Dukka - The first noble truth

From all that I am able to gather, I didn't have a choice in my being born. Although the Tibetan Book of the Dead does suggest that we may choose who our parents will be. Perhaps the choice of being born is one of no choice at all.
I didn't choose to be the third born child in a family of four, born of depressed parents who rode the post WWII train into the American Dream. Indeed, the Lady and I have often remarked that had we been made aware of how rotten the family tree was, we may have forgone the decision to have our own children.
I didn't ask to suffer from Agoraphobia for several years. Nor to suffer from chronic pain since 1986. Nor to gain successful employment and career only to lose and regain it and lose and lose it again. Nor did I ask for diabetes and the peripheral neuropathy that dogs me. It is a huge pile of shit that I find myself standing on and one that I never asked for.
That is dukka. A wobbly wheel on the cart of life. Even when things are going good the cart still wobbles on this warped and unbalanced wheel.
We all suffer pain, loss, sickness, old age and death.
To quote Denis Leary, "Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe."
But that is only the First Noble Truth.
Wait.....things get better...I am happy. Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I experience a feeling of injustice and righteous indignation about things that go on in the world too,
But all is good in the hood. I am grateful and appreciative.
Remember, This Being Human........is a guesthouse. Welcome and entertain them all!
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