CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

I come up with ideas in the line at Whole Foods. I started thinking today in the quick check out line when the woman in front of me was chattering away with the cash register guy for about ten minutes after she’d paid and been bagged.

Today I was thinking about change. Mostly I was thinking about how we are sitting almost on a tipping point of change, where people are really beginning to realize that what they do matters. I don’t think enough people are on board yet, but we’re getting there.

Change is kind of an abstract concept. It’s hard to define, especially when we need everyone to scoot over a few pixels. Change means different things to different folks.

I’ve been on a fantasy daydream tangent lately where I’ve been visualizing my change. I’ve been wanting to buy land in New Mexico for half a century now, but I’ve never been really clear on exactly where or what I would do with it once I had it. It’s part of my process of change – it’s a big thing for me to be thinking about moving away from the coast. Anyway, I’ve been daydreaming about the strawbale house, the painting studio, the green houses, and the off the grid lifestyle that I would be living there – all within the pretext of being minimalist and ultra-modern. That’s my big change. It’s a little creative, combining styles and architectural methods.

My little change that I found for today in the real world were compostable bag liners for the kitchen compost.

So while I was standing in line at Whole Foods, I thought about people’s fears and resistance to change, which sort of revolve around their expectations of what their lives are supposed to be like, based on what everyone else’s live are like. I was trying to think of ways to let people know that we are on the edge, where expectations are not going to be the norm. That we’re all going to have to get a little creative about how we live our day to day lives on the planet.

Anyway. That’s what I was thinking about in those few minutes when the chatterbox wouldn’t shut up and go on her way.

Things I’ve been wanting to write about, but haven’t had the time to focus on any one thing.

Rudeness. People think I’m rude, and tell me so all of the time. I don’t care. It’s not my problem. These same people do things that I think are rude all of the time, but they feel these things are their god-given rights. Like what, you ask? Like this … They shorten my full name into a nickname. God I hate that. They run stop signs on their bicycles. They let their bad ass dogs run the streets off leash. They hog the sidewalk when walking with their friends. They talk on their cell phones while they are walking on an otherwise nice quiet street, or driving in their car, or in the bookstore. They push their way in line in front of me at Whole Foods because they have one thing and I have two things. They don’t pay attention to others needs. They don’t teach their kids how to act in public. That’s enough for now …

Eccentricity. I’ve been thinking a lot about living in my own little world. People tell me all of the time that I live in my own little world. And when I thought about this for awhile, mostly while in the shower, I realized that my world is not my own nor is it little. It’s actually quite big and everyone would fit in it if they chose to do so. I realized that the world we all try to live in is the one that is quite small and limited.

Flakiness. Where is my paycheck? Payday was a week and three days ago.

Work. Why haven’t I been able to support myself by doing things that I love to do? Especially when I feel that I was meant to do them?

Teeth. I really need to find a new dentist. Actually I really need to find a job that has benefits.

Remember. I registered for a dharma talk this coming Friday. Sakyong Mipham is in town. Now I just have to remember to go to it. I so rarely find out about dharma talks ahead of the event.

Change. I need to make some changes.

OK, that’s all that’s been whirling around in the tag cloud of my mind the past week or so.

Feels good to get it out :)

We now have the opportunity to really begin to become unattached from our stable hum-drum everyday lives. It’s something that I’ve been experimenting with over the last five years or so.

As a society, the American one, we have developed our lifestyles to be completely dependent on jobs, on stability, on comfort, and on the premise that we buy things in an effort to hold up the illusion that we are all the previous things in this list. We can be comfortable if we are employed, stable, and buying things. We can be stable if we are employed, comfortable, and buy things. This line of thinking is the very center of our collective universe.

Society has a hard time letting go. Once it finds something that works, at least for the majority of the people involved, it really doesn’t want to change. It gets stuck. It starts living in fear of change. It starts thinking about the risks involved in changing, rather than the benefits. It stops moving forward.

The internet brought up a hairball for society. The hairball being a massive change in the way we live. It was all ok when it involved sending jokes in emails around from friend to friend. But then banking went online. Education went online. Paying bills went online. But not all banks, not all schools, and not all companies wanted to be online. So if I want to do my business online, I have a slimmer selection of people and companies and banks that I can work with. But, work with them I do.

I like the idea of being mobile. I like the idea of being able to sit on the beach in Tulum with my laptop and work on a job that is based in San Francisco, get paid by direct deposit, and make payments for things like storage or services online. I like that when I want to change locations, I just logon to the net and buy a plane ticket. I like that all I have to do is carry a small laptop around in a backpack to do this. I like that I don’t need a phone. I like that email can get to me just about anywhere.

But society doesn’t like it. My storage place refuses to allow online payments and I still have to pay by check. My bank freaks out when I leave the country. My job doesn’t have direct deposit. And some things are impossible to do over the net if I’m not sitting in the right location.

I’ve designed my life, as much as it is possible, to exist in a small, thin box that I carry around with me. I love the change that it has brought to my life. I love the mobility that I now have. Do I still have attachments. Yes. I mean someday I will have to get rid of this box too.

Change is good.

Change is freedom.