When I was still married, Michelle and I were watching a documentary on Napoleon Bonaparte. In all innocence, I exclaimed when they described his personality, "that's just like you!"
Michelle was not amused.
Napoleon was a hero and a monster. His mind was great: his soldiers loved him because his ideas reformed warfare and allowed a small fierce mob to beat the crap out of long lines of well-trained redcoat-type soldiers.
It's Independence Day. Our Sangha teacher called it interdependence day.
I was listening to NPR this morning and the author of a book about Bunker Hill talked about how George Washington had to get the new Americans on his side, regardless of their differences. The differences were huge and the zit popped as the Civil War, but the country unified long enough to beat the pants off George III and free the colony from England.
People into numerology and stuff probably have cool things to say about how our first president and our last king shared a name.
Something about differences and similarities all tossed together, shaken and stirred, will often come out more or less balanced in people raised in the same country, common cultures, values and stuff. Right or wrong we're more alike than not.
We may rant at each other on facebook, but we do get that info out there. We agree on the power of the truth. The truth is so powerful some of us spend most of our lives running from it.
It's harder to do nowadays.
My spouse was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. There's the connection with Napoleon. Do you have to be a little squirrelley to be a great leader? That's where I opt out. But maybe I ought not to. I feel like I'm in a dark cave and only just have the slightest sense of what to do...I'm a blob in space and nothing more. I can't get my brain around creating a life. I can't imagine people who think they can create a life for someone else.
Then blow a fuse when the life they've envisioned doesn't fit the person. The narcissist blames the person. The person by then, having been subjected to the whims and cruelties of the narcissist has no defense--it's been eaten away no matter how strong she might have been at one time. And we do not see it.
But we have to see it. I am paralyzed with fear. I can't finish this. where's that quote?
"Do they have legitimate, soluble grievances with America (Geoffrey Warwo, in Quicksand, speaking of Middle East countries) Israel, and the West, or, as British novelist Martin Amis has written, are they agonistic...marked by darkness sequestration, the shockingly bitter and unappeasable self-exclusion from the planet, its fear of ridicule, its fear of truth.... tendency to dissect instead of implement their dissatisfaction"
to utterly oversimplify, sounds like he's accusing the Middle East of having an alcoholic personality. And they don't even drink. That's worse--dry drunk, no 12-step solution. oy vey.
I was teased in my first rehab that I couldn't get sober because I was too focused on all the trouble in the world. Focus on yourself they said.
Buddhism gives us a way to do both. Yes, examine the navel, but dedicate the practice to all sentient beings. And studies show that prayer/positive thinking does have some eerie quantum-level effect on behavior.
I wonder what the self-immolating tibetans have to do with the horrible forest fires in the USA? Nothing, you say? Think again. But be careful.
Thoughts may be things...
smile! pet a cat...call a friend...say "awww oooo ahhhh" at fireworks
be safe and happy forth of july
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