Samsara - Daily Irritations

Thought for October 27:
Stealing harms others' property and welfare, and disturbs their peace and happiness. When a house is built, an ugly screen and iron bars are put on the windows to protect what is inside from thieves. Have you ever thought how just the sight of those bars, that screen, makes us uneasy and steals some of our peace and happiness?

The above reminds me of a recent trip to Costa Rica. There, in the riot of nature's beauty, many of the houses , particularly those near cities, were surrounded by iron fences , and the windows were barred like prison cells. It was incongruous in the extreme, the contrast of soft flowers and vines with hard metal.

How could anybody even think of stealing in a garden spot like this? But of course they do, and common sense tells us it is so. This isn't just because it's a developing nation. Costa Rica is, in fact, relatively well off among developing nations. And really, developing nation or world power, it is no different. In New York City, street-level windows are always walled off with iron. One takes for granted the need for doormen, buzzer systems, police locks, and intercoms.

The Dalai Lama's observation calls us to awake and question that which we have learned to take for granted. The quotation makes us mindful of the suffering all around us. The robber and his victim both suffer. The tourist on her expensive vacation, sees evidence of others suffering; she cannot totally insulate herself, and so their suffering, to some extent, becomes her own.

As a high school counselor, working with at-risk students, every day shows me the iron bars amid the flowers.A short explanation: at-risk is to me a patronizing, demeaning bureaucratic label for students who are really a heterogeneous group. Students come to our program for a variety of reasons. They might be serving time with the juvenile justice system, or they might have been sick too long and lost credit in their regular school classes. Many are poor; many have low academic skills; some are middle-class but drug addicted; some have exceptional talent but no patience with demands of the system. Some are teen-age mothers having their first or second baby.

Many of these young people are a delight to work with. But there are the hard-cores, who live to wear a counselor or teacher down. They dare to a rudeness I never dreamed of when I went to school. Dealing with these abrasive personalities is like water chipping away at a rock. Over the years, new channels get carved in my consciousness, and these eventually weaken my foundation. Because constant confrontation is just too exhausting, I shrug off more and more that should not be shrugged off. I've watched the other counselors and teachers go through a similar process. To keep the peace, and to keep the class going, we do not stop and address every time they mutter to their friends, shooting us hostile glances, every time they groan and complain when we ask them to do anything, every time they pretend to sleep from the awful boredom we impose upon them, every time they slouch in their chairs with hard eyes and say "I don't know" no matter what they are asked. I am aware of a dull sort of irritation, but I just move it along and do not stop to fully consider the price I am paying in loss of self respect, authority, and comfort. Every time I do not address behavior I find unacceptable, I open the door to a worse offense. A shard insinuates itself under the skin, where it encysts, eventually to boil over in infection.

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