November 12, 2023

 November 12, 2023

   My phone didn’t take the overnight charge. I had it plugged in. The battery was so low in the morning the phone was unresponsive. I tried other cords; I tried different outlets. The phone remained unresponsive. I had the brains to check the Internet. They gave some easy-to-follow suggestions. One was to clean the port. The instructions were to use a nonmetallic toothpick. Remember: we constantly shove our phones into our pockets and spit into them when we speak directly into the microphone. That cleaning worked like a charm.

  The rest of the entry will be all deep thoughts. You might like to skip it.

   How’s this for a deep thought: despair is the doorway to acceptance. Acceptance is different than resignation. However, I can imagine that despair might also be a doorway to that. It depends on how we respond to despair. Despair is the feeling that nothing can change for the better. I call it the ‘Oh, shit’ place. I’ve sat with others in healing sessions but have never gone there myself. I have faced resignation- reluctantly. I have given up on resolving relationships and settled for a separate peace. I faced despair; I hoped it would lead to acceptance. It worked for Christ on the cross; why not me? It really didn’t. I was good for a few hours. Then back to the struggle to solve it so it kills the pain. No such luck! Oh, well. On to another day. Meanwhile, I have learned not to howl openly or just practice restraint.

   I wrote about this recently. It comes to mind again. Buddhism teaches peaceful acceptance in the face of despair; Christianity teaches hope. Hope based on God’s good will and the ultimate reward of heaven. Marx didn’t think much of either one. He saw all religions as the opiate of the people, seducing them into accepting current unfavorable economic conditions. I return to the AA prayer; “ God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”   That prayer covers all the bases.

  The other topic is the ego. I viewed through the eyes of the children I worked with in the Ulu Wini, all members of the Marshallese community. I work with one child at a time at the side of the community center and watch the rest running around, laughing, and playing on this commercial playground equipment. I was there several years ago when it was installed. The younger children play on it. Many of them are part of extended families. It’s joyful.

   Before I moved to Hawaii, I taught what was called, at the time, English as a Second Language, now ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages. The students were all part of strong communal societies. When asked to describe something they did over the weekend, they were inclined to write, “I went to the zoo with my family.” 

 When asked to provide more details, they looked at me as if I was out of my mind. There were no other details worth mentioning. Individual observations were irrelevant.

   Back to the word ‘ego.’  When Buddha talked about the self, he didn’t imagine it as we do today. In a collective society, if anyone sees themselves as an individual versus a part of a family or a community, they are emphasizing the self, manifesting ego. Probably some of it included an exaggerated idea of one’s worth, arrogance as we think today. In a communal society, seeing oneself as different from the rest of the group in any way is a manifestation of ego because it’s a manifestation of any individual.