Today I was at Whole Foods and a call came over the loudspeaker, ” Can the owner of the silver BMW with plate number XYZ please come to the front”.  That was me, “that is my car” I said, as I rushed to the front desk. It turns out I had parked crooked over the line and the person in the space next to me couldn’t get out. I hadn’t realized I had done it, and I was already feeling bad and self conscious as I went outside to straighten the car, when a stranger in the parking lot mutters, “who the hell would park like that?”

I was so angry, I suddenly hated that stranger, even though I didn’t know her at all.  But in my mind, I was sorry, I didn’t park badly on purpose, it was an accident, so why the fuck is she being so mean and judgmental? As I fumed in my car, repeating the mantra, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her”, it dawned on me,  I don’t really hate that woman at all. The person I am truly hating right now is me…

Alana is considerate and kind, those are traits I pride myself on. I think these are important qualities in a person, and in a community. In my mind, situations where people are considerate go smoothly and those where they don’t, well the threat of disorder and violence lurks beneath every honk and curse and broken social norm. I value living in orderly places; it is the reason I moved to uptight Greenwich from unruly NY, it makes me feel safe. But here I am breaking my own rules. Feeling upset when the place I normally appreciate for its citizens’ polite policing, is finding me to be the offender. I can’t just let go of my rules, I can’t admit that the fact that I can’t even keep them faithfully should call their absoluteness into value.  No! For me polite/considerate/compassionate is true and good (even though their upholding is making me feel pretty bad about myself right about now). So, instead of dealing with that whole kerfuffle of contradictions, I shortcut the cognitive dissonance I feel with a simple emotion — hate.

In a flash I project the hate outward, on the woman who wouldn’t give me a pass. Who judged without seeing my intentions, my usual polite nature. But it is my own value of this quality that makes me so upset at being judged lacking in it. It is really me, my failure, that I hate.

A few weeks ago I was at the Wat and LP Anan was playing a little instructive game with me. He opened up a website about ‘miss-matched’ couples and started sharing pics. One was of a super tall guy and a tiny woman, another an old guy and a young woman, another a fat woman and a skinny guy. He asked if I agreed with the website that these couples were, ‘mismatched’, if their being together bothered me in some way. I admitted they did and he asked why. I said the guy is too tall for that lady, the second dude too old for the woman, the third woman too fat for the skinny guy.   He called me out — he said that the problem wasn’t with the coulpes, the problem lies in my heart: The height difference in the first couple exceeded my threshold for height differences in a couple. The age difference in the second couple exceeded my threshold for an appropriate age difference in a couple; that the weight difference in the last couple exceeded my threshold of acceptable weight differences between a couple. In other words — my thoughts, my judgments, were not about the couple at all, they were about my standards and expectations. They were about me and me.

I had taken this lesson home and started contemplating on it when it hit me. My Mom and I have struggled with a hard relationship. But ever since a trip we took last summer together, I have been feeling like I hate her. I agreed to the trip because she wanted to travel so badly. She promised she would be ‘easy’, not make a big deal about her religious diet, that she would be so very grateful. On day 1 she was dragging me to restaurants I didn’t want to go to so she could get a kosher meal. A small misunderstanding about a rural stay, and her diet options in the town of 150, had her screaming at me for 45 minutes telling me what a bad person I am, how inconsiderate, etc. I broke. I yelled. I wanted to drop her on the side of the road and drive away. Instead, I calmed down on the outside, and seethed on the inside, through the rest of the trip. Them, I went home, with hate unlike any I have had before, in my heart.

Now, almost a year later, with LP’s lesson on the brain, the hate starts making more sense: I want so badly to be a good kid, to be a calm, patient, saint-like person. To be equanimous, like a good Buddhist. It’s the Alana that hugs homeless people, and frets so much about being a good Buddhist. My Mom, she pushed me too far to be that ideal Alana, she forces me to acknowledge that there is a threshold, after which I am not calm or patient or good, I am just fucking pissed.

My hate of my Mom is really just me hating someone that reminds me of my own failings, of failings of this world. I need the world to follow my rules and standards, only in this world of rules, and consideration, and goodness, and patients, can I possibly be safe. I can’t bear to see the bald truth, that my own inability to maintain these qualities means they aren’t really absolutes of this world at all. Nor is Alana identity, rife with wonderful qualities, an absolute. So, I just tune out the uncertainty and impermanence and fixate on nice, simple, hate.

But is it really fair to hate my Mom just because she reminds me that I come-up short in following the rules — that I made up in the first place — about how things and people should work ( even though they don’t actually always work that way)? This really has nothing to do with my Mom; this is about me and me.

All those couples LP showed me obviously don’t agree with my standards. My mom doesn’t think she is acting in a way that would drive me away, or she wouldn’t do it. The lady in the parking lot today was Greenwich-style-polite-policing in a way I usually do, I usually agree with, only this time I needed a pass. Clearly these standards of mine aren’t absolute truths of this world, because not everyone agrees with me. I am catching myself up in webs of me and me, worsening my entrapment and suffering with each surge of struggle and hate, while the world moves along, being what it actually is, unconcerned with me and my standards.