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Blogs by Victor K. Pryles
My Mailman Is Pissing Me Off! 2/14/2005 9:07:02 AM
It's the little things in life that iritate me. I know I'm supposed to use these incidents to do some exploration of myself, not become choleric and so testy...but being human can drive you nuts, sometimes. There are three curses for a homeowner:
1. A long walkway from the front door to the street
2. Snow that accumulates along this walkway
3. A mailman that refuses to traverse said walkway
Today, there is less than 1/4 an inch of snow on my walkway which leads to the mailbox on my front porch. This tiny accumulation is further ameliorated by the lovely 'bare' spots of ground that spread in patches along the surface. The warming sun has created these elongated stretches of bare earth with its temperate and benign consideration of my aching back.
In short, there is enough traction for a fish to easily traverse this walkway.
Yet, my mailman refuses to deliver any correspondence unless this elongated path is cleared like the road to Valhalla. I have often thought that instead of a shovel to remove winter snows, I would better employ a feather duster. In this way, I could likely destroy microbes worth of each and every flake so that the kingly feet of my mailman might agree to walk on otherwise unholy ground.
I see him park his ubequitous little blue and white mail truck on my corner. He steals from it his baggage and bills, stealthfully eyeing me even though I'm hiding behind the curtains watching him. He knows I'm here, as mailmen will.
After delivering packages and parcels to all of my neighbors he now approaches my walkway. He looks carefully at my path; he hesitates. Will he be magnanimous today and bring me my vital letters? Will the danger he sees before him, those thirty-two flakes there in the middle of the path, be overcome with defiant courage and the steely spirit born of that great communal creed:
"Neither sleet nor snow, nor freezing rain shall keep us from our appointed rounds!"
Naaaaa!....he'll go to my next door neighbors instead.
He lopes away, bag slung loosely over his shoulder with a shrug. Too bad. The man at 5 Florence St. will get no mail today.
I went to my Guru about all this. I told him the story I just related to you.He of course hasn't a shovel or snow to contend with. He is enlightened enough to have others do such work. Either that or he wisely owns a high-tech snowblower. I needed help with this irascible feeling that arises in my chest when a snowflake drops from the sky and I happen to look out my window and see my mailman standing there at the Valhalla path. I tell him about the feather duster.
Now, in the mystery school I attend we are taught to use all irritants as opportunities to explore our reactions. They are tools for enlightenment and ways to destroy negative emotions.
My Great Teacher would relay this fact to me in his usually blunt way, no doubt. I would be responsible for my own reactions and must study them. Why should a little thing like a misanthropic mailman put a speck of unhappiness on my existence? Indeed, was I such a slave to common circumstance that I would cast away the promise and joy of 'awakening'? Was I so asleep that I could not see that this episode was sent by my higher self as a point for work?
But no. My spiritual councelor had none this for me today. He simply said:
"Next year, leave him a goddamn Christmas present."
