Alana's Dharma Blog

This post is from an email I sent to Neecha summing-up some of my thoughts on expectations/ standards/ entitlement. 

The Situation:

I overheard a donor asking my boss for a “favor”, which I thought was over the top, and my inside voice just said…”ugh, that donor is being such a &*%^. Just because they give a few thousand bucks, it doesn’t mean they deserve anything they want. They are acting so entitled.”

So I went out on my lunch break and started considering ‘entitled’. When I got out the door I was passed by someone smoking on the street and I thought yuk –people shouldn’t be allowed to smoke in public places, its a health hazard (in other words, I am entitled to breathe safely in public). Then it hit me, back when I used to smoke I thought I should be entitled to smoke everywhere, especially in public (because well duh..its public), it was my ‘civil right’. Somehow, over just a single issue, in one life, I have felt entitled both to smoke and to be free of smokers in public.

I act entitled all the time… so, 1) whats the wrong view (specifically over the concept of entitlement, rather than my interpretation of any particular behavior as entitled) 2) how do I sell myself the lie 3) why do I do it  4) whats the harm:

It’s not really TRUE true:

Smoking makes it perfectly clear that the acceptability of smoking (and the laws I think should be enacted) are based entirely on me, on what I want, and what I do. I pretend that they are permanent, coming from some absolute source on high, but in truth it’s just me and it changes based on what I want at any given time.

Dirty kitchen is in fact the same issue, though for dirty it is a matter of degree instead of a smoking allowed yes/no. I set the standards for where dirty begins and the standards actually change by circumstance. When I was younger, a pile of clothes on the floor would not have been dirty, but now I find it unacceptable. Even better, my “dirty kitchen” is less disgusting than someone else’s (because it’s mine..we’ll get back to this). The idea of dirty is impermanent but I superimpose my own judgement at any given instant and trick myself into believing it’s TRUE.

What are the mechanics–how do I sell myself an unTRUE truth?

In each case I create definitions and rules of what is acceptable in order to serve me. I base them off my own experiences and what I am used to (#3) and then imagine they are absolute (#4)…I use my imagination to forget that I was the one who created them in the first place (Question: Neecha –am I missing something here..any elaboration on my thoughts about the mechanics you can recommend?) . My definitions/standards justify my desires (a way desire tricks me) and my actions, making what I want/do (cleanliness, or smoking laws) entirely reasonable in my own mind (this is a weird feedback loop–I create the definitions and then judge reasonableness in light of the definitions I create. I draw evidence,selectively, from my own experiences and from what is culturally acceptable in order to further buttress the sense of reasonableness).

This brings me to the Why do I do this? This follows on a whole lot of previous contemplation, especially on the topic of self and self belonging, but in a nutshell it seems to be about preserving myself –either my sense of identity or my physical body.

I notice that none of the stories I tell myself, the rules I create around right/wrong, in this case entitled/untitled, come out of thin air. They all trace back to me..to how I want to see myself. To the stories I need to tell in order to protect me, preserve my sense of self and well being.

In the case of the donor request — something that has weighed on me a lot as I got a little more money was that I didn’t want to become a rich witch. I have met many of them (#3) and I never wanted to feel like money made me into someone “entitled”, which in this case I read into behavior that I see as inconsiderate.  So when the donor called with his request..I immediately thought I’m not that, I’m better than that. The story served to build my confidence that I had not turned into something I consider”bad”, a rich witch that I don’t want to be.

I have been thinking about panhandlers a lot lately too–I ask myself why I should give them change? Why they are entitled to it? Same thing with my old freniemy Sandy…why should I just let her mooch? When I dig deep though I see that I am someone who depends on others for financial support, I am someone who is “taken care of”. In this lifetime first by my Dad and then Eric…I’m guessing this goes back a bit further. I need to justify why I am worthy of care, entitled to support, why I have something better/more to offer than Sandy and the panhandlers. I need to use them, just like I did the donor, to be better, to justify my specialness.

To the issue of smoking and mess, I want to protect my physical self. Now that I have asthma, I don’t want to be near smoke so suddenly the rule is its a public health issue (before I had the identity of a cool smoker so I didn’t want any rule to infringe on my ability to look cool in public –so much for being considerate of all the nonsmokers around me). For mess, its really about what is safe..is it clean or is it disease-y (not that appearing clean/messy  always = health safe anyway). My own mess seems more known, something more under my control, so by my definition it is cleaner (safer) than the restaurant kitchen.

The more I think through stuff in this way, the more I feel sort of foolish..I get the sense that its so sad that I put so much effort, so much elaboration, into creating a sense of permanence, into preserving what I have, when its really impossible..its a no win. Still though… I persist. I still can’t fully convince myself that the efforts are totally futile, I take the evidence of limited control, some limited duration and I cling on to it.

My sense of self, the rules and standards I create just to keep it safe are so strong and tricky…but really, when I am judgmental, harsh, “throwing stones” outwards…its just me, the problem really isn’t out there at all…even just practically speaking, I’m not sure I’m even the me I want to be in cases like these.Then there is the cost…

The Cost:

As I have already elaborated before, the biggest one is that I commit so much energy to preserving this self that I get exactly what I want…more lives, more becoming and more suffering that comes along with it.

Moreover, there is a danger to building lies (like definitions of me-ness, absolutes of rules, judgments of what is right and wrong) and convincing myself of them. I keep thinking of the octopus frying clip LP Anan posted, all those folks grilling the animal alive. I think they tell themselves lies to make that behavior OK in their mind. What about me, what lies do I tell and what is the karma I create doing so (this is part of a much bigger topic I am working on–what techniques does desire use to convince me)?

For the examples just here, I know I don’t like judge-y people, folks who make arbitrary rules, so how much do others like me when I do it? I think I am entitled to certain things — like support from Eric and my parents — but then I act complacent, I don’t have appropriate gratitude. I risk the very relationships that I perceive as being a source of safety for me, which is ironic since the whole point of my story telling it to be safe and preserve.

I actually have concrete examples of this: Back when Eric and I started dating he spent hours in the kitchen making a special dessert for me. When he was done and I tried it my first comment was “the nuts aren’t chopped finely enough.” Ugh, it still breaks my heart that I was such a bitch — here is someone who spent so much time and effort to be kind to me and I could express only judgment rather than thanks.

Or I think that my Mom, who could have left me out in the elements to die, instead cared for me, fed me, vaccinated me and helped with my science fair projects. I spent years thinking that was normal, is was what I deserved — the minimum –so I was thankless. But, how many more births can I go getting cared for if I’m behaving thanklessly to my caregivers?

Plus, there is just my sense of discomfort that is self created…I feel ickey in the face of dirty, slighted at the thought of injustice. If I could just open up my definitions a little, reset those conditions, how much less could I suffer day-to-day?

I had been having a Line exchange with Neecha about how I am always trying to avoid ugliness and dirtiness in this world. About how I try to make the ugliness that does exist  ‘over there’, i.e. not in my life. I gave the example of restaurants: I always check health code scores before I eat out and I am unwilling to go someplace ‘dirty’. Even still, I don’t ever want to sit facing the kitchen. I am afraid to get a look inside and find a level of dirtiness I just can’t handle.

Neecha asked me a simple question: “Alana, is your own kitchen always perfectly clean?”

Since it’s obviously not, how exactly can I expect it from a restaurant? I started thinking about if I was getting what I expect out of my life. And, if I am not (since I am not) what it means. My  conclusion: My expectations about this world, about what I will get and what I can avoid, are wrong. Dirtiness is a state that quite simply can’t always be avoided, not in restaurants and not in my home.

As you, Dear Reader, already know, I love to travel. But part of traveling is the reality you never really know what you are going find at your destination.  Since I don’t know what I will get, since my expectations are sometimes wrong, doesn’t it follow that just going through my day-to-day life — even doing what I enjoy — I can’t really escape that ugliness and dirtiness that I keep trying to relegate to a place ‘over there’ behind the fence?

I had been thinking about this a bit  following my Line exchange with Neecha when I saw the most perfect — the most totally captain obvious– commercial ever. I will give the link below and let the commercial, which sums up my contemplations wayyyyyy better than words ever can, speak for itself. To this day, when I consider the topic of my expectations versus my reality, this little clip comes to top of mind.

Because I have totally booked this hotel before…https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7KY6/hotels-com-obvious-lies

I was walking down the street, a few days after New Years, and I saw tons of discarded Christmas trees on the curb. It occurred to me that just a few days ago, these trees were precious object. People went to a lot of work to buy their trees, hurl them home, set them up and lovingly decorate them. For a few weeks they were assigned such deep meaning — they were about family, celebration, traditions and joy.  Now, they are trash.

I couldn’t help but start thinking about my own body, it is something I work so hard to shape and decorate, with the workouts, the clothes, shoes and jewelry. I am just like a perfectly decorated Christmas tree. I give my body so much meaning — my body is me/ I am my body; my sense of self and this body of mine are totally intertwined.  But what happens when my season passes? What happens when, like all trees I rot, decay, break down?

The truth is a Christmas tree is just like every other tree in the forest. It is not special, it has no deep hidden meaning lurking inside it. Its value, its specialness, lives only in the mind of its owners and then only for a short time.

Growing up Jewish, I never had a Christmas tree of my own and I always have wondered why people would go through so much fuss over the thing.  And yet, look at how I struggle for the sake of my body just because I imagine it is somehow special and different than other peoples’ bodies. The time will come when this body will be trash. Is all the fuss over the thing really worth it?