Life is just a bowl of business cards

"Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you." Erma Bombeck


My career fair checklist goes like this: Stapled copies of resume with business cards in upper left, also stapled (to the stapled resumes or stapled with a third staple on top of the stapled resume for easy removal should the recipient be annoyed by the presence of the business card whose only business is to mention that you know enough to have a business card made up to advertise you are available for hire). Check (I guess.) Business cards (already covered in item one). Check. Writing samples. (oy vey-even the intended audience doesn't enjoy reading those, heh heh I'll attach my blog, what the hey). Double check. Outfit? Oh please.


Cheri (esteemed Zen teacher spoken about vociferously in prior posts on the offchance anyone reading this has never heard of me)-- speaks about the idea that suffering can be ended the moment one decides to do so. Say what? Say I agree with that or at least am intrigued by the idea-- HOW?

The 'how' is both the easiest and hardest process I've ever engaged in. In simple terms, how is often just opening my mind to the idea that something else exists. In the contradictory way that Zen appears-- we start with the sense that we have the control to divert our attention to a more harmonious inner experience, and then proceed to work with the notion that harmony involves staying put here until we experience what appears to be out there, perhaps in someone else's purview.

A lot of my early practice experiences with this idea have centered around being able to recognize thought patterns that I thought really represented who I really am gloves off, and coming to believe they not only weren't me, but items in some regard 'just there,' generated from who knows where (or cares) inside my head. 


Sure I'm the one wracked with worry about approaching strangers at the job fair knowing the balance of their interest will be in the subject matter experts for whom I have written all these years. Yet those fears are comprised largely of thoughts, if I can pause even for a moment to let one or two of them into my consciousness. That realization alone is the point at which another hateful voice comes along and starts filling me with the idea that I'm having the 'wrong' experience, and hardly one of nonsuffering. Again, with pause, or even the ability to breathe and physically look away, the notion comes along that that two is a thought, randomly generated, yet appearing to intimately connected with the reality that is my current experience.

So how does that make my job today one of nonsuffering? I'll be sure and let you know when it's all over. I arrived early and had enough clarity and love for the human that holds these thoughts and this consciousness to decide to put 'her' in the company of others going through the same experience. So I'm actually typing in the career center and about to head over to 'the fair' center shortly.


A lovely side effect of the willingness to pay close attention (notice everything and *try* not to take things in your head personally- don't believe everything you think! as a bumper sticker beckons)- is that the minute you are in it just for the view, you not only start seeing a kind of space around content that you might otherwise run toward and cling to, if only because that seemed inevitable- but other ideas make themselves known as well-- such as be kind-- really be kind-- to you as the container and watcher of these hateful/hurtful thoughts. 


Just as a thought to the effect of, 'you are totally unprepared and going to come off sounding like you don't know anything about any company you approach,' so can a less intrusive thought of, 'hey, it's ok-- you won't be alone,' or even 'gosh I'm proud of you for doing this.' It's all there, in your own head, I promise-- all for the noticing.


Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson