My family every lunch hour: Tofu sausages in our makeshift beach-lounge.My children’s lives are the epitome of what I consider paradise. They want for nothing. Both of them have enough toys to enjoy, but not enough to miss out on the blessings of boredom or need to develop their imagination. They eat their favourite meals and grow with the loving guidance of not one, but both parents.
Yet, if you were to talk with my youngest today, you would be convinced that his world was in a downward spiral of karmic condemnation. New Super Mario Bros World 8 was impossible. He was called to do his homework when Bowser was about to bow down and concede defeat. Super Mario would have won the prize that he had worked for weeks to achieve – a kiss from Princess Peach.
What kind of parent was I to have interrupted the greatest priority the world has known -- At least, World 8 has known?!
Homework was completed using angry-looking letters; cartoon smoke rose from his ears. His picture was coloured-in like he held the pencils by his toes.
The whole morning played out in this fashion. By the time he left for school, the normal pain in my heart born of missing him was replaced by relief, that he could get past his own self-created drama and enjoy his day at school.
HomeworkChildren can be forgiven for making a tranquil moment feel as if the fate of the world depended on it. But when adults share the same attitude, we enter road rage and waiter-abuse territory.
Anyone can turn an otherwise perfect day into a tense, incongruous series of activities performed against a clock that ticks too fast.
Somebody who doesn’t deliberately throw his spanner into the workings of the great machine, however, is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Imagine him grumbling to his minders that his orange robe is not orange enough, or his toothpaste tube is empty when it should be holy full.
He once observed that 95% of our problems are created by us. The other 5% are real problems. Considering that this man comes from a country that no longer exists, lives in exile, hears about the suffering of his people daily, and is still happy – I lean towards believing him.
His Holiness the Dalai LamaDo I hear a collective sigh of agreement?
Yes. My day might have been better if I didn’t shout at the guy with a disabled sticker on his car, who took the best parking spot. Or at the little old lady who walked slowly across the street. Maybe I didn’t have to yell at the sad, three-legged dog who pee’d on my flower plant. *
What if I decided that everyone was just doing their best that day; the old lady really couldn’t run fast like I had demanded, and the dog may have simply wanted to celebrate over the only beauty that he saw on his sad day.
No, we don’t all behave all of the time. We sometimes feel entitled, which is a place absent of gratitude.
But I definitely could choose to be a person who no longer bats for the unconscious, reactionary team of humanity. It doesn’t start out there. Humanity has always tried to change its ways by looking out there for a solution.
Maybe it begins with me.
* Of course, as a Presidentess I never really did those awful things to the handicapped driver, old lady and sad dog. I made those events up to illustrate my message.