Ups and Downs

I went to meditation this morning. It’s a small closed group of people with some of the most positive auras I’ve ever met. You walk into the room and you feel a wave of peace wash over you. We sit together as a group and when we ground ourselves and protect our space I can feel the energy running through me. It was a beautiful session for me this morning where I really felt myself opening up. A lot of the time I get scared and I’ll start to panic thinking about my day, thinking about what I have to get done, thinking about life choices. There are so many outside pressures that sometimes I forget to listen to myself. So even though I’m not always sure what Jagoda’s instructions are during meditation, I go anyway. This morning I felt incredibly blessed to be around so many people of such positive energy. I felt an inner peace with myself that I rarely get.

Then the day turned. Work was stressful. I lost my patience. I became frustrated and left the office to out my frustrations at karate practice. But then even karate practice pissed me off. I think meditation can sometimes be dangerous, precisely because it opens you up. You become more in tune to how the world affects the world, you can’t shut things out.

Driving home and I stop at the lights. And I’m used to the beggars, I really am. But tonight, I’m just not ready. I’m not ready to see their bare feet. My headlight shines on their frail tiny bodies. They look like they’re 2 years old. They wear an extra large T shirt and that’s it. It’s dark, and their skin blends in with the tarmac, and if it weren’t for my headlights they’d be in danger of getting run over. They’re staring up at the closed window of the car in front of me. It’s raining and they’re wet and cold. And they’re just tiny. Too vulnerable. Too ridiculously unfair for me to handle right now. My heart just can’t take it. I grab my leftover Indian food, only wishing it had some meat instead of vegetables and lamenting the fact that they won’t like Indian spices. Never give them money. Never. It feeds the system, you don’t know where the money is going. Food they can just eat, and they need it. But it’s still kind of feeding the system. Would they be there, out in the rain, begging, if they never received anything? So I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t. But I can’t help it. Because their hands are tiny and their faces are upturned towards me and they’re too young to be living this life. Not here. Not now.

How do we bear to live in such an imperfect world? If they had been born into my shoes, and had my opportunities, where would they be today? And what haunts me the most, (and I can never understand why everyone in the world isn’t haunted by this) is what would I have become if I had been born into their shoes?