Those happy-go-lucky Buddhists have a term, "Samsara." It means the endless cycle of rebirth and death. Or, in more casual usage, the general suffering of existence.
There's a fairly well-known Doctor's Opinion that states people like me tend to be "restless, irritable and discontent," until we find comfort and release after taking a few drinks. It works. For a while. Thereafter and for the rest of our lives, we chase after that sense of ease we once found, but it can never be recaptured. It's as elusive as the pot at the end of the rainbow.
This nifty little picture illustrates the cycle of craving, aggression and ignorance that make up the wheel of suffering that Buddhists would call, oh, you know, our typical daily life. Rooster, snake, pig. Repeat. That about sums it up.
This Christmas season, I'm thinking about samsara. I'm thinking about the ways I'm restless, irritable and discontent. And it all boils down to expectations. When I have expectations about how things are "supposed to" turn out or what people are supposed to do, I am locked into an either / or scenario. Either things will turn out the way I expect OR they won't. Either I will get what I want or I won't.
Looking back, more times than not, getting what I wanted didn't necessarily make me happy. Not getting what I wanted--or even worse, getting what I did NOT want--as it turned out, did not make me ultimately unhappy.
Things I thought were terrible at the time either turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, or at least set a train of events in motion that took me to a much better place.
Not only am I finding that I'm uniquely unqualified to issue self-appraisals (I think I'm walking on water when I'm really treading on thin ice and vice versa), I'm also not a very reliable judge of what is good for me, or what will really make me happy.
Still, I'm not content to just lurch through my pathetic existence like a zombie seeking warm brains to munch. I want more. I want to be liberated from the limitations of my own expectations.
I want to get back to the beginning. Beginner's mind. That place where things are new, and anything is possible because I haven't figured out yet that it is impossible. Potential. Possibility. Freedom.
I want to set myself and others free from my expectations. I want to give up the stupid certainty that I think I know what is best for you. A ridiculous idea, since often I don't even know what's best for me.
It turns out that the richest, most profound parts of my life have happened after and because my own little plans and designs fell apart. These days, I gravitate toward people whose life story could be told this way:
"The worst thing I could ever imagine happened. And then..."
