Karma
Last week, on the evening of St. Patrick’s Day, I was in the cockpit trying to use the internet. John was putting Sophie to bed. I heard a woman’s voice- faintly, saying something along the lines of, “almost, almost, get it, get it, get it, oh oh oh . . .” You know where my mind went- we live in close quarters with our neighbors, open hatches, blah blah. Then she started screeching, and I was relieved at the thought that it might be over with. Just then John appears and says, “Is she yelling HELP?” He went to investigate and sure enough, she and her equally-as-intoxicated husband were swimming around the marina looking for a way to get up, having fallen off their dinghy. John and some neighbors helped them up and tucked them in to sleep off their Guinness. But wow . . . I hope my neighbor’s head isn’t in the gutter when I need saving.
The story reminds me of a larger issue that’s plagued me for a long time. I can be so utterly convinced that one thing is happening, or that one process or direction is going to work, that I shove off any thoughts to the contrary. Buddha would say that I am attached. Attached, to my own detriment, to one outcome or thought. It’s a lesson I am working through. I got caught by it this week, working on the overhead insulation. It’s a simple process that, for some reason I was making more complicated by insisting on reusing materials and creating this jigsaw headache of styrofoam. The solution is using big pieces that we can fabricate easily, and remove easily. Duh. But I couldn’t hear the lady’s voice in the back of my head. Or see what was really in front of me.
I am probably the last woman on earth to have read Eat, Pray, Love. At some point Elizabeth describes karma, and does it well- “This is the supreme lesson of karma- take care of the problem now, or else you’ll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering- that’s hell.” Let me remember that when we’re halfway to Cape May.
My styrofoam karma. Coming back to get me.
