verse Thirteen

Having graduated law school and passed the bar, I am now in line with thousands of other recently minted attorneys looking for work. Humbling experience to understate things. And then there's loans.

Verse Thirteen opens with a slap. Accept disgrace and misfortune graciously. Sh!t happens. Disgrace is equated to complacently being unimportant. I am not unimportant in all spheres. None of us is unimportant in all spheres...There are some ways in which I do not want to be important - the infamy conferred by getting caught screwing up badly, for example, I am happily doing without. No hit and runs, no random assassinations, no corruption charges.

The kind of importance where I make a difference outside my comfortable sphere, that kind of importance I crave. And without a job, it seems the farthest thing from possible (although volunteer opportunities are helping me fulfill those leanings).

Misfortune, says the Tao, is a natural by-product of having a body. cf: my post on running hills. But I get it. No one gets to the end of the race without confronting adversity in many forms. Physical pain, conniving competition, tactical failures. To avoid emotional pain I think the Tao is saying not to expect gold medals to drop onto one's neck: be humble, don't worry about winning, simply take care of doing what it is needs to be done. That's where to find satisfaction. That's how to be if not important then authentically human  - by doing what must be done, not by trying to be important.

Having never seen the show about Snooki (Jersey Shore?) I can't really say, but I'm guessing that's where the striving to be important leads you. And there's another lesson for politicians - hearing the siren call of taking care of the world in a doing-what-needs-to-be-done sort of way is tantalizingly close to the taking-care-of-the-world to be important way. The striving, I think, the Tao frowns upon. The striving, I think, leads to injuries physical and mental, and harm to the connected community that is the planet. In a big-picture kind of way. (The small picture kind of way lands you in op-ed columns and cable talk shows as an example of "Don't.")

I confess to a neurotic fear of driving in snowy conditions. I get through by reminding myself to drive the road I'm on. Maybe it's not slippery, maybe it's not hilly. Maybe it is - aside from moving to someplace warm year round I'm stuck where I will sometimes have to drive snowy roads. Perhaps driving (or running) the road I have will lead to the last line of verse thirteen: if I love the world as myself I will be rewarded with the gift of being able to care for all things. Perhaps life under the radar will fulfill. Perhaps my rising panic about not having the vehicle of a job to work through will send me off the rails into the icy median strip a few more times before I sort things out. All bets are off. I accept not knowing the future (and all blame for mixing up one big batch of metaphor that last sentence).

I am driving the road I'm on (running, walking, talking, reading, thinking). Is that the best I can do? The Tao tells me to avoid the value judgment. I'm not sure I can but when all else fails it's a good place to start.