swim meet

I've been swimming at the pool these last few weeks; trying to get into a morning routine with my sister. We're both loving it.
Today, I was alone in the change room for a while with two older ladies. They seemed acquainted, but maybe not close friends. They were bitching about this, that and everything else. Here are a couple of memorable quotes:
"I'm so sick of these bloody ignorant people who think that everything is just la-dee-da."
"I'm like, 'Beam me up already' - I want outta here. I can't take it anymore - just beam me up."
At some point, they became aware of my presence, or maybe they could tell I was eavesdropping, and they started to speak in low voices.
I still overheard something about the 'radiation we have to deal with because of Japan'. And plenty of other doom and gloom.

Well, I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the wonders of the Industrial/Electronic age. And I'm not going to scoff at speculations on topics I don't truly understand. Perhaps we are all being slowly poisoned by radiation, perhaps we are about to be devastated by earthquakes of our own, and perhaps 2012 really is going to be the end of the world as we know it. These things are beyond my powers of prediction - completely outside my control. They're also too frightening to contemplate. But... is it really so foolish and irresponsible to live in optimism?

I am a positivist. A realistic positivist. I've learned from my own experience that good things do not come from bemoaning the lack of good things, that bad situations do not disappear when you try to hate them away, and that it's always dangerous to label anything 'good' or 'bad' in the first place. That last item was and is the hardest to learn, and I still grapple a lot with it. 'Nothing is good and nothing is bad - everything just is, exactly and perfectly as it should be.' Well, like hell it is, the mind says. A tsunami is bad. Injury, death, poverty, pain, torture, crime. All bad. (Pleasure, joy, relief, etc = good.) And once I start down this rabbit hole, I get bedeviled quickly.

eg.) OK - so let's entertain the idea that nothing can be inherently bad or good, because every event influences some other event which influences another event ad infinitum, and therefore cannot be isolated and evaluated. Fine. But if there is no good and no bad, then what can I call that which triggers pleasure, joy, relief, etc.? What can I call the energy that I am drawn to; what is it that I focus my energy on trying to attract? Should I be wary of and neutral towards 'blessings' and 'gifts'? Is it foolish to revel in success since every external event has an unknown future manifestation that might betray me?

But - nobody can deny the powerful dichotomy of dark vs light in this world. I have to assume that the Dharma (or any philosophy) is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. The salt of Common Sense! There is the good that is the positive and the light, and is maybe the inherent quality of/in life. And then there is the 'good' that is just a label and brings with it hopeful expectation. There's certainly no question in my mind about what true 'goodness' is and what it feels like. I really do believe that it is possible, and more helpful than foolish, to extract the good from bad situations. I believe that faith in goodness begets goodness, and that adherence to negativity brings nothing but more of the bad. And I guess I'm writing all of this as some kind of self-affirming reassurance that even if I am a 'bloody ignorant person who thinks that everything is just la-dee-da', that I still might just be better off.

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