As my winter in Miami was winding down to an end, I started to think ahead about my return to Greenwich. In my mind, homecomings should be happy occasions, but in this case, I feared disappointment: For my last 5 months in Greenwich, I would wake-up every morning, save Sunday, to a cacophony of construction so close it sounded like there were bulldozers in my bedroom. When I left for Miami, the work was not even halfway done, I considered the fact that I would  likely be going home, to continued construction.  Going home, my home, my space,  but a place I could find no refuge or peace.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way, when we got the Greenwich place it was cute and quiet; I signed the lease because it seemed like  the perfect refuge from Manhattan.  But then, zoning laws changed, and the row of charming historic homes across the street were demolished to make room for a mega condo. Now, the Greenwich place is far louder and more uncomfortable than the NY loft ever was.

Beyond the sheer physical suffering, the problem here is that circumstances are always changing (again with the impermanence) and the changes occur in accord with the causes and conditions for change, like new zoning laws, and CLEARLY not in accord with my personal wishes. Now, there are times when the world happens to be in states that align closely enough with my wishes that I feel comfortable, after all, my Greenwich flat was, more or less, a fine home for years. But my own comfort at certain circumstances can’t possibly confirm that the world bows to my wishes, or that changes that occur do so in accord with those wishes, otherwise those zoning laws never would have changed.

Frankly,  if even my own home, my own ears, won’t bow to me, my rules or my control, I am not sure what hope I can have that anything at all in this world will yield to my wishes/rules/control. Disappointment (anger as well) arises because shit isn’t the way we want it to be, it  doesn’t follow our hope, our standards, our expectations. In other words, it doesn’t follow our rules. But by its fundamental nature this world doesn’t follow my rules, so doesn’t that make it definitionally disappointing? How can I not count disappointment as one of the many faces of dukka?