If you think you're enlightened ...

... spend a week with your parents would be the classic line.

In my case I spent a few hours in a kind of brother in law situation. Have not gotten that contracted in years maybe, even if it was only a few minutes. Still plenty to learn, or unlearn.

Definitely. I think in my family we've been slowly getting along better over the years in proportion to lowering our expectations... even if we can only manage that one irritating personality feature/bug at a time...

Today's super irritating thing was sending a FedEx from Brazil to the US. The attendant was unable to pay attention to anything for more than 5 seconds and kept wandering off to randomly nervously rearrange pens, paper, or other items around the office, which meant that every time I had a question about the form I had to get his attention, wait for him to wander back over to the counter, get the answer, only to have him immediately wander off again. He then rewrote my form in worse handwriting, mispelling things, because he didn't like my handwriting. And then there were four more forms, and he put it in the wrong size box and had to rebox it, and so on. I spent about 40 minutes 'express' shipping a small useless item. But I did practice being patient with him, at least, and reminded myself that he can't be very happy if he's anxiously wandering around rearranging things constantly. He's certainly not very apt at the job, but perhaps he's new. Or the boss is mean. In any case, task done, and I will wait at least a year before doing that again, if possible. It's the second time I've ever sent anything that way, and the first time was even worse.

I'm also frequently annoyed by cab drivers. They drive terribly, talk too much, complain constantly, and ask nosy questions, though usually only as a pretext for launching into non-stop complaints. Uber drivers are very courteous and drive very nicely. I think because they feel less job security, needing good ratings to get rides assigned. The taxi drivers work at taxi stands and are not rated.

You could rename this thread "complaints"? lol

today i found out i got passed over for a promotion ive been counting on for the past 12 months.

it had me pretty screwed up for a few hours... i expect this will continue for a couple days at least.

I suppose I could have just let everything be, but some old patterns were triggered and there you go. Off and running.

There's a level where you could be watching even those patterns arise with non-attachment, but in this situation that was dialed down to, well, very little.

Bummer Noah. I can remember when that happened to me and I didn't deal with it well and wound up quitting a year later. I was a _very_ hard worker and really deserved the promotion... but even so, in retrospect, it wasn't in my best interest to quit despite it all. I've actually been thinking about that time in my life a lot lately...

For what it's worth, my "if you think you're enlightened" scenario happened in early 2017: I was potentially going to lose my job, my wife had a very serious health scare, my dog had cancer and needed an operation, and I had an operation that took me two weeks of bed rest, a month to walk, and maybe a year to mostly recover from. My body was definitely lit up, hyper-vigilant, when all of these things initially hit. But I will say that I never lost it and it really struck me how this was yet another opportunity for practice--- or you could say life is practice... In a short time, it all seemed like the new normal. (And ultimately I was fortunate that many of the worst outcomes didn't happen, I have my job, my wife, and my dog.) In a way it was a great experience because I saw so many assumptions regarding what should/must be stressful appear in my mind and then my mind saying "really? is that helpful?" I do feel like what could have been traumatic was greatly attenuated. So I think there is something to the idea that meditation can create a kind of resiliency to serious life challenges, but it was also clear to me that new and challenging experiences will be new and challenging.

Chris Marti wrote: I attended a wedding in New Hampshire this summer for one of my wife's nieces. I was entertained by watching a very dysfunctional extended family have it out, day after day after day. THEY weren't entertained, however.

I've occasionally noticed that when other parents argue with their little children it can be the most endearing thing in the world to watch the child come up with all kinds of reasoning and arguments and really see the relationship and the desires of them both in action. "It's so sweet how she said... " says I to the parent. "Man, it can be so stressful sometimes!" comes the answer.

I have absolutely no doubt that meditation has enabled to inhabit the more endearing perspective with my family, while of course remaining on the stressful side...