My mom called, she was feeling depressed and had started wondering what she had done in her life to have value, feeling regretful that in her old age, she has found she hasn’t done enough. I tried to console her, reminding her she had raised kids, had students, been a part of her community, etc. But she said that wasn’t enough, she felt like she needed to do something more for other people, for the world, for society. It occurred to me that my mom was feeling so stressed because she feels she has failed to BECOME up to her own standards of what a worthy becoming is.

I had been re-watching one of the animated videos of the enlightenment of Sariputta, one of the Buddha’s chief disciples. Sariputta struggled to become an arhant, his desire to BECOME the right hand of the buddha inhibited his ability to become enlightened. Because he clung to being the right hand, fretted over not having the characteristics, in his own opinion, that would make him that identity, he stressed. He was stuck until he realized that clinging – even to that ‘holy’ identity – was still clinging. Only then could he let go and he became enlightened.

It made me start thinking that all these criteria for meeting identities are made up by us. I do this a lot – standards to be, to become, to be worthy. There are already hundreds of blogs about what would make me (in my own un-humble opinion) a good enough alana to bear the title Buddhist, better yet to be worthy of enlightenment.

But more and more lately, I have seen in the past that my standards aren’t the arbiter of the world, if they were than everyone would wear masks and stay home and socially distance like good citizens. Hell there wouldn’t even be a pandemic, since that is certainly not part of my standard of a good and livable world. Shit, even my own body and behaviors, getting sick, getting angry, lashing out at all those unmaskers, isn’t living up to my standards. My standards aren’t arbiters of anything, they are just arbitrary.

My mom, myself, even Sariputta, we just arbitrarily choose what it is we think we should become and then we choose the ‘markers’, the characteristics and traits we think will get us there. But no characteristic is necessary to make you become something because, you can’t become an identity at all. All of us doing this are just stressing over manifesting the impossible. You can simply do certain things, based on certain beliefs, that have certain consequences.

For a few weeks, I had been considering each of the ‘aggregates for clinging’, how they operate to delude me into thinking I AM, I CAN BECOME. These aggregates are like funky colored glasses that obscure reality so that I can mistake an ever-changing process as self. So that I can cling to an identity I arbitrarily create, proving it with arbitrary characteristics and behaviors of my choosing.

I work so hard to be, to become, a certain thing. I work, I effort, I cultivate, I act: I workout to be a fit on top and in control Alana, I practice to be a good Buddhist Alana, I act and morph to be a good family member, employee, friend, citizen to have these traits I have lionized of good, and beautiful and willful and strong. But as soon as some marker stops, I feel the loss. As soon as I leave SF, I fret I am no longer an SF Alana. I mourn the loss of self.

And so, I am on to building the next me, finding and clinging to the new stuff I think will uphold that me, in a cycle that of clinging and loss that can go on without end.