CSotD: Choosing your burdens
Skip to comments
In "Anne and God," Anne Morse-Hambrock breaks away from the lighter questions she normally poses to confront the Deity with this more fraught issue.
The obvious answer is to repeat the well-know koan of the two monks and say, "Put her down; I did a mile ago."
But, as she says, she already knows that the burdens she carries are not helpful or productive. It's the putting-down that has her frustrated, because there is a tangle of what she can't do with what she won't do.
It strikes me in particular because of a social media posting I saw recently of a video from the security camera of a diner in which a belligerent customer, after making several unpleasant remarks, walks over to a booth and physically assaults one member of a gay couple.
The victim posted the video with a commentary about how he was no longer going to keep it to himself, which was fine with me, until I realized the incident had happened three years ago, which made me wonder how often he had replayed the scene for himself, not just in his mind but on his computer screen.
He had not only preserved the memory, but also the video itself.
Which made me think of my son's comments on a related topic: As an ER nurse, he's seen his share of homeless vets, but, as a vet himself with his own burdens from the experience, he has wondered if maybe part of "putting it down" might include no longer wearing cammo on a daily basis.
This is not so much a judgment as a puzzlement, and, while the old monk is an instructor and thus expected to judge his student over what is, indeed, a passing incident, we are not afforded that luxury.
The same teachings that tell us to "put it down" and move on also instruct us not to be judgmental.
And it both starts and ends there.
Anne is, after all, seeking to stop judging the long-gone bully so that she can drop the burden of resentment.
By posing the question, and raising the issue, she is already ahead in the process.
Writers are continuously working through what it all means, but, in today's Between Friends, Kim faces the issue of, as the phrase goes, putting her business in the street.
There is the old rule of thumb, either invented by Ann Landers or the Buddha, "Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?"
The hole in that well-worn phrase is that, so long as it's true, then, if it is also necessary, it is kind, whether the kindness is immediately obvious or not.
And, if it's not true, then it cannot be necessary.
But, of course, it can be both true and unnecessary, in which case, it is almost certainly not kind.
The karmic struggle is in defining necessity, and the poster boy for that is Truman Capote, who was, ultimately, shunned by a good many people who didn't quibble with his sense of truth but were deeply wounded by his definition of necessity.
As a journalist, I was more concerned with a professional, ethical breach, and, when I heard about the movie "Capote," I wondered if it would address that conflict.
Boy, did it.
Capote, in his ground-breaking non-fiction book, "In Cold Blood," failed to disclose his romantic interest in one of the two killers, which was known in prison circles but generally hidden from the public.
The book was therefore not true, and thus could not be necessary, or, certainly, kind.
The rest of his gossip can be passed off as coming from a nasty little man who spoke ill of everyone but himself, which is a karmic burden of his own, though there is a second karmic burden for those who happily gobble up such betrayals.
Which suggests that, if the Buddhists are right about re-incarnation, then the people who predict that cockroaches will be around long after humans are gone are also correct.
And there I go being judgmental.
And here is Darrin Bell, being pragmatic in Candorville.
Sometimes a cartoon needs to be treated as a snapshot rather than a sermon.
As someone who is also an editorial cartoonist, he could apply this directly to the plight of cartoonists like Rob Rogers and David Horsey, who lost their staff positions for being more like the fellow on the left than the fellow on the right.
But, given that not all rich people are evil nor all evil people rich, it's better to take the money in this cartoon as a metaphor for a variety of "profits," which brings us back to Kim and the issue of speaking your mind, and perhaps losing friends.
As noted on the sign, silence is tacit agreement, and the question is whether, when someone expresses a hateful, untrue opinion, you shuffle your feet and stare at the ground or speak up and risk a friendship.
Which in turn asks the question, was that friendship true, kind and necessary?
Jen Sorensen poses the issue even more metaphorically, with the comic twist being the sudden snap back to reality and truth in the fourth panel.
Is there a difference between silence and apathy?
And, if we speak up, how can we do so in a way that merges necessity with kindness? Because simply raising hell and creating bad vibes is neither necessary nor kind, even if it's true.
So we have now begun beating each other up over whether you can publicly praise and enforce a policy that primarily hurts Latino families and then walk into a Mexican restaurant and expect to be greeted politely.
But let's not forget our conversation over whether you should be able to purchase an iced tea and a bag of Skittles without being treated rudely.
The challenge is to speak truth in a way that gathers friends and allies, at the risk of losing those who were neither.
Comments 3
Comments are closed.