......success and failure are your journey*......
When people say, of a marriage, "things just didn't work out," is that something that happens because of a lack of willpower? or a lack of commitment? or is it something that just... happens to you? something beyond your control?| www.flickr.com or visit www.flickr.com/photos/birdfarm |
*The quote in the top bar is from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whom I tend to view with some suspcion as a person (great teacher or charismatic cult leader? I'm not sure!), but whose teachings I often find useful nonetheless... here is a further elaboration:
The sense of trust is that, when you apply your inquisitiveness, when you look into a situation, you know that you will get a definite response.
If you take steps to accomplish something, that action will have a result--either failure or success. When you shoot your arrow, either it will hit the target or it will miss. Trust is knowing that there will be a message.
When you trust in those messages, the reflections of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, or reservoir, of richness. You feel that you are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages....
You trust, not in success, but in reality.... [W]hatever the result that comes from your action, that result is not an end in itself. You can always go beyond the result; it is the seed for a further journey.
And,
Often, when someone tells us we should be fearless, we think they're saying not to worry, that everything is going to be all right. But unconditional fearlessness is simply based on being awake....
[F]earlessness is unconditional because you are neither on the side of success or failure. Success and failure are your journey.
3 comments:
When I say about my marriage that it "didn't work out," I mean that after much work I perceived that there were differences that could not be reconciled.
In my case, we diverged too much to ever be able to meet in the middle and for me that was a deal-killer.
When do you know you're there? I never want to be away from Loopy but it hurts a lot to be with her right now. I guess we'll probably get through it like we always do.
I don't know. For me, it was the day I realized that any other situation - even one in which I lived without the man I SAID VOWS TO IN FRONT OF GOD AND MY MOTHER - was better than the one I had.
It had been over for awhile; what finally did it for me was the day he said something I found to be utterly intolerable in a way that I found to be utterly intolerable about a topic I found to be utterly intolerable:
He returned from being out of town for a month. I was on the rag and had, though I didn't know it yet, a giant fibroid cyst, so my periods were horrendous. He knew they were because I'd bled all over the bed more than once. We were in the kitchen talking, I was gossipping about whom had hooked up with whom while he was gone while I cooked him dinner in his very clean house that I'd slaved over for days. He said he wanted sex. I said I was out of commission. He told me he was sick of hearing my excuses and that if I wasn't going to fuck him, I had to find someone else to do it.
It was in that moment that I realized he cared for nothing but himself, and I walked out the door and never went back.
I knew in that moment that the love of my life wouldn't even be capable of speaking to me like that.
It wasn't about the sex, it was about the utter lack of compassion: he did not CARE about me. I remembered thousands of other little things he'd done (or not done) over the years, and realized that he didn't love me.
I'd passed the hurting phase a couple of years before that. He'd quit hurting my feelings a long time before, but I hung in there because I'd meant my vows.
I guess I figured the occasional bent nose was part of a couple's life, but such utter lack of compassion was a deal breaker.
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