Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Planning a wedding is stressful, and my daughter talked about it yesterday.  I assured her everything would go right enough and little glitches are to be expected.  Though I never had a wedding event my self (eloping the first time and having 12 people the second time), I've been through 3 with my kids.  And let me tell you, there is stress.  Thinking about all the pieces of the puzzle to fit them together, being unsure of what decisions to make and when, imagining how things will look and feel and discovering reality is a different experience. 

Girls are hyped up about this from toddlerhood.  The princess obsession turns into the bride/princess dream, and it's disconcerting to discover how crass and discouraging the real process is.  People are pushing you to buy more, that you'll be more beautiful, the pictures more lovely, your day more perfect.  No day is perfect, not even a wedding day.  There is the tear in the dress, the broken zipper, the heels that kill your feet, the drunk bridegroom, the touchy/feely guest, and hairdo that falls apart, the spilling of the wine on the mother of the bride, the flowergirl in tears:  need I go on?

I hope my daughter can hear right speech, which shares funny goofs and reminds her she'll still be married at the end of the day, and she can laugh about it later, instead of listening to greed and bad advice and judgement.  I keep reminding her to have fun, and for a moment yesterday, when she chose lingerie in a lovely pale pink,  I could see she was imagining her groom's pleasure when he saw her.  That moment was priceless.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We watched Antique Road Show last night.  There definitely is a right and wrong speech decernable as you watch.  There are people dissembling when asked if they have any idea of the value of grandma's table, and those who feign delight when hearing the value but you can see are crushed, their hopes of a vacation in the Bahamas dissolving into thin air.  I'd guess one in ten people is genuine in their surprise or delight.  The rest have lost the lottery, on camera, no less.

Right speech is admitting you had the clock appraised but didn't believe the shopkeeper, and were still expecting to pull a rabbit out of a hat.  Right speech is admitting you hoped for more, though no one ever says such a thing.  Right speech is disappointment that you were so nice to Auntie all those years and this is how she repays you!?  Kind of like "Little Women" when Aunt March takes Amy instead of Jo to Europe.  We all have our expectations.

Maybe "wrong" speech is too strong, but if you can't be honest on camera, just thank the assessor and hold your tears.  Though it would be fun if someone got a little bit irate and huffed off.  Or admitted, when the value is large, that they are putting it immediately on ebay, instead of insisting it's a family heirloom that has sentimental value and would never be parted with.

It helps to remember this is theater, just as a soap opera or a news program or a documentary.  Everyone strutts their stuff upon the stage and then departs, to privately break uncle's worthless pottery or have a pint and drown their sorrows.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband, our daughter and I saw "Into the Woods" this afternoon and we enjoyed it.  There is something to be said about singing instead of speaking, and I am a great fan of opera and musicals.  I used to sing everything to my granddaughters when they were little, making certain their names intertwined with the lyrics.  I sang as I push the swing, as we made sand castles, as we walked along looking for kitties and flowers and garbage trucks and other exciting things.  I sang of their beauty and how smart they were and how they were getting bigger and stronger every day.

We can say words in song that sound silly in prose.  We can gain attention and have an eager listener where otherwise no one would hear.  I sing to the dogs, and seranade them on dogwalks.  Sometimes I lower my voice if I see someone coming and sometimes I do not.  I think it's what my teacher Anam Thubten was speaking about in his dharma talk yesterday:  singing and dancing is a better conduit to our true hearts and minds.  The inexpressible slips easily out of the throat that sings.  When we sing we feel the vibration of our heart-mind and our body is speaking with us. 

I wonder if I'd ever have the nerve to sing responses to others for one whole day?  Of course people would look at me like I'm barmy, but so what?  The unexpected is so delightfully awakening.  Like a flash mob at a mall:  all of a sudden you hear Handel burst out the throats of people all around you  while you're waiting for your burrito.  What could be more sublime?

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Anam Thubten's dharma talk today had a lot of silence in it.  He told us he's been doing a lot of dancing in the retreats for which he's been the teacher.  What happens in speech is we get caught up in concepts and beliefs that are delusions our ego concocts.  To be free of them requires the space and quiet time to examine our thought process and see all the business we do to keep ourselves feeling important and "known".  I've been trying to practice, when I speak, saying "I feel" instead of "I think" or "I believe", because I get into less trouble that way.  At least "I feel" carries more of a sense of what I am feeling in this moment, whereas the other statements imply a solidity that is false.  After all, I often think one thing one moment, the opposite the next and round and round.  Whatever has the mark of solidity is false and delusional.  Many thoughts float through my mind in a day, an hour, a minute.

Today I was adamant when I was speaking to my husband about a relative.  Then I went in another room and noticed my thinking was the opposite of what I'd just stated.  Both or neither statement could be true, but, in fact, I was speculating about someone else's mindstream, so I really have no idea about what was going on with that relative.  I don't know.  I know I have strong opinions, but I forget that these opinions change often and contradict each other frequently, and don't have any real power to describe my thought process or what I am witnessing.  Words are inadequate.  What does this mean to me?  I better be super careful about what comes out of my mouth.  Because although I know that it's not writ in blood, other people take my words seriously, whereas they represent only that fleeting moment and not a definitive statement of where I stand.  Now there are exceptions:  the ten commandment kinds of moral codes.  But those dramatic decisions are few and far between.  Normally, we are just shooting the breeze, a good metaphor for the illusiveness of opinions and statements.  I FEEL that my concepts and beliefs are a false version of me, the complex contradictory me.  So I'd better shut up more or explain myself better.  Ah, a new year's resolution presents itself.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's a bright sunny crisp clear day.  I walked the dogs then headed out for errands, and just returned home.  So I've not had much conversation today, unless you count telling the dogs to behave on the walk and our female dog to stop scratching her ear ( ear infections).  They don't often answer me back, but do a good job of expressing themselves anyway.  The female has perfected the art of the hairy eyeball, which she uses before dinner and when she wants me to make room for her on the sofa.  The male dog barks when he has been cornered by the female and needs to be rescued.

I will count a delightful video of my granddaughter, her sister and family with the dog in a ridiculous hat, and lots of tearing open packages and pointing out lights and running around.  Exuberance is contagious, and silently I got the picture quite well. 

I also received a text photo from my younger daughter who is in the east, and she looks glamorous and happy in her new coat we bought her for her birthday.  A glowing bride-to-be!

So all seems right with the world, my little world, and I picked up ready to bake pizza at Whole Foods, plus mandarin oranges, so dinner is going to be delicious, and without any effort on my part!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been mulling about the term "intervention" because I wonder about my brother, and if there is something more I might have done.  I had done interventions with him when he was drinking, and the last one led to his sobriety.  I also spoke to him right after the reading of our father's will, and that consisted of my explaining that all his blusteriness was a result of feeling guilty about not helping more with our father's illness and not being willing to help settle the estate.  He didn't speak to me for two years, but when he did begin interacting again he was warmer and no B.S.

Should I have told him what his notes seemed like when I read them?  They seemed like delusions, or an extraordinary embellishment of whatever his reality might have been.  I never said, bluntly, perhaps seeing a therapist would be helpful.  He was so afraid of being labeled or caught up in the medical system.  He was paranoid.  Honestly, he'd been hurt so much I didn't wish to hurt him further.  His self esteem was so damaged, and I thought it harmless to let him tell his stories of success and travels to me, the judgmental older sister,  the proverbial wet blanket.

I certainly know I could not have gotten him help without his cooperation, and he'd had our dad looking over his shoulder his whole life, and I honored his desire to cease having to please his family.  I hoped he was happy, and I don't know that he wasn't, but it was not enough.  I know I offered nothing he really needed, and I didn't know what he did need.  Could he have been helped?  I'll never have the answer to that.  Was I a person who could have helped?  No.  I was associated too closely with our parents, our childhood, his drinking twenty years.  I was not the answer.

But right now I regret not telling him one time that his tales sounded like fantasies to me, and I wished he would tell me something real about how he was feeling.  He didn't talk about feelings, not ever, and like our father, he thought them better left in the dark, like a shameful secret.  I cannot quite imagine how an intervention might have worked, or what it would have looked like, but it's elusiveness haunts me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Ah, the best right speech ever:  Happy Hannakah, Christmas, Kwanza, Eid, Winter Solstice et al, and a wonderful new year!

I'm so happy my family is in good heath, all four kids have loving partners, our grandkids are merry and bright, the dogs and cats in the family doing well, people are scattered in great places like Long Island, Michigan, Sun Valley, and Canon Beach.  I've touched base by phone with all of them, and made a yummy breakfast.  My husband and I are going to the movies this afternoon and then to friends for the Christmas feast. 

We really wish each other a Merry Christmas and mean the words.  Maybe the eggnog helps.