Playing by the rules

I have been thinking of my daily practice this week since my house is again upside down with all of the dining room and kitchen into the parlor and I am the dog sitter for an ancient dog that appears to need to relieve himself every two hours.  I am not doing all the things that I think are important in my life.  I don’t get all the time to meditate…I am not playing by my own rules.   When you are a child, you have to learn that not all the time will the game go your way or will others play by your rules.   In my early 20’s I went to another camp for three sessions and they were singing a song that I was very familiar with but they were singing it with a different beat.  “that’s not the way it goes” I said and was told that is the way it goes here.  So sing or don’t sing…but this is the tune.  We do this with expectations about people.  This is the way they are to act, to always act, to always be.   This is the way it is comfortable for me if you think and act in this manner.  Well sometimes people do things differently than we expect and we get “disappointed”.  The disappointment is the variation in the expectation for perfection.

There will always be the potential of pain, but we don’t have to suffer.  Without the pain, we will not know the pleasure.  Without the dark we will not know the light.  The light does not take anything away from the dark or the dark the light but reminds us that all things have a ying/yang. 

People who put others on pedestals are bound to suffer as well as the pain of the crash felt by the one coming off the pedestal…. Rarely do they ask to be up there.  There is no giving each other a break.  It is only by truly accepting the humanness the ying and the yang… the dark and light that we can give up suffering and truly connect with another….good bad ugly. 

So if for today, I can write, feed four animals, and get a shower…. I am ahead of the game.  It’s all good.