This morning I was walking down the street and suddenly my peaceful stroll was interrupted by a bevy of honking: A bus was stuck behind a tow truck that was blocking the road and the bus driver was relentlessly laying on the horn.  The thing was, the tow truck had no other place it could possibly go. In order to be able to tow the car that needed towing, to remove it from blocking another road, the tow truck simply had to block the bus. That was simply the laws of geometry. “Honk, honk, HOOOOONNNNKKKKKK!!!”

My blood started to boil: Why in the hell is this bus driver ruining my peace, my morning walk, my block? Does that bus driver really think honking is going to help? Seriously, if he just used his own two eyes to look out the window in front of him, it would be clear that the honking is useless, the tow truck has no where else to go. Asshole bus driver.

But then I had a second thought: Much like the asshole bus driver, I am constantly upset by, and acting-out about, situations that I can’t control. There was the time we took the wrong train in Japan and I was devastated by wasting so much vacation time, or the time I got so angry when the park I wanted to visit closed before it’s posted hours, there was my self loathing for ever agreeing to travel with a friend I had a strained relationship with (after we were already on the trip), or even right now, flipping-out over the honking symphony assaulting my ears.  In each case, the circumstances are already what they are . So why do I get upset? Why ‘mental honk’, when clearly my rage won’t change things?

The simple reason:  Just like the bus driver, I don’t see that things can’t actually be different than they are. That like the angles a tow truck can move in to tow a car are restrained by geometry, all effects are restrained by the causes and conditions that bring them about.  I got angry when the park had closed early, but there were reasons the city had to change the hours. I was upset with myself for agreeing to a trip with a friend I had a strained relationship with, but there were reasons I said yes in the first place. I imagine I can change those reasons, if not now, than at least ‘next time’. My problem is that I still think the circumstance could be different. That they should be different. That parks should keep their posted hours, and Alanas should know better than being suckered into a trip. So I get angry, because things aren’t how they ought to be,  not what I imagined or want them to be, or what I think I deserve them to be, or what I am used to them being, or what they were yesterday.

The foundation of the delusion is two fold: 1) I believe that the situation is all about me, instead of being about the arising of circumstances, at a particular point in time and in a particular way.  So I start feeling guilty/bad that I screwed up by going on the trip, or that the world screwed me by closing the park. 2) I don’t understand impermanence: That the way things were in the past doesn’t guarantee it will be that way in the future.  All my assumptions about travel, parks, trip with friends are founded on past experiences, and beliefs I have about how thing will and should be (i.e. what I have seen in the past triangulated into what I expect of the future). They are all, always, grounded in how things once were before. But now is different than before, or what I imagine it will be, and when it is too different, when it falls outside my acceptable range, I am devastated. I imagine I can change those reasons, if not now, than at least ‘next time’, which misses the fact that next time is a whole other, independent set of factors, at a new time, and by definition will have different outcome.

The thing is, I keep getting ticked-off at what is totally normal. Honking in a once silent street, normal. Parks closing early, normal. Sickness, aging, breaking, decay, suffering and death, normal, normal, normal. None of these things has anything to do with Alana’s definitions of ‘deserve’, or ‘right’, or should be. A chain of causes coalesced to make each current state. A state different than past states. In a world where what happens is normal, it is only Alana, not the world that gets upset. I cling so hard to what I believe is ‘right’ and ‘fair’, I make ever single external thing about me when it is not.

Obviously, I think my indignation is warranted. That my internal honking is a compass that points me in the right direction, it orients me as on the side of right in the world, it prevents me from being slighted, it lets me prepare better for next times, it will protect me, it will save me, make me exempt from bad stuff, give me control… The problem is, in reality, it does none of these things. Instead, it just makes me suffer. It feeds my own self-indulgence. Rather than face the truth : I can’t change the circumstances of the truck that are in my way, it gives me the illusion of control –at least I can get angry, I can honk, I can stoke my beliefs about what is right and fair and just in this world, even though ultimately those beliefs don’t change anything but my level of suffering.