As I live my life, the question I ask myself: what work needs to be done? As I look across the “home” within which I live, where is the unfinished laundry, the unwashed dishes, the meals that need cooking? Put another way, the life which needs living?
We are meant to move. The most pernicious thing you can do to any person is to denigrate in any way the process of work. Clearly, in our modern world we often live as machines. We do things which are meaningless to us because the context is so large we can’t grasp it in an emotionally meaningful way. But even in a cubicle farm, if you try to do things with a pleasurable quality of consciousness, relaxation, and diligence, it will be better for you. And these things are possible. You can control them.
The point I wanted to make here though is that arrogance is INHERENTLY separation. The process of feeling superior to the web within which you live your life is the process of feeling apart from it, separate from it.
No perceptive person can fail to grasp their sundry limitations, or the countless ways in which they depend on others.
2 replies on “Arrogance”
From late August of 2011 until mid-May of 2012 I voluntarily bused the used trays in the food court of the Danbury Fair Mall. I did that in response to an intuitive nudge. That activity (almost unexpectedly)morphed into making nightly drops of leftovers from several of the food court vendors to an overflow homeless shelter. That led me to Annie Orr ( http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Annie-Orr-pillar-of-righteousness-dies-4175872.php ) and I am SO glad to have met her. The mall was an ideal place to change all sorts of attitudes. The trays activity was in gratitude to the mall for being the setting where my meditation became impervious to distraction. I am not too proud to bus trays, and I was damned good at it, for twelve hours each day. One thing leads to another. Things and people weave together in unexpected ways. Judgments against others can really be stemmed when undertaken in a realm which includes a vast sampling of humanity. A mall can be one's monastery. Everywhere you look you'll find the corner of Commerce and Conscience. The opportunities are limitless.
Sounds like you did good work.
For my part, I certainly could loosen up a bit. In principle I judge ideas, but clearly the people do sometimes get mixed up in it.