Open Buddha

Shouldn't there be a German word for the betrayal of the dreams of youth by the reality of adulthood? They have a word for most everything else that sucks in life. I say all of this with a smile on my face as I'm in a good mood but I was pondering this all the other day (the betrayal of dreams, not German words).

I assume that my generation isn't that different than all of those that came before. I was born in '71 and grew up, effectively, in the 80s and 90s. Every now and then I feel a rage that isn't exactly a rage. It isn't anger. It isn't grief. It's something else. It's the feeling about all of the dreams that my parents and others planted in my head as a child that were and are lies. Did they mean to lie to me? No, I doubt it. I'm sure I'll get the same kind of thing from my own daughter someday. I think my parents didn't know any better and I'm not sure that I do. I bet everyone deals with this or at least people in every generation.

When I was a child, I was given the myth that many or most Americans are given. The world is a fair place. America is just. You can be anything that you want to be. The problems of the past are gone. Just the general feeling that things are right with the world and that potential is endless. You knew nothing of the horrors, of genocide, or even of being fucked over by a manager or a girlfriend or boyfriend.

This is in comparison to the reality that we find somewhere around adolesence but only really understand intimately over time and through examination. The way of the world is a wound that stretches through our souls. It aches and bleeds and never really heals. I'm not even sure it scars and scabs over to abuse the metaphor This feeling is a large part of what drove me to magic and spirituality and is what keeps me there. The world is not what is seems and I'm not satisfied with the seeming world around me.

Is the world Joy? I think you can find Joy and learn to be free enough and aware enough to see the inherent Joy in the world but, given our normal consciousness, culture and day to day activities, the world really is full of tears for most. It doesn't have to be that way but it is…

The sense of betrayal comes from this rude awakening that happens at some point. The dissonance between the reality of what we see on our doorsteps, the pain, the suffering, even the madness of many many people compared with the dreams that our heads are filled with as children. Is it simply innocence that we see the world that way? Should we prepare children better for this or would that just rob them of their childhood?

The shock of seeing the world as it is, at least as a physical place that we go to work, sleep, fuck, whatever in, can be too much for many people. How many teenage alcoholics, drug addicts, suicides did you know? How many people that you knew in college or right after it are lost? Every insane, shambling figure you duck away from on the streets at night was someone's child at some point and probably was somewhat normal then.

I guess this is part of why I'm drawn to Buddhism so much of the time. Existance is Pure Joy as has been said but the human condition doesn't necessarily partake of that.

None of this deals with the nameless rage that I feel about the world and my place in it at times…