MEMORIAL DAY
At the start of the weekend marked to celebrate Memorial Day, the moment we are asked to honor war veterans, one of my childhood friends phoned sounding shaky. “I know you’ve been through this, so tell me it’s going to be okay,” she said, seeking re-assurance that she could survive selling the house she’d been living in these past 30 years in order to move to a small apartment for which a local friend had magnanimously offered her a deal.
The pain barrier seemed to be that over the decades both her financial and familial circumstances had diminished, leaving her thoroughly dependent on the modest income free-lancing could generate. Most of it was now devoted to keeping up the property so she was feeling strangled. Yet not being able to hang on to that big house, empty though it was, made her feel like a failure, a person who could not keep up and was being pushed out, a woman whose life was turning out to be worthless as she was confronted by unplanned change.
My friend wanted to know how in my own unexpectedly reduced circumstances I had soldiered bravely on three years ago after reluctantly letting go of my beloved sea view property on a sunset bay in Maine. When June and August showed up, the confines of a San Francisco condo had chafed but the income from the rescued bank account was the spoonful of sugar that made the medicine go down. I did, I reminded my friend, what I had to do although uprooting is so terrifying a prospect, it took me two years to get the guts. Then however, even as a nouveau pauvre, I managed to “go home” by renting a house for two weeks. Not chained by repairs, gardens or guests I got out to do more than I ever had. Until I set myself free I didn’t know what I’d been missing, what else was out there.
I told my friend I thought I had been towed to forward motion by my grandmother who without much ado died weeks short of her 98th birthday in 1990. She liked to say the reason people found her astoundingly vigorous and vibrant was that she couldn’t be bothered digging up her past; she was way too interested in what was happening now. Thus at 93 she showed up with her first shoulder bag and matching heels, quipping “just like Linda Evans!” The Biblical take on looking back is being turned to stone, which I suspect means feeling paralyzed, just as turning into a pillar of salt probably poetically means to be so blinded by your own tears you can’t see ahead and end up stuck on start. It’s dangerous to look back when you are forced to go forward because looking over your shoulder you can’t see where you’re headed so you’re destined to trip and fall.
The Buddha’s peg on which all this hangs is of course “impermanence.” There is no point hanging on when nothing hangs around long enough to grasp. At the root of the meditative and logical analysis Buddhism prescribes is the stunning discovery that absolutely everything is composite, a continual flux of circumstance coming together, coming apart, coming together in a completely different way, coming apart ad infinitem. One atom slides out of the molecule and everything irredeemably changes. Those shifts in cells--that reconstruction of the body every seven years— may be imperceptible but a growing child or a shrinking senior is not that subtle. The river flowing by is a different collection of water molecules every nanosecond yet we think of it as the same old Mississippi that just keeps rolling along. Lobsters grow too tight in their shells and shed them just as snakes do their skin. The soccer Mom van gives way to the two-seater sports car, the tree gets cut down but sprouts shoot out, the four bedroom house is suddenly an empty cage to which a friend is chained. Nothing is forever—except impermanence.
We are all veterans of a war on this reality. Attachment which seems to slow the pace of change can taste good like sugar so we get addicted. Then breaking up is hard to do. Others have pointed out that I maintain friends from childhood although we have no current common ground and communication can thus be stilted. I am much more candid and concerned with friends who share more recent phases of my life, who share some commonality with the person I happen to be now. Yet for tradition or history I don’t let the old folks go. Frankly, I used to feel guilty pushing passé people out to and over the edge of my circle, but years back a lawyer friend suggested that my mind can outgrow people just as my body can no longer fit into certain clothes, so there should be no shame in giving them away. I started practicing that and it seems the acquaintances most easily let go are those, as the song sings, always getting back to their same old used to be, the ones who haven’t changed although I have.
We all know seemingly functional people who sit in the shelter of a rundown romantic relationship collapsing from leaks, rust and mechanical failure merely because it’s still there defining their landscape. After all, it is a bother to locate another place and way to be. Change calls for courage to shake off habit, faith to shake up life, stamina to shake free. None of it is convenient especially when the culture insists (since it has the aphorism) the devil you know is better than one you don’t. Unknown uncharted waters are scary when you already possess a navigation chart based on experience of where lurk the obstacles that could sink you. Inertia thus becomes the platinum denial card, for something feels better than nothing, even if that nothing is actually the blank space in which something fresh can and will arise.
As it happens, when my friend phoned I was in the midst of a relationship crisis of my own, not with a mate but an airline. For a decade I have been going steady with United and I am so faithful I’ve become Premier to them. I have their credit card, special phone number, frequent flyer miles and piles of 500 miles upgrades to use in the highly unlikely event that there should ever be two classes of service on the mini planes that fly these “commuter” routes. They take my money and hug me for it with early boarding and legroom. Together we’ve gone many times to Asia and the coast of Maine, to Guatemala, Vancouver, mountain villages of Colorado and Manhattan Island.
It was a fine working relationship until about a year ago when to my dismay United started to become inexplicably and increasingly abusive. For the trajectories I wanted they demanded almost double the banked miles they led me to believe. They started fixing their planes on my time—a consistent lot of mechanical failure with not even an ice cube for my wait. They stopped sharing meals with me to the point that I couldn’t get a can of mineral water because they didn’t have any. They told me to do my ticketing myself on my computer and charged me when I couldn’t because their site doesn’t work right. Then yesterday their credit card statement announced my due date had been moved up—so perilously close to the arrival date that late fees would be inevitable; was this not Jaws playing “gotcha!” ? This morning I found out they wanted $600 for simply changing the return date on a ticket six weeks away, making it cost more than a trip 6000 miles longer.
The worse part is they don’t want to speak to me anymore. Dialing that special number gets me either a relentlessly grating, unctuous robot squiring me from frustrating question to question or an unskilled Asian who, for example, when asked how many miles from the Mileage Plus program a certain route required, had to speak to his supervisor and fully three minutes later came back to say the geographical distance was 2,645 miles each way. What kind of partnership is this?
Obviously United does not understand me any more. It keeps offering me all sorts of foolishness like executive level concierge service for a hefty membership fee and ways to spend my accumulated miles without airtime—which means they don’t want to see me aboard. Meanwhile Jet Blue wants to please me knowing I just want to be carried between two points with trace elements of my dignity and bank account in tact. But I’m so used to United that I’m angry I now have to spend time and energy dealing with the problem of finding a new carrier where I won’t have the perks of loyalty for a while—and that special seat in my case is a medical necessity. I thought this part of my life was under control yet it’s begun continually popping up like Bozo the clown to punch me. The insecurity is making me cranky because I have more shit to pack into my day. I feel as powerless and pushed out as my friend.
I reminded my friend that 30 years ago her beloved home had been new and strange and unreflective of what she had subsequently made it; thus she could remake the new place in her own image as well. Soon it too would feel like “home” all over again. My heart no longer hurt for that sunset seal view property because I now had nearby a magical little cottage I’d imbued with its own captivating charm. The problem was, of course, that due to the strain in my old relationship I couldn’t easily get there from here and that is what I yearned to do.
Between me and my heart's desire was...well, me! I had to remind myself that maybe it was time for me to part ways too. Last year I'd had a first date with Continental who treated me quite well. One or two more flights and I'd be back basking in familiarity, maybe even privileges. I'd be a decorated veteran. If only I could make myself move on, this could be a very memorial day.
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, change, Memorial Day
The pain barrier seemed to be that over the decades both her financial and familial circumstances had diminished, leaving her thoroughly dependent on the modest income free-lancing could generate. Most of it was now devoted to keeping up the property so she was feeling strangled. Yet not being able to hang on to that big house, empty though it was, made her feel like a failure, a person who could not keep up and was being pushed out, a woman whose life was turning out to be worthless as she was confronted by unplanned change.
My friend wanted to know how in my own unexpectedly reduced circumstances I had soldiered bravely on three years ago after reluctantly letting go of my beloved sea view property on a sunset bay in Maine. When June and August showed up, the confines of a San Francisco condo had chafed but the income from the rescued bank account was the spoonful of sugar that made the medicine go down. I did, I reminded my friend, what I had to do although uprooting is so terrifying a prospect, it took me two years to get the guts. Then however, even as a nouveau pauvre, I managed to “go home” by renting a house for two weeks. Not chained by repairs, gardens or guests I got out to do more than I ever had. Until I set myself free I didn’t know what I’d been missing, what else was out there.
I told my friend I thought I had been towed to forward motion by my grandmother who without much ado died weeks short of her 98th birthday in 1990. She liked to say the reason people found her astoundingly vigorous and vibrant was that she couldn’t be bothered digging up her past; she was way too interested in what was happening now. Thus at 93 she showed up with her first shoulder bag and matching heels, quipping “just like Linda Evans!” The Biblical take on looking back is being turned to stone, which I suspect means feeling paralyzed, just as turning into a pillar of salt probably poetically means to be so blinded by your own tears you can’t see ahead and end up stuck on start. It’s dangerous to look back when you are forced to go forward because looking over your shoulder you can’t see where you’re headed so you’re destined to trip and fall.
The Buddha’s peg on which all this hangs is of course “impermanence.” There is no point hanging on when nothing hangs around long enough to grasp. At the root of the meditative and logical analysis Buddhism prescribes is the stunning discovery that absolutely everything is composite, a continual flux of circumstance coming together, coming apart, coming together in a completely different way, coming apart ad infinitem. One atom slides out of the molecule and everything irredeemably changes. Those shifts in cells--that reconstruction of the body every seven years— may be imperceptible but a growing child or a shrinking senior is not that subtle. The river flowing by is a different collection of water molecules every nanosecond yet we think of it as the same old Mississippi that just keeps rolling along. Lobsters grow too tight in their shells and shed them just as snakes do their skin. The soccer Mom van gives way to the two-seater sports car, the tree gets cut down but sprouts shoot out, the four bedroom house is suddenly an empty cage to which a friend is chained. Nothing is forever—except impermanence.
We are all veterans of a war on this reality. Attachment which seems to slow the pace of change can taste good like sugar so we get addicted. Then breaking up is hard to do. Others have pointed out that I maintain friends from childhood although we have no current common ground and communication can thus be stilted. I am much more candid and concerned with friends who share more recent phases of my life, who share some commonality with the person I happen to be now. Yet for tradition or history I don’t let the old folks go. Frankly, I used to feel guilty pushing passé people out to and over the edge of my circle, but years back a lawyer friend suggested that my mind can outgrow people just as my body can no longer fit into certain clothes, so there should be no shame in giving them away. I started practicing that and it seems the acquaintances most easily let go are those, as the song sings, always getting back to their same old used to be, the ones who haven’t changed although I have.
We all know seemingly functional people who sit in the shelter of a rundown romantic relationship collapsing from leaks, rust and mechanical failure merely because it’s still there defining their landscape. After all, it is a bother to locate another place and way to be. Change calls for courage to shake off habit, faith to shake up life, stamina to shake free. None of it is convenient especially when the culture insists (since it has the aphorism) the devil you know is better than one you don’t. Unknown uncharted waters are scary when you already possess a navigation chart based on experience of where lurk the obstacles that could sink you. Inertia thus becomes the platinum denial card, for something feels better than nothing, even if that nothing is actually the blank space in which something fresh can and will arise.
As it happens, when my friend phoned I was in the midst of a relationship crisis of my own, not with a mate but an airline. For a decade I have been going steady with United and I am so faithful I’ve become Premier to them. I have their credit card, special phone number, frequent flyer miles and piles of 500 miles upgrades to use in the highly unlikely event that there should ever be two classes of service on the mini planes that fly these “commuter” routes. They take my money and hug me for it with early boarding and legroom. Together we’ve gone many times to Asia and the coast of Maine, to Guatemala, Vancouver, mountain villages of Colorado and Manhattan Island.
It was a fine working relationship until about a year ago when to my dismay United started to become inexplicably and increasingly abusive. For the trajectories I wanted they demanded almost double the banked miles they led me to believe. They started fixing their planes on my time—a consistent lot of mechanical failure with not even an ice cube for my wait. They stopped sharing meals with me to the point that I couldn’t get a can of mineral water because they didn’t have any. They told me to do my ticketing myself on my computer and charged me when I couldn’t because their site doesn’t work right. Then yesterday their credit card statement announced my due date had been moved up—so perilously close to the arrival date that late fees would be inevitable; was this not Jaws playing “gotcha!” ? This morning I found out they wanted $600 for simply changing the return date on a ticket six weeks away, making it cost more than a trip 6000 miles longer.
The worse part is they don’t want to speak to me anymore. Dialing that special number gets me either a relentlessly grating, unctuous robot squiring me from frustrating question to question or an unskilled Asian who, for example, when asked how many miles from the Mileage Plus program a certain route required, had to speak to his supervisor and fully three minutes later came back to say the geographical distance was 2,645 miles each way. What kind of partnership is this?
Obviously United does not understand me any more. It keeps offering me all sorts of foolishness like executive level concierge service for a hefty membership fee and ways to spend my accumulated miles without airtime—which means they don’t want to see me aboard. Meanwhile Jet Blue wants to please me knowing I just want to be carried between two points with trace elements of my dignity and bank account in tact. But I’m so used to United that I’m angry I now have to spend time and energy dealing with the problem of finding a new carrier where I won’t have the perks of loyalty for a while—and that special seat in my case is a medical necessity. I thought this part of my life was under control yet it’s begun continually popping up like Bozo the clown to punch me. The insecurity is making me cranky because I have more shit to pack into my day. I feel as powerless and pushed out as my friend.
I reminded my friend that 30 years ago her beloved home had been new and strange and unreflective of what she had subsequently made it; thus she could remake the new place in her own image as well. Soon it too would feel like “home” all over again. My heart no longer hurt for that sunset seal view property because I now had nearby a magical little cottage I’d imbued with its own captivating charm. The problem was, of course, that due to the strain in my old relationship I couldn’t easily get there from here and that is what I yearned to do.
Between me and my heart's desire was...well, me! I had to remind myself that maybe it was time for me to part ways too. Last year I'd had a first date with Continental who treated me quite well. One or two more flights and I'd be back basking in familiarity, maybe even privileges. I'd be a decorated veteran. If only I could make myself move on, this could be a very memorial day.
Technorati Tags: Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, change, Memorial Day
posted by Sandy Garson @ 5:43 PM
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