volition

Volition is one word on a continuum. A wisp of a thought, and urge, an impulse are at one end. And resolve is at the other end. Maybe stubbornness. Insistence. Goals are clarifying what impulses you want to channel your energy towards. Radical Acceptance, popularize and greatly articulated by Tara Brach is a goal I am striving for.

I resolve to increase my daily minutes of meditation. I tried to just force myself but it turns out it has to happen more organically, building up slowly, that feels better than just willfully forcing myself. And isn't that strange that is better, or maybe it makes all the sense in the world. (I'd be really interested to read about other's efforts to increase their gross number of minutes in meditation, and the quality and effort.)

I want to create the least harm when I eat. But eating is sometimes social. And when you eat from a food pantry, from charity, you can't choose. "You get what you get and you don't get upset" is a motto of preschool, which I have adopted midlife. Put another way, "beggars can't be choosers." So I eat what creates the least harm. If I can choose to not eat meat, then great. If I can choose to be vegan, even better. A vegan will ask you, why not just do the least harm always? They buy all their food, and control their social situations. So I'm a least harm-atarian, which is omnivore with kindness strivings.

Buddhism, the Buddhism I love, the one that works for me, is one that is more about looking at yourself and not pointing a finger. People go onto r/Buddhism all the time and ask if "x,y and z are OK?" There is no pope. There are many sects in the Buddhism marketplace to choose from. I'm going to work hard on myself. The vibrancy of a spiritual tradition is to help you to take responsibility for yourself. That is not easy because you have to choose that. How do you help someone to choose that? By exemplifying virtue. People see the goodness, and want that. 

The whole aversion to "woke" culture is a kind of spiritual jealousy that isn't very aware. Why not be as woke as you can be? I guess their reason is that they're doing the best they can, and they can't be bothered with all these extra concerns. So don't be bothered by them. But to attack others who are trying to evolve, what is that? I go the other way. I want to support people who are trying to positively evolve, create greater empathy and kindness towards others. I vote for the party that will create the fewest deaths by their policies. I choose life! I like humans. 

Fine, so people posture. Aversion to virtue signaling is another example of jealousy towards those who are striving to evolve. Maybe they have tried to be good and quit, and have embraced the Sith path. Can't other people strive to improve? OK, sometimes people are giant flaming hypocrites. But I don't think it's horrible if a politician drives an expensive but environmentally conscious car. An American socialist can actually like nice things, they just want the system to evolve to preserve more life! That's the real pro-life party, not some manic reparation aimed at women's body control. Universal health care would preserve more life. That seems uncontroversial, but if you don't make health care dependent on employment, then there's a kind of death threat to work. Why do you have to have a death threat to make people work? Is it because it's stealing? Anyway, our country is a mixture of communism and capitalism. We all own the roads, we all love it when society takes away the trash. We need business, socialists aren't asking for 5 year plans and state controlled business. It's a matter of extremes, and America acts like the wild west is the best option. I don't think so, society evolves and takes care of everyone to the best of it's abilities. There are limits and we should not look to the government to to solve all our problems. But can government at least be good, please?! Why run for government just so you can wreck it up and prove that it doesn't work? That's hypocrisy and a self fulfilling prophecy. I want good government, you should too. 

The opposite of good government has woke me up. I'm paying attention and I vote. And I'm talking about it.

The goal of never being frustrated with my children or impatient is not a winnable goal, but I still shoot for it, to minimize. Always choosing to respond with compassion, maximizing the learning potential, with empathy, is somehow really hard. And yet this is the muscle I really enjoy learning how to flex.