Back in the No Drama Zone

RJ asked if she was the cause of the 'No Drama Zone' declaration.

No, you aren't.

A lot of it has to do with work, about which I choose not to write.

And a lot of it has to do with life in general. Person A came to me and warned me to watch out for B because B is crazy. Person B warned me to watch out for C because C is a sociopath. I haven't heard from C, yet, so I don't know what to think of D – or even who will be D. There's some D in our midst who is a serial killer or kleptomaniac or cat hater and I don't even know who it is, because C has been holding out on me.

I know we are all trying to do the best we can with what we have to work with (hum "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love" to yourself here). I know – because I'm one of them – that people with crazy issues do as much damage to themselves as they do to everyone else, and maybe nore.

I prefer compassion to snarkiness, but I know the default setting for humans in groups is snarkiness.

Two monks got into an argument about some pointless how-many-boddhisatvas-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin issue and asked the Buddha to settle it. The Buddha listened to their positions, then got up, and without saying anything, walked off into the woods.

He stayed gone three weeks.

My own take is that he was not pondering the difficult issue placed before him. He was just totally fed up and needed to get away for awhile. If the Buddha can get contact overload, then certainly so can I.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all be sources of understanding, instead of sources of bleak humor? If we could all see the good in others, instead of the bad? But even the Buddha couldn't do that 24/7. I would be happy to do it maybe 3/2, but even that seems to elude me.