I skipped doing this yesterday, and that’s wreaking havoc on my obsessive compulsive disorder. The night before last was terrible – I was awake all night with worries about… does it matter what I am worried about? Ten years ago, I was worried. Ten years before that, I was worried. I’ve always been worried. I have a feeling that, after I’m gone, somehow, there will still be worrying. If somebody walks over my grave, they’ll have a sudden urge to check to make sure they paid the gas bill.
I now begin to understand that the ability to relax is a comprehensive process that involves a degree of discipline. Or drugs. Frankly, the drugs path is probably the more realistic one. But I’m too afraid of becoming addicted. So I guess I’ll have to try to sit under the bodhi tree for seven years.
I’m feeling tired this morning. I had a dream that I was playing Jaques in As you Like It. Jaques is “melancholy.” He describes it as “a melancholy of my own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry’s contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.” Well, at least his sadness was humorous. He should be grateful. The Snyder sadness is 100% pure grain sadness.
I was also just thinking about zoos this morning, which doesn’t help my emotional outlook. I was reading an article about how a zoo in Egypt has been accused of painting a donkey to look like a zebra. I hate the concept of zoos to begin with. I know that I can’t tell exactly what animals are thinking and feeling, but I have a hunch they’d rather not be forced to look at us all day. Of course, I could be totally wrong – there could be some animals who would prefer to live in the zoo, and don’t mind being put on display. Perhaps, there are some animals who are like me, and hate nature – “we’ll take a cramped apartment over the African bush any day of the week.” So, I guess, for them, the zoo might be fine.
I remember a particular tiger who paced back and forth behind the glass. He (or she, I don’t know what sex it was) seemed frustrated to me. His thought seemed to be something like this “I want to kill and eat. I want to kill and eat. I want to kill and eat.” He looked mentally unhealthy. Why? Because he was isolated, confined, and not doing what he was built to do. The only difference between him and me is that I am the one imprisoning myself.