I'll have to buy a new one. One more chore to do! My husband is going to be annoyed, and think I'm an idiot. My kids will be disappointed. All I wanted to do was clean out the pencil sharpener, and look what happened.

I was deflated.

As I was looking at the machine, mad at myself, kicking myself for adding more to my to do list, and going through all the things that were wrong with this particular situation - about a pencil sharpener! - I saw the solution.
Not sure how it happened upon me, but it did. I had put the cover on upside down.

I flipped it over, and it fit perfectly. There was no missing piece.

Let us reduce our suffering by having the awareness to see problems from multiple directions, and letting ourselves have patience before assigning blame, projecting into future problems, and worrying what others might think.

Why People Don't Like Each Other - Letting Go of Us/Them

It's logical to think that when someone treats us badly, we like them less.

But that's not true. It's actually the other way around.

When we treat others badly, we like them less. 

It can take a long time for someone treating us badly for us to finally get the message that our love and affection is better spent elsewhere. Why would we put up with years of abuse, or let a "friend" bully us, or keep going back to partners who talk down to us if people treating us badly makes us like them less?

Whereas, when we treat others badly, we are less likely to want to be around them, to like them, or to give them future affection or love. When we treat others badly, we significantly increase the chance that we will spend our affection elsewhere.

Why is this? It stems from cognitive dissonance. Deep down, we all want to think of ourselves as good people. We wouldn't hurt anyone, or do anything bad. Well, unless, the other person deserved it. In order to maintain that we are good people, when we hurt someone or treat another person badly, we have to create a story in our mind that the other person deserved it. It was something bad about the other person that makes us treat them badly. It's their fault we behave the way we do, so we like them less.

With this understanding, we can see that treating people well isn't effective at getting them to like us better. Treating people well helps us like others more. Treating other people well cultivates a continuation of being compassionate to others and of continuing to treat them well - no matter how they treat us.

That's the key to this meditation - if we treat other people with respect, integrity, and compassion, we will like other people more, be happier, and even like ourselves more. When we like other people more, and we treat others well, we will feel more loved, and feel like we have more friends in the world. The concrete number of people who we can count as friends makes little difference. Our feeling of support and love comes from the feeling of how often we treat people well (not how often they treat us well). Think about this again. Our feeling of love and support doesn't come from how others treat us, but from how we treat others, and why we treat others that way.

If we understand this, when other people treat us badly, we will see not that this other person is a bad person or anything is wrong with them, but that they are simply treating us badly. It's when we treat others badly that we think they are bad people. If we want to get out of the "us/them" paradigm, the key is simply to treat others well. Treating others well isn't for them, but for us. How much they like us won't stem a whole lot from what we do. They will base their feelings for us much more on how they treat us.

So it's fruitless to treat others well to try and manipulate people into liking us. That not only doesn't work, but it sets up the scene to feel unappreciated and used. Instead, what works better is setting our boundaries and not allowing others to treat us badly. If they continue to treat us badly even after setting our boundaries, then it's not about us. If they treat us better after we set our boundaries, then we've made a potential friend based not on us trying to appease them or do what we think they want to make them happy, but based on two people who are treating each other well because they like themselves.

This teaching made an impact on me, because it allows me to continue to treat people well for my own reasons, rather than trying to be a peace maker or trying to "get" people to like or appreciate me. I treat people well for me, because I like other people, because I like me, because it's who I am, and because it's good for me and then, consequently, others. All of us are are responsible for our own feelings and behaviors. And if someone treats me badly, and they don't like me, I understand now that it's not me they don't like, but their own cognitive dissonance, and stories they create in their head. I do it, too. It's human. It's not personal. And that makes people's difficult behavior a lot easier to deal with emotionally.

Forgiving in Advance

For years, I held on to anger, frustration, and bitterness. I could not forgive people who, in my perception, wronged me. And in parallel, I could not forgive my own mistakes and imperfections.

Zen study, as well as life experience, have helped me grow into a more forgiving person. I can see now how things that happened many years ago can trap me in the past, if I don't forgive. Forgiving is for myself, not for the other person, although it can repair relationships. Forgiving is not giving in, it is being strong. The weaker response is to hold on to grudges.

It's helped me in my parenting, and I hope my hubby would say, it's helped me in my marriage. Things I used to hold on to, and would create accumulated pain, don't effect me as much. I'm living much more in the moment. When problems arise, I can, although imperfectly, see how unfair it is to tie things in the far past into the now. Children who are growing and changing at lightening speeds make holding grudges nearly impossible. How silly it is to chastise a ten year old for how he behaved when he was five.

It's a window that gets smaller and smaller, as I learn to forgive things more quickly. The more practice I have in forgiving, the easier it comes.

What if, I could forgive at the very moment of a wrong-doing? What if I could forgive my children and my hubby at the moment that they do something I deem is painful, frustrating, or just plain wrong? Can I make the window that small?

And, is it possible, to go even farther, and to forgive before the wrong-doing even occurs? Is it possible to forgive in advance?

How freeing that would be, to forgive everyone in advance, so when things happen, I've already let go of the baggage that increases pain and suffering.

That will be my zen focus for this weekend: forgiving all the past, forgiving in the present, and forgiving in advance.