The Entirety of Suffering in 14 Words

Yesterday while doing some studying with Middle Daughter I was trying to adjust some electronics into what I had hoped would be my Road Warrior Writer’s kit. It consisted of an Anker portable battery which was charging my iPhone 6+ (in a very low-tech stand hack) via the Nomad ChargeCard while I typed using Daedalus on a full-size Anker keyboard.

Those links are provided for gearheads like me. What you really need to know is that it looked like this:

[caption id=”attachment_2772" align=”aligncenter” width=”500"]

Note the clever use of gloves to provide the right angle for the battery pack…[/caption]

The problem was that the usb connector on the ChargeCard is cleverly designed to be flexible…which means a not-always adequate connection to my iPhone for power. I did the usual wiggling and adjusting which illustrated the limitations of my stand hack, as the iPhone tilted or fell over. It was a mini-version of the Keystone Cops there on the table, and my daughter was pretty amused. She made some comment about doing it “right”, and I blurted out:

“I don’t want to do it right; I want to do it MY way!”

There was a pause. Then my daughter said, “Well. That’s an interesting little commentary on life, isn’t it?”

Indeed it is. Simply an illustration of the Buddhist proverb: The sum total of your suffering is the difference between the way your life is and the way you want it to be. Of course, it’s possible to change either of those factors and become happier. But the question is, which do you really have more control over?

Eventually — through things like journaling, meditation, and other self-awareness exercises — I think people who do it long enough eventually discover that it’s easier to control one’s own mindset than to control the rest of the world. Not easy, mind you (ha!) — but easier. Or, to put it another way, the old saw of “Think globally, act locally” may be a lot more “local” than we realized.

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