I’m general, I do hate to ‘over-share’, but I’m afraid I have to kick-off this blog with a mighty personal detail about my life — I have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It’s a disease with no known cause, no cure, and a not-so-fun set of symptoms that include surprise attacks of uncontrollable diarrhea that always seem to come at the most inopportune times.

For example, when I’m walking through one of SF’s shadiest hoods (Tenderloin), already late for work, and that first, telltale, stabbing stomach pain strikes. Oh crap. Literally, oh crap the crap is coming… I run for the first open restaurant and beg to use the bathroom.

Alana: “Please, please please can I use your restroom, its an emergency.”

Waitress: “sorry customers only.”

Alana: “I promise I will buy something when I get out.”

Waitress: “No, you need to pay first, no credit cards by the way”

Ughhh, no time, no cash, I run out, and manage to stumble into the public library just in time. Whew, the crisis was averted, but I felt so slighted. I mean who denies someone something as simple as a bathroom in their time of need? That waitress had no compassion; I would never do something like that…but then my thought was interrupted by a homeless guy asking for change. Out loud I explain, “sorry I don’t have any cash on me.” In my head I am thinking, “what the hell did you do to deserve my money?”

To me, that homeless guy didn’t meet my criteria for a ‘hand-out.’ On some level, I looked at that guy and thought he got himself into his mess; he did something to deserve a life on the street.

But wait – dharma whammy – wasn’t I literally just in this situation 15 minutes ago? When I needed a bathroom, I thought it was something so simple, so basic, a small request. I thought I deserved it, I was entitled to it, I had a basic human need and I expected it to be understood and accommodated. But the restaurant had a standard, a criteria for use of the bathroom – you needed to be a customer, which I was not.

The restaurant standard seemed so arbitrary to me. The waitress so compassionless. But was my standard for a homeless guy  deserving a hand out any less arbitrary? Was I any more compassionate? I mean really, where did my own standard come from anyway? Dharma practice 101: When in doubt, a problem, a wrong view, an arbitrary standard must be coming from me.

Which got me thinking… I am someone who takes handouts all the time. First I was supported by my father and now by my husband.  But I can’t live with the fear of being someone who is needy, someone subject to a harsh life on the streets. To sleep at night, to feed my illusion of safety, I need a reason, a standard –an imaginary line in the sand– that makes me and my handouts different from, better than, that homeless man. So I conjure up this idea of ‘deserve’. I think of what a wonderful daughter and wife I am while I imagine the terrible things he must have done to land on the streets.  

But the truth is, that homeless guy and I had much more in common than I am comfortable admitting.  That man was at a low point in the ups and downs cycle of life (lives). But don’t I go through those same cycles? Wasn’t stabbing abdominal pain and the desperate need for a bathroom just such a low point? Wasn’t being denied the place to perform a basic bodily function with dignity pretty damn low?

I managed to escape my low pretty swiftly thanks to a public bathroom at the library. But does that mean I should forget? Ignore? Pretend that I am somehow better than that man— somehow magically exempt from the high/low cycle (8 worldly conditions) that affects everyone?  Do my imaginary standards really protect me from the conditions of this world? Just by not looking can I avoid what is over the fence? Is it my beliefs about deserve, or is it karma, that will ultimately determine what I get?