Mini-piphany

So I was in Utah for the past 2 weeks, where the mountains and trees are just fucking spectacular. It's always a very easy place to 'wake up' and see yourself and your life from a different perspective.

I was thinking about what compassion means while speeding along a snowy trail through the barren aspen trees on a snowmobile. One simple meaning is the understanding that every person seeks happiness and seeks to avoid displeasure. Just picking specific people out and thinking to yourself "this person seeks happiness and seeks to avoid unhappiness" is enough to change your point of view about the world after a few hours. They don't have to be contiguous hours, mind you. Just keep a rubber band on your wrist to remind you to say it every 15 minutes or so. If you really say it mindfully (instead of just blurting it out quickly so you can get back to picking your nose), it might change the way you see someone. Try it with someone you like before you try it with someone you hate! That's a lot harder to do mindfully.

Anyway, after having thought about compassion like that for many years, I thought of an example that shows how we really are all the same. (I believe that everything's relative, so I know that we're the same in some ways and different in other ways, but that's a topic for another post). The night before the snowmobile adventure I was watching a documentary about WWII that showed some footage of a big US bomber (probably a B52) landing in an airfield, with a bunch of guys in the foreground ignoring it and just going about their business. I thought something like "that's so insane" when I saw that huge machine flying through the air. But to the people who were actually there, it must have seemed like the bazillionth bomber landing that morning. So I thought about how we all become accustomed to our surroundings and take it as "the norm", even though to a foreigner it might seem completely insane. And this I thought was the basis of all the strife and horror in the world!

If only we could see that we are the same as everyone else; that we're all just seeking happiness and avoiding pain... maybe less people would lose their lives at the hands of another person. OK, OK... I'm climbing down from my soapbox now.

Let It Slide

Well, after finally coming to the conclusion that I was going to tell my dad how it makes me feel when he jokes about gay people, I've gotten over it and decided not to tell him. I'm sure if it happens again I'll get angry again and I might tell him then. But for now my heart is filled with love for my dad once again. We had a long day of snowmobiling in the deep powder of the Uintas with no beginners and no amateurs with us. It was a blast! So all is right with the world once again.

If anyone is reading this I hope 2007 brings lots of good stuff and only a tiny bit of crappy stuff.

Filed in: Contented