Squiggle & Heart No. 33

This morning I was thinking about how easy it is to extinguish aspiration for service (or, as I actually wrote it in my journal, the aspiration to Bodhissatva practice) with the shroud of guilt, smoldering its guiding light. I thought about how the Buddhist practices that have been so helpful to my life are so easy to co-opt accidentally with this problematic emotion from the Judeo-Christian orthopraxy.

As I head off on a trip I’m very excited about, to temperatures far cooler than what most of my country is suffering (not to mention to a brand new Prime Minister who… actually seems to be good at his job?) I have noticed I’m mitigating my joy of the adventure with a lot of guilt: guilt that I get to do a nice and expensive thing that so few people have access to. Guilt that I’m leaving my parents in a sweltering Massachusetts. Guilt that wars wage all over the world while I get angry and annoyed at what an impossible amount of reading we’ve been assigned (no, but seriously it’s too much and I’m not going to do even one-sixteenth of it). Guilt that I can take all this time for myself while so few people have a moment to breathe.

The thing is, none of that guilt is of any generative service. We might convince ourselves that guilt springboards us into action or behavioral amendment, but in my experience it generally makes me shut down into inaction. If I am deeply present, and stay aware of the privilege of its existence in my life, then I may transmute this pleasant experience (maybe, who knows, could be a nightmare) into moments of resourcing, filling my cup, seed planting and acts of service. If I forget that presence in the face of guilt, none of it has been of any use to anyone except the airlines, hotels, and school running my credit card.

Luckily, it all feels a little more silly, and a little bit easier not to take too seriously when Squiggle and Heart wrestle with it.

This will be the last Wednesday cartoon until late August, but I’m going to try to keep up my Saturday missives while abroad! Happy summer and stay hydrated!

(Bonus: see if you can spot Heart’s missing arm in one of the frames. I just noticed it but I’m too lazy to rescan/photoshop it)