Disgrace and Despair (or not)

I watched the unfolding of the Eliot Spitzer scandal-drama with a sort of horrified interest. It was very much like driving along a road and coming upon a car wreck, with flashing lights, ambulance and police cars on the scene; it is impossible not to slow down and look, to gaze upon whatever awfulness is there to be seen. The suffering of others is apparently irresistible to human beings; it sells newspapers (or whatever has pretty much replaced newspapers). But the unpleasant fact that we are riveted to watching horror unfold does not mean that we are incapable of nobler motivations and feelings, as well. We feel compassion for Spitzer’s wife, his children, and (maybe, even) for Mr. Spitzer, himself, whose experience of humiliation must be simply excruciating. And also compassion for the young woman who has now been identified by the New York Times, her photos and name published, a link to her MySpace page published, names of her family members published. And in that compassion (and in the horror) is the awareness, brought once again to the forefront of our attention, that we cause each other so much pain. Most often, those who hurt us the most in life are not strangers, and they are not even monsters: they are the people we are closest to. Most often, the people we hurt are the ones we love. I have seen it again and again in my own life, and sometimes it brings me close to despair.

For me, the way out of the temptation to despair lies in remembering that the experience of pain need not lead to bitterness or alienation. And it is not necessary that we demonize those who heedlessly or carelessly cause us pain (or ourselves, when we realize that we have taken our turn playing the role of perpetrator). It’s just pain. The person who just hurt me and my feelings is the same person s/he was before, with the same glaring flaws (now made obvious) and the same beauty, as well. So long as we are living our lives as human beings, there is no way out of the messiness and complexity of actually being (only) human. We are all led around by the Eight Worldly Dharmas, and we so often persist in the mistaken belief that these experiences (pleasure and pain; praise and blame; fame and disgrace; gain and loss) are of the utmost significance. When we do this, we reify the grandly isolated "self" who is hurting, or who is proud and happy, and we get lost, unmoored from the reality of our connection(s) with the rest of the universe.

In my earlier blog entry about this (here), I quoted Pema Chodron, who said:

• “The irony is that we make up the eight worldly dharmas. We make them up in reaction to what happens to us in this world. They are nothing concrete in themselves… In meditation, we can notice how emotions and moods are connected with having lost or gained something, having been praised or blamed, and so forth. Gradually our practice evolves. We start understanding that, just like us, other people also keep getting hooked by hope and fear. Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. … [This is] the beginning of growing up… When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up.”