CrankyBuddhist   the learning never ends …

Things keep coming around in life until we learn the lesson the thing was designed to provide. If you live long enough, or have enough experiences in life, you begin to see the patterns. Some of these patterns are easy to figure out and the lessons are easily learned. Like, unless you are a moron or completely disconnected, it doesn’t take too many times of putting your hand in a fire to know you’ll get burned.

But I have this recurring lesson or thing that comes around every single time I start a job. Even though I may have gotten the job at a time when I can budget and make it to the first paycheck, there is always, and I mean always, something that delays the first check, or complicates the money so that I have to work sometimes for weeks longer than expected without pay. One job I started it was my fault. I assumed that the job distributed paychecks on the 15th and 1st, or twice monthly. Two weeks into the job I found out that the job payed once a month and I had started just after a payday. Another time I was told that the job did pay twice a month, but I wasn’t told that the pay period was delayed two weeks. This time, the job I’m working now, it was the surgery and holidays that backed me up two weeks.

So what is it about this that makes me a moron?

I’m not exactly sure what the first $21,odd thousand dollars was for. Apparently not much as I am now getting more bills from the anatheseologist, the pathologist, the ultrasound technician and the emergency room.

Actually the original bill was $54, some odd thousand dollars, but they gave me a $32,000 uninsured person discount.

And just as I predicted, the Financial Counselor told me not to worry about running around and getting my paperwork together because there wasn’t a deadline, yet today I received a letter from the hospital saying that I did not meet my 30 day deadline for turning in my paperwork. Although, they are going to be nice and give me another 30-day extension.

I’ve decided to just take as much time as I need tomorrow and do all the running around and get this crap taken care of.

Maybe I should just declare myself homeless?

How do people with more serious problems deal with this …

And I don’t want one. I like what a lot of teachers have to say. I read a lot of writings. And I love that many teachers are putting up their teachings on youtube. There are a few teachers that I am spiritually attracted to. Maybe I would hang out with them if they were in my hood or I was in theirs.

But for the most part, I’m a loner when it comes to my dharma and life studies.

Sometimes I feel like a hermit.

Or a nun.

Or just a conscious person.

As individuals, we each live different lives. We each have different lessons to learn. We each started out in this current life with different stash levels of karma. My life is completely different from any other life on the planet. And so is yours.

Many people go through life thinking that each life should be the same, following the same rules, and have the same goals. But they are not. We do not. We are each at a different stage of development, even if those stages are only seperated by moments.

My most difficult moments in this current life have happened when I’ve tried to fit in, make someone else happy, or live my life by another’s rules. My parents rules. My grandmother’s rules. Christian rules. Societal rules. Even Buddhist rules. I find that things flow when I’m instead living my truth. When I am unattached and free to bend with the moment. I’ve always known this, but sometimes I try living by the rules just to keep testing this theory. It still holds.

While my friend and I were at dinner, he mentioned that he didn’t quite get my life. I rarely work (on tangible things – like my growing web site with four departments, writing about travel, photography, and making art :) but somehow I always have what I need.

I recognize that I do have what I need. I do always strive to make my life better and more comfortable. I am not always successful, by other people’s yardsticks. And I’m sure a lot of people are like this – they are living not quite the lives that they envision for themselves. We all want to be further along the path. We all want to have a roof over our heads and food in our belly. Our minds open. Some are better hunter and gatherers than others, whether they are hunting material necessities or gathering enlightenmnet.

In any case, this rambles down to the realization that life is what it is and the minute we get happy with that, our suffering ends. Until some other thought comes along that disrupts the happiness.

Life is what it is.