Granting that people have their own, independent existence, I still believe that they come into my life for reasons very personal to me. Most simply, if I am bothered by someone's behavior, it is because there is a message in it for me. Like attracts like. The universe gives us endless opportunities to learn. Karma happens.
Recently, twice in two days, karma, the same karma, happened to me.
The first episode happened while I was helping my friend with her sick "grandfather" cat, driving her to the vet and paying those bills, just as I had two weeks earlier. We went back to the vet who had helped us during that cat's first episode of illness. He referred us to another vet, explaining that the cat needed an x-ray, to see if the problem was, as he suspected, a stone in the bladder larger than the sand he had removed two weeks earlier. Then, if that were the case, a blood test would be necessary to see if the cat were healthy enough for the surgery that would be needed.
It's been shown that patients who question their doctors have better outcomes. With that, I suggested that if the blood were tested first, and if that test determined that the cat wasn't healthy enough for the surgery, then the cat wouldn't need the x-ray. It was a question of both medicine and finances. (Why sedate the cat for an x-ray if there was no treatment available?)
The veterinarian, patient and kind, insisted, and I, sure of my point, persisted. The whole exchange took perhaps three minutes. Halfway through it my friend exploded at me, yelling at me and then storming out of the small exam room when I asked her to be quiet. (In Spanish, "cállate" means both "be quiet" and "shut up" depending on the context.) I know she was very, very upset about her cat, but her anger stunned me.
When the second vet did the blood test first, and didn't even consider an x-ray, my friend apologized profoundly.
The second karmic impact happened the next day when I was joining a Zoom call. I was to meet with three women with the intention of resolving some difficulty between me and a fourth woman on a project where I am consulting. I was a little late joining.
When I did sign into the meeting, the three women were already conversing. Although I could see and hear them, and my image appeared at the top of my screen, they were unaware of my presence. I can't tell you what the pop-up window there on my screen said, the one that I had to dismiss before I became visible to them, because from the first moment, what I heard, or overheard, shocked me.
While I eavesdropped, they were complaining, unkindly, I thought, and unfairly, I was sure, of what they only imagined to be my interaction with the fourth woman: "He brought her to tears..." Listening in, mine was an otherworldly perspective, like being the invisible man or a fly on the wall.
Eventually, after some five minutes, I clicked the pop-up and they became aware of my presence. When I mentioned that I had been listening in unobserved, they were embarrassed and there was some awkward exchange between us, but we worked it out.
My interaction with the offended woman having been conducted through messages, it was easy enough to review a copy of that chat. Doing so proved that my interactions with her had been very polite.
Not quite understanding what was required, the offended woman, with no malicious intent, had been obstructing the process. I was trying to get along. If you're looking to get nasty, I can dish it out with the best of them, but that was not the case here.
Later that day, in a phone call, my daughter made things better when she kindly explained that women in a group, she and her friends included, rather than offering considered opinions, often think out loud, and that they give permission for each other's cattiness by expressing their own.
But at the time of the Zoom call, again, as with the vet episode, I was emotionally stunned. I lost my appetite and wanted to sleep. (After the Zoom call I did take a nap.) And that right there for me was the curious thing; if both times I knew that I was right, and those confronting me acknowledged that I was right, then why was I so upset?
A life lesson was asking to be learned.
Today it dawned on me that in these upsetting episodes I was reliving my childhood trauma. Through no fault of my own (no fault in this life, anyway), I was emotionally mistreated. I was punished, at least the sensitive child that I was felt punished, overtly or through neglect, for nothing that I had done wrong. I spent most of my adult life recapitulating this emotional abuse; being mistreated in intimate relationships; trying to have emotional relationships with women who were incapable of having emotional relationships; trying to prove myself innocent, failing, being abandoned.
In these two recent episodes my innocence was proven very quickly. My stunned reaction was inappropriate based on what actually happened; as Hamlet puzzled, "Aye, there's the rub," the friction, the part that doesn't fit. My incongruous, emotional reaction was me reliving what I felt as a child... hopefully, this time, with a deeper catharsis.
I'm not solipsistic. I know that you all have your own independent existences. But it's paradoxical that until I figure out how you play into my personal drama, until I become aware of my own karma, I am not free to interact with you as you truly are.
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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.
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