email response to 4-H

--- On Fri, 3/20/09, XXXX wrote:

> I just
> wanted to let you know that on March 28 there
> will be a group using the big room. Please make
> arrangements to shoot under the arena.

Hi Xxxx,

Last Saturday we moved all the BB stuff into the big trailer, so we're already planning to use that rather than the big room both on the 22nd and on the 28th. We knew about the pageant thing already and were planning on being outside anyway.

> I understand that there was an incident with a vendor from
> the Coon hunters’ show a few weeks ago. I was
> not there and don’t
> know exactly what happened, but when something happens I
> have to field the heat
> for it. I don’t mind taking it if it is
> necessary, but each instance puts someone off to 4-H.


I take tremendous exception to this statement. You're right. You weren't there. I was. I don't know what exactly it is that you "understand" nor where you get your understanding from, but I have not and will not ask you nor anyone else to take any heat on my account. If any coon hunter had any beef to share with me, I invite them to say it to me in person.

Not a single soul from the coon hunter group said one word to me in the entire two-hour period we shared the premises with the coon hunters. If they had a problem with anything we did, that would have been the time to raise it, not weeks later in some anonymous underhanded way. The lowliest criminal defendant has a Constitutional right to be directly confronted with his accuser. Where is my accuser in this instance?

I will not respond to anonymous complaints nor to anything you may "understand" from rumor or innuendo. If there is any heat to take from any source for any specific conduct of the BB team I will answer my accuser directly and specifically. You need not get burned.

I suppose what galls me is the assumption by you that there was indeed some "incident" which occurred. That you blindly accept the truth of this accusation without any proof or even discussion is unfair and insulting to me. I could just as easily tell you that I "understand" the coon hunter group held an orgy outside in the woods that night. Would you treat that statement as true? Of course not, yet you treat an essentially equal statement about our conduct as gospel and then tell me that you're taking some heat for it. Implicit in your message is a warning that we need to behave in future so you don't have to take more heat on our account.

I'd like to think that since 2000 when we started the BB team, I might have begun to build at least some track record of more or less responsible behavior such that I don't need to be warned to play nice with the other people in the building.

answering an email about hypocrisy

> How do you stop being a hypocrite and start living the right way?

It's difficult to answer that question because of the assumptions it contains, but I'll try.

The quick and dirty answer is you can't, but that's just because you're asking the wrong question. Anytime you compare some ideal with what's going on around you, you're bound to lose. You never can live up to your ideals - never. It's not a bad thing to have ideals, of course, or the wish to improve. But it is bad to beat yourself up over not reaching them.

Ideals are just thoughts, and thoughts aren't reality. The best analogy I can think of (or steal from Brad Warner) is that of firing an arrow at a target. The target is your ideal. You fire the arrow and it flies, not based on the target, but on your actions in the here and now. The target can't affect the arrow. Only your actions can. Instead of getting pissed off because you missed the target, ask yourself what you're doing to affect the flight of the arrow. Better yet, notice where the arrow is actually going. That's reality.

Your arrow doesn't hit the pretty bull's-eye, but goes exactly where it goes according to your real actions. Life hands you all sorts of shit and you have to act out of where you really are, not out of some ideal of where you think you ought to be. That doesn't mean you don't aim at all, but it does mean that you need to pay attention to the act of aiming, not to the target itself.

To me, that means paying attention to who I really am and what I really think, losing the ability to lie to myself. It's trying to see what the truth is, where is the arrow really hitting, not where do I think it ought to hit. Once I see where that arrow is hitting, then I can take a look at what I'm doing to make it hit there. Only then do I know what to change, if change is possible.

Your mileage may vary, but for me, the best way to do all that is Zen Buddhism. To sort of paraphrase some things Brad has said better than me: The whole idea of Zen in the beginning was to answer the question, How can we live a truly happy life? Buddha didn't want to find something holy; he just wanted a life that wasn't a fucking drag all the time. The best way to live life is to live the way you want to. But living the life you really want to live is not the same as living the life you THINK you want to live. Before you live the life you truly want to live, you need to find out what you truly want. You need to look straight into your own mind and weed out your real desires from the false ones you've created out of thought.

In effect, you've got to know who you are and see clearly what you're doing and see clearly the effects of your actions. I know that sounds so simplistic as to be stupid and insulting, but it's hard as hell to do. We all know that acting morally tends to make us happier. It's hard for me to be happy if the people around me are unhappy, but it's hard for the people around me to be happy if I'm acting like an asshole. So if I want to be happy, morality seems like a good place to start. But I don't mean memorizing some set of rules and beating myself up when I don't live up to them. I mean being careful to see, really see, really notice how my actions affect things, how what I do makes that arrow fly.

There's a lot more to it than that, and I'm only scratching the surface, but I know you don't give two shits about Zen, so I won't go into the specifics of why I think Zazen is the cats ass when it comes to affecting the flight of your arrow.

Instead, to get back to your original question about hypocrisy, I'd simply counsel patience, especially patience with yourself. I don't think you know what you want. I don't think you see where you're at. And I think you give yourself far too little credit for the search.

We can all say the same for ourselves. We see our own faults all too well, and we call these faults our self, but it's a false self. We are what we do, not what we think we do. Look at what you do, not what you think, and especially not what you think you do.

Hypocrisy is a Treasury Secretary who doesn't pay his own taxes. It's not a friend who willingly shares her time, energy (and beer!), who makes the effort to stay in touch with folks, who's accepting of the outer weirdnesses of relatives and friends who have more faults than she ever dreamed of having. If you treated yourself half as well as you treat those around you, I think the question you asked might have little meaning to you.

That's my long-winded mish-mash anyway.

_/\_

How long is now - Haiku

The question remains,
how long is now? I don't know,
but it's all we have.