Tag Archives: Frustration

Being Humbled

The warning message appeared on the dashboard display: “Washer fluid low”. No problem. Even though my car Ruby is new to me, I’d been down this road many times before. Once I get to school, I’ll whip out the jug of fluid and get that sign out of my space.

How many vehicles have I had in my life? I bet fifteen. Fifteen hoods to raise, fifteen reservoirs of washer fluid to locate, fifty years of driving.

There’ll be a button or lever low on the dash to get the hood open. And there it is, with its little car diagram. Flick! Open with a click. (Gosh … I just have so much life experience!)

I walk to the front of Ruby and feel for the lever that will raise the hood. It’ll be a small thing right in the middle. I’ll get my finger underneath it and push up.

I groped along the gap between hood and body. Nothing. A second sweep produced the same result. Being a mature, adaptable type of human, I anticipated that the magic lever was probably way to the right or way to the left – unusual, but my history of rich life experiences would see me through.

Nothing again … and again I say nothing.

No, Bruce. You don’t need to consult the manual. Your mature intelligence will solve the problem.

Two minutes later I’m on page 502, viewing a diagram that indicates a lever smack dab in the middle of the hood edge. What? This dumb Honda manual is lying!

I felt and felt and felt. There’s no ******* lever anywhere!

I took a break, leaning against Ruby’s driver door while the school buses spilled out their young contents. I was hoping that no kid would approach while I was wallowing in ineptitude. Thank goodness for small miracles.

Back to the redness of Ruby’s hood. Back to the gap. Fingers in slow motion left to right … and then right to left. (Sigh)

And then, something tiny nudged my hand. I lifted up. The gap did not expand. Without thought, I moved my fingers to the right.

Release … letting go … opening.

For fifty years I’ve done it one way. Today Honda had a different idea. There is much to learn in this life.

Day Two: Friend in Flesh

This is so cool. I’m sitting in the Waffle House south of Cincinnati, Ohio, eagerly waiting breakfast. I’m in a booth facing two lines. On the left, I see the profiles of five hungry guys wearing well-used jackets, some sporting toques on their heads. Man, do they know how to eat!

The right line features busy waitresses almost yelling detailed orders at the cook. He repeats the details and gets to it. The grill is right beside me, crackling away. My active friend is stirring eggs, flipping hashbrowns, and in general bouncing along. Food smells waft to my nose and soon a big waffle is entering my mouth. The place is nearly full and the atmosphere is so alive.

Hours later, my world has been filled with three lanes of speeding cars, impossibly steep hills, and the glory of coloured leaves. It was such a long day of driving and my right arm has been majorly sore. I think I jerked it madly to get away from yesterday’s tiny dog and then I held it rigidly all day at the steering wheel. Oh well.

I made it to Asheville Airport about thirty minutes before my friend “Derek”‘s plane landed. We arranged to stay at the same B&B as we experience the Evolutionary Collective orientation together. I’ve talked to Derek many times during our online practices but I was about to meet him in the flesh. I gazed down the arrivals corridor with great joy. And here he came, looking just like my laptop said he would. I first just stood and stared … here was one of my beloveds. We looked into each other’s eyes and then reached forward in a slow hug. Hello, my friend.

I was fascinated to see Derek in front of me. “You’re real. You’re three dimensional.” Yes he was, and I laughed at how marvelous it was to have him with me. This moment will be repeated several times tomorrow morning as EC Global folks show up at the registration table. Yay!

Derek and I got into Scarlet and started exiting the parking garage for our trip to downtown Asheville. Only one problem: I couldn’t figure out how to leave the building. There were gates, but no obvious place to pay and those ornery gates refused to rise when Scarlet nestled close to them. We did circles in the garage, seeking the Holy Grail of release, but none was to be found. Derek headed into the airport to seek professional advice but came back essentially empty handed. While he was gone, I watched vehicles in my side mirror approach a gate – and it magically went up for them! With Derek back in Scarlet, I tried to replicate others’ behaviour but the darned gate still stuck its tongue out at me.

There were two gates beside each other. Finally I figured that while my mirror had shown a left gate, I should have approached the right one in real life. And so I did … and up it went. Thoroughly humbled, we discovered that the true toll gate was outside the garage at the far end of the parking lot.

Defeated by a parking garage, we ventured into the world of animated discussion, a classic old B&B with wraparound porch, and a delicious meal at the Mountain Chef Bistro in Burnsville. Ahh.

See you tomorrow.

Discipline … And Letting Go

Now that I’m home, I’m going to take on a project that will require all my dedication.  Will I address world hunger or perhaps contribute to an elevated consciousness in Canada?

No

I’m becoming a better golfer.  There … no grand plan for touching the world, just me touching the land.  Hitting balls with a prayer that they’ll hang in the sky.  Wait a  minute – that sounds a bit spiritual to me.

I’ve become a member at Tarandowah Golfers Club near Avon, Ontario.  My plan is to go there most days and hit shots on the driving range until I get consistent enough to play the course with other members.  Tarandowah is a very difficult course which matches my golf game nicely.  But I’ll get there, supported by the lessons I’m taking from Derek Highley in London.

I was on the range yesterday.  Such a meditation.  I hit 200 balls, trying to “sweep the grass” and have the low point of my swing an inch or two in front of the ball.  I’ve never really practiced before so no wonder that I’ve never broken 120 at Tarandowah.

Consistently hitting the ball on the sweet spot of the clubface is one key to happy golf.  But consistency hasn’t exactly been my middle name.  And so what?  I begin.  Most of my shots were hit off the heel or toe of the club and squibbled unimpressively down the fairway.  My low point ranged from two inches in front to three inches behind, with corresponding tears in the earth.  Sometimes life felt effortless and the ball climbed in the air.  Mostly, though, it was like hitting a stone.

Again I say, so what?  I’m on the road to the sweet spots of life.  And I realize it’s possible to feel that sweetness even during the most wayward shot.  I’m on the grass, doing something I love.  I’m fully capable of letting performance thoughts go and revelling in the happiness of being at Tarandowah.  I met some fine people out there yesterday and that’s the realest joy of any activity for me.  Sooner than I’m expecting, I’ll be walking down the fairways beside them.

I Know Things

There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Jean-Luc encountered a race of people who looked like they weren’t too smart.  Their leader kept saying “We know things.”  It turned out that they were a crafty group.  Ever since, I’ve borrowed their phrase, usually to express a lack of knowing on my part.  Such as yesterday.

Three items for your consideration:

1.  While trying to mow the lawn on Friday, I turned my tractor to the left and the front right tire came off the rim.  It rained Saturday and Sunday and the grass kept growing.

2.  No hot water in the house since Saturday morning.  I tried a brisk hair wash in the sink but it wasn’t much fun.

3.  Monday afternoon, a fellow knocked on my door, wanting to seal my asphalt driveway.  It had been about fifteen years since I’d last had it done (by me!) so I told him to go ahead.

Monday morning, I thought I could get the tire back onto the rim with a big screwdriver, and then pump it up with my air compressor … but no go.  Phoned my lawn tractor guy and he told me how to get the wheel off the axle so I could bring the tire in for a redo.  And I actually did it!  Such a handy guy.

The water heater company had given me a four-hour window (10:00 – 2:00) for their technician to show up.  He’d phone fifteen minutes before arriving.  It was 11:30 and tire guy would only be at his shop for another couple of hours before heading out for appointments with desperate homeowners.  Do I take the tire in or wait for water heater fellow?  I decide to go.  And as I went, my cell phone rings.  I pull over.  No, the gentleman couldn’t go see another water heater customer first.  If I wasn’t home in fifteen minutes he’d cancel the appointment and I’d have to rebook.  I was already twenty minutes away, zooming towards the tire shop, scratching my unwashed head.  (Sigh)

I dialed water heater company.  Magically, they were able to give me another appointment that day, technician #2 to arrive by 5:00.  Magically as well, lawn tractor guy put a tube in my tire and I was out the door lickety split.  Definitely on a roll.  “Make sure you put the two washers back on and the clip that holds the wheel on.”  Sure, I’ll do that.  After all, I know things.

Back home again.  Plastic Nitrile gloves on (cleverly avoiding greased hands), wheel on the axle, washers too, and now for the clip.  It was a little horseshoe-shaped spring-loaded dealie that fits into a groove on the axle.  I got a screwdriver and tried to jam it in.  Nyet.  More pressure, and sproing … off the metal guy flew into my uncut grass.  Search, search, search … ahh – there it is.  Since discretion is the better part of valour, I phoned lawn tractor guy.  “How do I get that clip on?”  “Take a pair of pliers and squeeze it.”  Okay.  So I squeezed the left and right sides of the horseshoe, which didn’t make any sense since that just put more pressure on the groove, rather than widening the clip.  Grunt and grunt.  And off she went again, over my right shoulder.  Far away, I believe, into the bush behind me.

Thinking that the clip might be deep within the grass between me and the bush,  I got out my Whipper Snipper and mowed down the tall blades, never considering that if the clip was on the lawn, it could easily be ejected into kingdom come by the rotating trimmer cord.

Meanwhile, driveway sealer guy was starting to edge the asphalt and the tractor was partially in the way.  No clip.  I needed to push the tractor fully onto the grass.  I had raised the offending wheel with Scarlet’s jack.  I inserted the long rod into the hole in the jack and turned left to lower the wheel.  My Nitrile gloves wrapped themselves around the rod, pretty much immobilizing my hands.  And here comes edger fellow.  More grunting, plus a ripping of plastic gloves that reminded me of Superhero Man.  Finally my hands were free, the tire was back on terra firma and I pushed the tractor away from my new friend’s trimmer, just about to the point where the wheel fell off the axle.  But not quite!  I know things.

Trimmer man, also known as driveway sealing man to his friends, shut down his machine, and started groping with me through the grass.  (Hmm … I don’t think I said that right.)  Still no luck with locating said clip, and the grasses were grinning at me with their very long bladed mouths.  So thinking at the speed of light, I reasoned that I needed a magnet.  I knew that Jody and I had one but God knows where.  However Tony, my neighbour, knows everything and has everything.  So off I went.  He found a little disk magnet, about an inch in diameter.  He came back with me and we groped together.  Same result.  Then Tony simply said, “Well, Bruce.  We have the same lawn tractors.  I’ll take a clip off mine, we’ll put it on yours, you can mow your grass, then buy another clip from the tire shop, and give it to me.”  Of course.  Why didn’t my all-knowing self think of that?

One more conversation with lawn tractor guy.  “No, you don’t squeeze the sides of the clip.  You set it in partially in the groove, take the pliers and squeeze the top of the clip and the underside of the axle.”  Oh.  Tony was all set to do the deed, but I said no.  With the fine motor ability of a surgeon, I did the squeeze and the clip popped into place.  I then mowed part of the lawn while my driveway transformed into glistening blackness.

And there you have it.  I absolutely, positively, for sure know things.  Plus I had a shower last night.

Gently, Gently

The Buddha taught about three big problems people have: attachment, aversion and delusion.  Over the nine days of the meditation retreat I just experienced, I learned how to be with these obstacles.  Easier said than done, however.  The teachers asked us to observe the eruptions of the mind as they emerged.  And to hold them gently, as you would cradle a baby bird, rather than getting all ramped up with an issue, creating a big story about the topic, filled with distress.  I found that if I was being quietly aware of, say, an attachment I was watching unfold, a telltale sign would be a tiny smile at the corners of my mouth.

I came to the retreat attached to a particular walking meditation route at the centre.  On previous retreats, I did a big loop, walking the long, curving driveway and then on the lawn, next to the hedge that borders the road.  When I arrived on Easter weekend, there were drifts of snow by the hedge, the temperature was about 5 degrees Celsius, and I was sick.  Still, I had to walk my route, every day.  Lips tight, leaning forward, I trudged on.  Sometimes my boot would break through the crust and sink down 8 inches or so, and sometimes my foot would stay on top.  I tried to convince myself that this just duplicated the ups and downs of life, and that it was therefore a good meditation.  But it didn’t work.  Mostly, it was just a pain in the ass.

Where, oh where, had vacated my meditative mind?  I was covered in a blanket of “have to”, determined to do as I had done before.  But the pressing doesn’t work.

By day three my cough had gotten worse, it was cold out, and I abandoned the great out-of-doors.  I found a rectangular walking room in the centre and stepped on out, marginally at peace.  The truth was though, at least to my addled brain, the smooth wooden floorboards were not good enough.  I lusted for my hedge, lawn and driveway.

As the teachers continued their daily lessons about simply observing our attachments – our greed to have life turn out just the way we want it – I got to see the huge tension I had created for myself.  I was sad, and tried to just let that be there.  Glimpses of that tiny smile broke through for a moment here and a moment there, quickly to be replaced by a pout.  That Buddha!  What does he know?

More about that tomorrow.