7th Kyu Essay: Taking the Wheel.

Many of my early essays grew out of something that I specifically noticed in the dojo, and then extrapolated to everyday life. This one went the other way. It came up at a time where I was becoming very frustrate with how work kept making me angry. A variety of sources were quickly put forth by the universe to remind me that anger, and all my reactions originate from within.

Here is what came up.

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Taking the Wheel

There is a great contradiction in our society and in our lives. While many people seek power and control over the world around them, they are victims within their own lives. It is very easy to see the desire for power and control. People may want wealth, status, or just to be the alpha male/female in their own circles. In one form or another they seek to control the people and situations in the universe outside their body. Ultimately, they fail. However, this failure does not deter them from trying again and again to control and direct the universe.

Meanwhile, as they rush about trying to control others, they are achieving the opposite. They allow others control their lives moment to moment. They have created a world for themselves in which everything that happens to them (usually the bad stuff) is the result of another person’s actions. They cannot escape this deluded cycle. In our society as a whole, this way of thinking is an accepted norm. “He made me angry” or “They screwed up my entire day” are familiar phrases in our lives. In these events however, there are two things happening; the actions of that other person and our reaction. So how can we stop this? We certainly can not stop the other person from doing angering things. There are far too many other people and too many potentially angering actions (do we really think we can make everyone act the way we want them too?). There is only one place left to find the answer and that is within ourselves.

We have done a lot of work in our society to condition ourselves as victims. We refuse to take responsibility for our lives (“He made me angry”). In fact we cherish the anger. We rationalize that since that person did some horrible thing to us, we are entitled to be angry. We completely miss the source of the anger. We completely ignore the damage the anger does to us because we have convinced ourselves the anger should be there.

If we realize that the anger comes from our own hearts and minds, and not from outside, then we can take responsibility for it. Did that guy still do the horrible thing? Yes. What then is different? By taking responsibility for our thoughts, reactions and anger, we empower our lives. We can, at that point, act to improve or resolve the problem. We don’t change the dumb thing our buddy did, but rather the problem our mind turned it into. When we blame others, we become helpless to do anything about the situation because we see the problem as being outside of ourselves. We know deep down that we cannot control those things outside of ourselves.

Cut through the conditioning. Cut through the rationalizations. Cut through the victimized perception. Realize the power that we have to act within our own lives and minds. Stop making our happiness dependent on the conditions of the external universe. Seek out your own mind and work from there.