Today I tripped over the 500 GB hard drive cord at work (the one that holds the backups for all the computers and the 12000 or so photos that need to go onto flickr) and sent it flying across the desk to stop finally, inches from the floor, held only by its usb cable. Then I lost my friend’s debit card with her pin number stuck to the front of it and didn’t realize until 6 hours later. At that point it was pretty easy for me to lose all sight of calmness and go into full on guilt filled blame for my own stupidity, carelessness and insensitivity for other people’s things.
Blame. The Monk talked a great deal about blame this weekend, in relation to the path to enlightenment. He said that to become a stream enterer one must stop crediting and blaming. (Stream enterer being one who is reborn 7 times or less before enlightenment according to wiki - I don’t know quite what the monk means by that because he doesn’t seem to follow any particular ligniage) Anyway, stream enterer in my head means definately on the way. I digress.
Dropping credit and blame. Harder than I thought. (To be honest, I never assume anything is going to be easy anymore… need I mention mercury retrograde) DOH - blaming. Sigh. So, upon observing my blaming of myself, I realized a few things. One was that I look back over what happen and realize that I had a little feeling about putting that sticky back on her card after I used it. I put the sticky back on anyway. Second, as I was running down the street with my wallet a few hours later (after getting the computer bits looked at) I thought that I should carry it like that. I bet that is when it fell out of my wallet. So I beat myself up a little bit for not listening to my “little thoughts”. Then, I realized that she was kinda pissed at me. I don’t like people to be pissed at me. I like people to love me. So even though I was feeling that this is not a huge deal, we will deal with the card, I can pay her back if money is gone, I felt like I should express my remorse more outwardly, to try and make her feel better - or make me feel better.
Bottom line is that blaming makes my ego feel better, or more accurately, feel right (as opposed to wrong). My ego gets power from being right, even if it is to my detriment. For this reason, society is a little bit confusing, because if you don’t look like you are feeling adequately guilty about having done something, people take it personally. (Hah! blame) Which in the end reinforces everyones ego. I would imagine that there is a way to take responsibility for an action without actually blaming… Would apologizing for disturbing the flow of the day be blaming? Or, does the karma for disturbing the flow of the day provide an opportunity for lessons for both of us (and possibly the person who found the card?) Ahhh… how very buddhist, answering a question with a riddle.
Consciousness, the path that keeps on giving.
Epilogue: In the end, no one got the chance to use my friends card, so we got all worked up over nothing (hah - nothing is ever nothing). My collegues at work are fairly good with computer bits, and they are going to help me figure out the hard drive situation (glad I work in the yoga centre - not fans of guilt). Jury is still out on whether I can get the information off the hard drive or not. Many lessons learned in the process.