Comedy of Errors

The older I get, the deeper into my meditation I go, the more I think life really often is such a comedy of errors...I think Shakespeare understood everything. I, and maybe many of us, spend oceans of mental energy trying to "figure things out," placing events and emotions into the right categories in our library of experience. The trouble is, they begin to overlap; they are clever escape artists to, what experience would view if it were a person, the prison of dichotomy. Ironically, I find that the errors, which we try so earnestly to avoid or plot to derail, are really the stuff of dreams, the richest moments in our lives, where our hearts are available to the massive range of human emotions. Hence the epic comedy.

When I reflect on my mind-space, I see that so often I forget to be present...I am somewhere in the past or somewhere in the future. It will be such a great accomplishment in my life- in all our lives- if I could one day be so firmly present that I hear everything, that I operate through listening more than thinking, that I find deep, thorough peace because nothing has been left undone and there is nothing left to do...no matter how busy or exciting or driven or full of things my life is, that still, I am first and foremost 'being', compassionately living right now, un-distracted by what I might be or what I once was...

Rainer Maria Rilke, who also understood the equal worth of sadness and longing and anger to that of love and hope and comfort, wrote (in "Letters to a Young Poet") to his troubled friend, begging him to "be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now." He is not the first to say such things.

I admit to being a bit of a passivist, at times preferring to downplay rich and sticky conflict, despite for years feeling aware and dedicated to embracing it. But even as we embrace it, we judge it: this is bad, this is uncomfortable (with our lovers as with our distant enemies) and so, let's fix it, let's understand it right out of existence. One of my favorite sayings is slowly becoming "let's agree to disagree." I would like to add to it, "let's agree to not understand." I used to kind of hate the phrase; I thought it kind of breathed conscious cop-out, a haunting passive aggressive back door. But I see now how it validates the unquestionable human condition of contention. It gives license to the darkness and confusion to go ahead and exist. It is deeply affirming, especially when said with a genuine smile.

I don't always know how it will feel, to walk into conflict, to embrace emotionally volatile situations, or even to sift through the general blues. But I'd like to say that, as I am more skilled now than before, I will become even more adept at not trying to answer all the questions. Of not trying to "figure things out." Of being content in whatever mood or circumstance is presented, without trying to either grab hold and make it stay or by plotting its eradication. I'd like to one day say that I welcome the muck as much as the sun...

In fact there is a saying, "No mud, no lotus," as the lotus only can grow out of the stinkiest, deepest, most unsavory mud. Why is this the way? We may never know, but we can see the dreamy humor in it. We can celebrate that the lotus, somehow, does grow...and we can take refuge in that knowledge and in so honor and laugh at our soaked and dirty clothes...

I'm going to really try to hold that space more often, in all the different pockets of my life...and see the comedy in trying to figure out perceived errors, and commit myself to seeing and hearing them while setting them free from having to fess up to the serious, un-playful professor in my mind. She is the voice that always wants everything defined, that is quick to blame and who encourages competition. She is the voice who forgets that some mysteries are meant to be lived- that understanding and defining them pale in comparison to the importance of their presence in our lives.

I don't always know how to be like this, but I know that whenever in my life I'm just there, just present with what is, open and curious, I feel relaxed in the most all-together authentic, blissful way. I am available, without expectations and agenda, to the universe.

pondi.