Oh, the torturous and complex few days I have had. Dealing with the issues of judgement, stretching to give myself permission to HAVE opinions, but then immediately I would pull away. I never feel completely justified in not liking someone. It makes me sweat. But some people are so unlikeable.

Let me explain.

Two nights ago I worked with someone who acted really weird. I could feel him very loudly. He is plain and unassuming, but his energy fairly hollers at me. Even so, this man refused to give me eye contact, refused to greet me, talked to me, briefly, three times in twelve hours, and was as uncivil with our psychiatric patients as he was with me. He was eerily animated with a few of the staff. Because he was such a sour puss, I was glad to see him getting along with somebody, anybody. However, then something weird began to take place.

By the way, my other colleague was also as as cold as ice. Not mean, not hostile. Pleasant, actually. But cold. Guarded. Shut tighter than a drum. I read a lot that night.

It was the man's behavior that really got my goat. As the shift progressed, I got more and more chapped that here is this guy who can be decent to other people, but he treats me, and the patients (!) like crap. Good God, did the judgements start flying. And the more judgement I indulged in, the farther and farther off course I began to feel.

That's when the questions came up:
How can I reconcile hating someone with having to love them? How do I deal with someone who literally acts as if I am not there? Is this disdain? Contempt? Resignation? Prejudice? How will it be possible to ascend as a planet, as a people, when people suffering to this degree, acting out badly and hurting others in the process... how are we going to even pull this thing off? Everything could be solved with kindness. No it can't! Yes it can!

I drove home from work behind an Audi. At a long light, someone needing money held up his sign, and it was the Audi driver ahead of me who gave the guy some help.

I immediately considered that dude lucky, because I am just certain that an Audi driver more than likely hands out hundreds at traffic lights.

I began, then, to think about money again. It is such a hot-bed of blocks for me, this whole money thing. It is the judgement, the shame and the fear attached to money that I find so aversive. The parts within me that are still shivering alone in dark corners, wanting so much to be included, and not knowing how.

So I let those parts stray into the light for the rest of the way home.

My Indian friend told me once that there were certain people she avoided at all costs, because they could not be taught. She said, in India, they have a saying about this. "Ripe wheat bows."

What are luxury cars and 6,000 square foot homes, diamond jewelry and designer purses, a vast portfolio and a fat savings account, or even $100 pairs of shoes and $50 sweaters? What are these symbols of? My culture tells me that these are symbols of success.

Because of a combination of simple peer pressure and a vast and infectious cultural/media matrix, if I owned all of the above, I would think I were well within my rights if I felt these things proved my superior intelligence, my superior cunning, my superior nature, because surely, if I have all of this when many have little, there can be only conclusion: I am better than you.

The punch-line is, those are not symbols of status. They are symbols of a system I never believed in. They are excessive. They are unnecessary. And, I have to believe that if a terribly wealthy individual is deeply and humbly honest, they would admit they were being overpaid.