Scarred for Life

   At our local gym, the vehicle of a patron was broken into; a mom van no less, shattering a side window along with, unfortunately, shattering her sense of security.  It happened in broad daylight, in a very busy parking lot, with many people coming and going without predictability; talk about bold.

  Montse and I discussed how many hassles such an event entailed for the victim.  Not just the material loss of items left in the car, or the replacement of the damaged window, but the suffering that comes with having to stop finances done by credit cards and debit cards; then there’s the joyful wait to get a new drivers license, and of all things taken for granted; the personal calendar; where important dates and appointments are kept.  Every commitment, special event, birthday and anniversary for the year and forgotten-about because the time was taken to write it down insuring it wouldn’t be inadvertently overlooked later; gone, poof, in an unsuspected moment.

  I had something similar happen to me once, and that was enough for me to have instant empathy for the woman standing distraught, giving the police officer every detail she could recall before being shaken into the here-and-now; he wrote it all down in his report, for all the recompense that would mean.  I’ve spoken to, and heard often, about the same expression by those who experienced robbery as a personal violation when these events occur.  And rightly so, it’s your stuff dammit.

  As for me, I am ever interested in the cause of my emotional upheavals.  Be they good or bad, I’m always toying with the why of it.  Why do we feel violated when the unexpected theft occurs? It is, after all, just stuff.  Like everything else in life, we make it personal.  Our stuff reflects our choices and decisions on a continuum of time.  We selected the colors, the types, brands, all of those specific details that translated ‘it’ into ‘ours.’ And then we added those choices to other choices weaving an identity of products to reflect our opinion of who we think we are in the world; as well as what we like and care about and how we want the world to see us.  Simply put: our stuff becomes a banner of who we say we are; pure and simple. 

  So of course, when our stuff is taken, then part of us is taken as well.  I’ve learned this is just another case of are attachment to externals for the sake of feeling secure in the world we define.  We live in a house, with people we say we know, on a street with neighbors we say we know, in a town we feel fairly familiar with since we know how to navigate to the places that interest us, or to the places we feel a need to go in order to feel a sense of continuation of the theme affecting our world while endeavoring to control our destiny with confidence and certainty.  When our belief in managing these known facts is challenged by unpredicted events, we are in fact, upset.  Even with the common denominator of recognizing change as a fact of life, we do it in an oblique sort of denial.  We make purposeful changes all of the time and we don’t consider them drastic; purchase clothes, paint walls, hang pictures, change cars; all of this without a lot of emotional investment or tearful good-byes to what we discard.  But when change is cast upon us without our ‘permission’ or warning, then of course there will be an emotional event to be reckoned with.  All observed by me for clarity of what is real.  The stuff I have to make my life easier, does not necessarily make it simpler.  When I invest me into my stuff, I am carrying it within the arms of my concern.  Even the stuff I forgot I have, still will haunt me when I go looking for it and can’t find it.  There is a pin-prick of loss when I realize I’ve lost track of it.  And I know too, this is exactly how I gave myself away to things….because none of it mattered until it was gone…then I felt the void of the part of me it took the place of.

  In such an incident I consider myself grateful for the lesson of robbery.  And where theft of stuff is a liberation to oneself; this, I believe is what the Buddhist mean when they say life is an illusion.