Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, April 14, 2010

“Your success diminishes me.”

I love Dilbert! I have a daily calendar on my desk, and I can’t wait to read it every morning. I almost always laugh out loud. They mostly have a “noir” humour to them – and for me it just adds the right tone to seeing the absurdity and the “wrong-thinking” of Life. South Park, which is my absolute favourite, does the same thing in spades. Cartman is definitely my alter-ego – probably nearly everyone’s!! (Let’s hope he’s not a lot of folks’ Ego!)

“Your success diminishes me.” NOT good thinking! Creates a lot of the problems of human community. This sort of thinking has its roots in envy and in greed and in narcissism and in “me-ism”. St. Paul (I think) had something to say about this – something to the effect that if one hurts, we all hurt, and if one succeeds, we all succeed. He is right; this is “good” thinking.

I think that if we can’t think this good way, it indicates that we have been badly taught, and that perhaps we have not been loved and cherished. And that’s got to be true for a LOT of people! I KNOW a lot of such people. And I know that I find such selfish thoughts in myself – and am working always to put them in perspective.

I am helped in this by remembering something I was “taught” and in which I choose to believe: we are all connected. Or, to use a Gospel image, we are all “members of the Body of Christ”. When the “ear” succeeds, we all – whatever “body part” – succeed.

As that lovely poet (don’t remember her name) said in the recent TV biography of the Buddha: every person we meet, we say in our heart, “Hello Buddha, Hello Buddha, Hello Buddha”.

Yes.

Brian+