You all know how much I hate being controlled by someone else. How did I grow this fervent hatred? There has to be something that happened that inspired this. It’s been so long since I felt connected to that despairing feeling of being controlled by something outside of me, so I have a hard time remembering what it was.
So let’s trace a lot of things back. Yesterday I went to Disneyland. We left around 6:30AM and came back around 1PM. This reminds me of how much I suffered whenever I left home, because I felt this immense sense of guilt when I wasn’t home with my dogs. It felt like I was abandoning them into a lonely pit of despair while I go off to lala land to enjoy myself. I suffered every minute being outside and I was always so anxious to go back home, to the degree it really interfered time with my wife.
I wasn’t in charge of my happiness; my dogs were. My dogs decided whether I get to go out in peace or not. If my dogs didn’t allow me (which they actually… can’t…), I could never go out with this feeling of my mom letting me play outside. That was a miserable way to live.
I went to work this Monday and that also reminded me of how much I hated some people at work. I would intentionally walk a different direction just to avoid them and when you look at it in another way, it’s them deciding where I walk instead of me deciding where I walk. I was a puppet of my own hatred for them.
I had a workshop last weekend where I wanted to work with 10 people but ended up working with 3. This would have really driven me insane because I had failed at reaching my goal. My goal was in charge of my happiness, which is an insane thing to think about because I’m the fucking guy who decided on the goal in the first place.
Now I see that it wasn’t this one big thing that I wanted freedom from, it was a general pattern of life where I kept on outsourcing the conditions of my emotional experiences to the outside world.
What I actually want to talk about today is the idea of being marginalized. I understand that in the world there are many marginalized people who are systemically abused. I used to believe a lot in allyship and supporting the marginalized people. Then I entered into a bit of a radical phase and believed that radicalism was a great means of achieving a revolution in how marginalized people are treated. Through experiencing these extremes I arrived at the middle way after a lot of introspection about suffering itself.
I understand that these talking points may be controversial, and it may seem like I am defending the oppressor and shifting the burden of compassion and understanding to the marginalized. And you know what, I can’t really deny that because that is, in a way, what I am saying. But my questions, that reveal the ridiculousness of suffering, are these.
If my oppressor is in charge of what I do or don’t do, then… Am I not reinforcing the oppression of myself, by being compliant to the system of oppression? If I fight my way through the oppression… Isn’t that exactly the method of the oppressor? So in a way, by fighting am I not trying to be like the oppressor? Isn’t that, in a way, idolizing the oppressor and feeding into their supremacy?
If I cannot be happy as long as there is an oppressor, then is it truly my fate to suffer? If I don’t have an oppressor, will I be happy? By that logic, don’t all of my oppressors have to be happy? But aren’t there unhappy oppressors in the world? Also throughout history haven’t there been happy marginalized people?
If I revolt, that may achieve some short term goals of the resistance. But what happens when THEY revolt? If revolt WORKS, then isn’t there no reason to not utilize it on both sides? So do both parties have to continue feeding the loop of continuous revolting, leading to bloodsheds?
Change in oppressive systems take time and are not likely on a day to day basis. But if I just resign, then am I not precluding the possibility that it will ever happen? Does somebody NEED to win in this world?
These questions apply to the other side of the aisle as well. If I’m the oppressor, then shouldn’t I be in charge of what I do or don’t do? Then why do I get angry when the marginalized people keep asking for more rights? If I’m superior and oppressive to them then why am I being emotionally controlled by them?
The marginalized are fighting us, why can’t they just stay put and accept this as the reality? But if I’m demanding that of them, then why can’t I stay put and accept that they will fight back? When I hit them super hard they seem to die down, so if that strategy works then don’t they not have a reason to use that as well?
I don’t want to give into their demands, no matter what they threaten us with. But isn’t that exactly what invites more threats, because I’ve prefaced that no amount of threat will change things? If I open an all you can eat buffet, won’t there be people who test the limits of ALL you can eat?
When I get fed up I want to eliminate them, but will eliminating them actually give me happiness or would I just go back to my mundane life where I don’t care about their existence and I’m still living my life?
The more you think about it and the more you reflect, the more you realize the whole business of oppression doesn’t make sense. But the 3D world I live in, it’s full of fights and oppression. And this isn’t some bash against non-Buddhist worlds; even Buddhist countries have civil wars and minority oppressions so it’s just a really attractive human trait to command supremacy over another.
I don’t really have an intention of changing the world with this writing. But I want to encourage you to think about whether it’s a worthwhile usage of your time and energy to let yourself be controlled by other people, especially people who are so hell bent on oppressing you. I’m not asking you to show your belly and wag your tail, I’m asking you: is it worth hating them? Is your resistance to them worth your happiness? Is anything worth your happiness? If someone wants me to gamble my happiness, there is no winning that will make that game worth playing.