My efforts not to be judgmental and to remain accepting of most
Yesterday at the Seattle Zoo throngs of people gathered to celebrate their three day weekend with their screaming children. I love the Zoo. The sadness of the creatures in captivity does not escape me, but I still love going to the zoo. Unfortunately with parks like the zoo, comes the idiot, undereducated, rude and most obnoxious examples of humanity one could find. Still, I try to ignore themoh do I try.
Lately, I've been practicing acceptance and patience. I've practiced my breathing exercises and meditated on placing myself in the perspective of others I may disagree with. Understanding is my ultimate goal and I would like to think I've made progress. Well, my trip to the zoo seems to have set me back a bit. As I looked out to watch and study the various animals (as an artist I always take my sketchbook) I found I was increasing cringing at the idiotic behavior of those next to me. Kids aside, because kids are really just representations of their parents, it was the adults I was finding myself being annoyed with. Comments like; 'Hey, I wonder if they'll fuck!', or 'Damn, look at the size of its pecker!' or even 'This is boring' (at which point the make bad animal impressions and try to entice the animal to 'do something'. I'm sorry, but no matter how wonderful your monkey noises are, you are still being a complete fucking asshole! This is the part where I practice my deep breathing.
The cynical side of me rears its ugly head and I find myself suppressing feelings of disgust and sadness for these individuals. My mind cries out and I struggle to not say something mean spirited or roll my eyes. I was unprepared for this assault of stupidity and ignorance. Practicing patience and understanding is tossed to the wind and I find myself just being slightly pissed off. Thoughts about people of this ilk being the ones who hold back humanity and are responsible for every horrible even that has, is and will happen. These are the people promote bigotry, ignorance, hatred, censorship and laziness. And now I've gone too far. I've lost my patience, my ability to see the world from another's point of view and all because I was standing next to redneck dumbass.
I catch myself mid-thought and realize I've hit cynical and judgmental. I take a few steps back, breath a little and clear my head a bit. Wondering where this knee jerk reaction came from I analyze myself and ponder about why I felt such intense anger. It hit me like a bus and I wasn't prepared for it. The rest of my time at the zoo I focused on my drawing and managed to muster up a good time despite my ill feelings towards my fellow human beings. Upon arriving home I put those feelings aside and let myself get caught up in cleaning the apartment. A mindless productive task can work wonders and now I was ready to explore these angry and resentful feelings I experienced.
Anger is a natural reaction. I am human, I will experience anger. This is a given and unavoidable outcome. The ability to choose when one becomes angry and how to express it is one of our greatest skills if well honed. Yesterday my choice was to either allow the anger or to fight it. I did choose to fight it and even managed to overcome it a bit. Controlling my anger is something I need to practice more. It is my feeling that we can all use our anger as a productive force to bring about change, but only if properly controlled and focused. There are things in this world that should make us angry but not uncontrollably angry and never hateful. Hate is the outcome of uncontrolled anger where resistance to ignorance and evil may be a positive outcome of anger. Much like the actions Gandhi, anger may be used to move people and be expressed peacefully. One does not need to sit by and let others create misery. The power of anger is to change and drive people to seek a better way.
So what does this have to do with me and the zoo? I found myself becoming angry and annoyed at what I perceived as the stupidity of others. My solution; I need to realize I may have just caught many of these people during a moment of idiocy and realize they may be wonderful, intelligent and interesting people. It isn't about seeing them in the moment, but accepting how little I truly know about each stranger who makes a stupid comment in public. The other point of realization is the hypocrisy of how I felt. I am definitely guilty of making a complete ass of myself in public and to judge others in this way is simply not fair. Now the tricky part, remembering my new perspective and practicing it the next time I venture out into the world of stupid comments. Maybe I should go to pike place market today and simply stand and listen to the tourists at the fish throwing stand. If I'm to overcome my judgmental tendencies, the Pike Place fish market would definitely be the place to practice.
I'll leave you with a quite from the fish market. "Look Look honey! They throw fish! Isn't that just amazing??? Wow!" *followed by them standing there for fourty-five minutes watching grown men throw fish at each other*
Yesterday at the Seattle Zoo throngs of people gathered to celebrate their three day weekend with their screaming children. I love the Zoo. The sadness of the creatures in captivity does not escape me, but I still love going to the zoo. Unfortunately with parks like the zoo, comes the idiot, undereducated, rude and most obnoxious examples of humanity one could find. Still, I try to ignore themoh do I try.
Lately, I've been practicing acceptance and patience. I've practiced my breathing exercises and meditated on placing myself in the perspective of others I may disagree with. Understanding is my ultimate goal and I would like to think I've made progress. Well, my trip to the zoo seems to have set me back a bit. As I looked out to watch and study the various animals (as an artist I always take my sketchbook) I found I was increasing cringing at the idiotic behavior of those next to me. Kids aside, because kids are really just representations of their parents, it was the adults I was finding myself being annoyed with. Comments like; 'Hey, I wonder if they'll fuck!', or 'Damn, look at the size of its pecker!' or even 'This is boring' (at which point the make bad animal impressions and try to entice the animal to 'do something'. I'm sorry, but no matter how wonderful your monkey noises are, you are still being a complete fucking asshole! This is the part where I practice my deep breathing.
The cynical side of me rears its ugly head and I find myself suppressing feelings of disgust and sadness for these individuals. My mind cries out and I struggle to not say something mean spirited or roll my eyes. I was unprepared for this assault of stupidity and ignorance. Practicing patience and understanding is tossed to the wind and I find myself just being slightly pissed off. Thoughts about people of this ilk being the ones who hold back humanity and are responsible for every horrible even that has, is and will happen. These are the people promote bigotry, ignorance, hatred, censorship and laziness. And now I've gone too far. I've lost my patience, my ability to see the world from another's point of view and all because I was standing next to redneck dumbass.
I catch myself mid-thought and realize I've hit cynical and judgmental. I take a few steps back, breath a little and clear my head a bit. Wondering where this knee jerk reaction came from I analyze myself and ponder about why I felt such intense anger. It hit me like a bus and I wasn't prepared for it. The rest of my time at the zoo I focused on my drawing and managed to muster up a good time despite my ill feelings towards my fellow human beings. Upon arriving home I put those feelings aside and let myself get caught up in cleaning the apartment. A mindless productive task can work wonders and now I was ready to explore these angry and resentful feelings I experienced.
Anger is a natural reaction. I am human, I will experience anger. This is a given and unavoidable outcome. The ability to choose when one becomes angry and how to express it is one of our greatest skills if well honed. Yesterday my choice was to either allow the anger or to fight it. I did choose to fight it and even managed to overcome it a bit. Controlling my anger is something I need to practice more. It is my feeling that we can all use our anger as a productive force to bring about change, but only if properly controlled and focused. There are things in this world that should make us angry but not uncontrollably angry and never hateful. Hate is the outcome of uncontrolled anger where resistance to ignorance and evil may be a positive outcome of anger. Much like the actions Gandhi, anger may be used to move people and be expressed peacefully. One does not need to sit by and let others create misery. The power of anger is to change and drive people to seek a better way.
So what does this have to do with me and the zoo? I found myself becoming angry and annoyed at what I perceived as the stupidity of others. My solution; I need to realize I may have just caught many of these people during a moment of idiocy and realize they may be wonderful, intelligent and interesting people. It isn't about seeing them in the moment, but accepting how little I truly know about each stranger who makes a stupid comment in public. The other point of realization is the hypocrisy of how I felt. I am definitely guilty of making a complete ass of myself in public and to judge others in this way is simply not fair. Now the tricky part, remembering my new perspective and practicing it the next time I venture out into the world of stupid comments. Maybe I should go to pike place market today and simply stand and listen to the tourists at the fish throwing stand. If I'm to overcome my judgmental tendencies, the Pike Place fish market would definitely be the place to practice.
I'll leave you with a quite from the fish market. "Look Look honey! They throw fish! Isn't that just amazing??? Wow!" *followed by them standing there for fourty-five minutes watching grown men throw fish at each other*