This blog is only for people who have made it their business to make a difference most of their lives. For those who have yet to make their mark, this can be a misleading reading.
To MAD (Make a Difference) people everywhere, you have programmed yourself or been programmed to never sit still, never to accept things as they are, but to always find ways to tinker with reality and make it better. Your music is words like “Ask not what your country can do for you…” and are inspired by bold words that challenge man to not be satisfied and just keep making improvements.
I am speaking as comrade who belatedly has peeked into a small corner of the mind’s eye and seen the beginning of space where there is no compulsive drive to make a difference. It’s a place of equanimity where the last thing you want to do is make a difference or change anything. This place is called Mindfulness or mindful Attention, where all you do is observe things as they are, as they unfold, as they change, as they become what they were again, and then morph into something else yet again.
This is a place of calm, of quiet, where there is no frantic need to fix anyone or anything. This is a place that is not ruled by a desire to control anyone or anything. This is a place where an unruly child is a child is exhibiting energy and behaviors that make me uncomfortable. I don’t know if he is unruly or not; unruly is a label, a judgement which may or may not be correct. In Mindful Attention, I just see it for what it is, and see me for what my feelings are. I see how I just so want to strangle him or beat him to a pulp or sit him down and read him the riot act or berate someone for this child’s behavior. In Mindful Attention, I can witness my thoughts and feelings parade and stomp their angry feet and slowly disappear from view. In this state, I can see how this child’s world is filled with strong and powerful characters, some of whom scare him, intimidate him, infuriate him for trying to kill the life in him. I see that I am only a marginal character, but am most likely to join the chorus of monsters who yell at him and call him names — if I break out of Mindful Attention and yield to my impulse to drag him out of where he is and sit him down in a corner where I can lord it over him.
I let the impulse pass and the unruliness subsides.
Making a Difference has been over-rated, its importance extraordinarily exaggerated in my case. So I’m practicing how to be on the periphery, in the margins, to the side of everyone, to be just the backwall, the background against which things happen.
My intended forecasts, prognostications, pronouncements, and words to the wise have been held in check for the better part of the day thus far, and no one has suffered from it. It is conceivable that my contribution to the health of people around me might be my silence, my letting things be. That is a new kind of difference I’d like to practice making. It’s one that doesn’t demand the spotlight, that doesn’t turn someone issue and personalizes it, that does lay over a coat of personal imprint on anything. It is one that leaves no trace of ego because ego has settled for a cameo role, even no role at all, except to be in respectful silence.
