I’m deliberately late to the discussion of Elliot Rodgers’s homicidal spree. If you haven’t read any of the variety of excellent pieces discussing his misogyny, and how this horrific event relates to the threat of violence that hangs over every woman’s head, you should do that before you read anything more here. (Feel free to post links to your favorite pieces in the comments.) It’s important, and it needs to be said, and heard: Elliot Rogers killed seven people and injured 13 more out of a rage based in the fact that women were not giving him the attention (read: sex) that he deserved. While it is uncommon for men to kill people out of this sense of frustrated entitlement, it’s absurdly common for men to make verbal and/or physical advances on women whose attention they feel entitled to.

Which is where I want to go next. Never setting aside the need to address rampant misogyny—nor, for that matter, setting aside the urgent need to address the fact that the US has a rate of gun violence that far exceeds that of, well, pretty much anywhere else that isn’t actually a war zone—leaving these important matters in place, I want to point to one more thing. The sense of entitlement itself.

Elliot Rodgers was not furious just because he couldn’t have what he wanted. After all, almost all of us go through life simply accepting that we’re simply not going to have everything we want. However much I might long for an original Monet, there will never be one hanging on my wall, and I really have never given any emotional weight to that sad fact. That’s just how it is. But when I feel I deserve something, that it is rightfully mine and it is being denied to me, then the anger starts to set in. Elliot Rodgers felt entitled to sexual attention from women, and his fury came not from the fact that beautiful women were beyond his reach, but rather from the fact that he wasn’t getting the women he felt he was supposed to get. Of course, a big part of this problem is seeing women as objects for someone to obtain, rather than individuals with their own needs and desires. But another part of the problem is the idea that wanting something is somehow equivalent to being entitled to having it.

Now, it seems in this country that when people complain about entitlement, they are generally complaining about folks who expect to have health care even if they’re not working, or expect to earn a living wage for unskilled labor, or think that their birth control should be available without cost under their health plan. But you know what? I happen to think that people are entitled to health care, to education, to a wage that doesn’t force them to choose between rent and food. I don’t have a problem with those entitlements, nor with Social Security or Medicare. I genuinely believe that a civil society does best guaranteeing people certain basic things.

But somehow, while a whole lot of folks are ready to blame others for their sense of entitlement to, say, not dying of a treatable illness, these same folks are perfectly ready to tell you that they deserve a mansion or a sports car or a tropical vacation, because they have worked hard for what they have. But you know what? There’s a big difference between enjoying something that you are privileged to have, and declaring that you deserve that privilege. No one deserves a shopping spree or week in an Alpine village. Which is not to say that people shouldn’t have those things, or enjoy them. But the moment that you move from a place of gratitude for the gifts of your life to a sense that the world owes you the pleasures that you crave, you have taken just a step down Elliot Rodgers’s terrible path. Because the more you feel that you deserve, the more you will resent it when those things don’t come to you.

And “Blessed are those who piss and moan because they can’t have everything they want” said no great religious leader ever. Buddhism teaches non-attachment, the understanding that we can’t truly hold to anything. Islam teaches the importance of charity, the notion that some percentage of what is yours doesn’t really belong to you, as does Judaism. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” or maybe “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” either of which works here. A person whose life is founded in gratitude for what is given, and in an ongoing quest to share gifts with others, does not to arm themselves and go on a shooting spree.

Of course, there are precious few of us who are aching to go out and shoot up a bunch of people because we aren’t getting what we want. (Thank goodness.) But there are a whole lot of us who waste a whole lot of time and energy fuming about what we don’t have, and trying to get more of what we think we deserve. What would happen if we just started with the assumption that whatever it is, we are probably not entitled to it? That hot woman at the bar? You don’t deserve her. The dumpy middle-aged lady at the table across from yours? You don’t deserve her either. You also don’t deserve a brownie , a flat-screen TV or a pedicure. Which is in no way to say that it wouldn’t be great for any of those to come into your life. But when you start to view the good things in your life as privileges, as gifts, as grace, then it’s harder to be sullen about what you don’t have, and easier to share what you do. Not only are you less inclined to shoot people, but it also turns out that life is a lot more pleasant.

Let’s say I tell you I’m wearing a tinfoil hat today . . . What does that say to you? Crazy? Paranoid? Safe from the mental meddling of governments and/or extraterrestrials?

It’s shorthand, isn’t it? A tinfoil hat says crazy or paranoid or safe, not because of anything inherent in the tinfoil hat, but because we equate wearing a tinfoil hat with a set of behaviors that could be well described as crazy or paranoid or staying safe—“tinfoil hat” is a symbol for a set of beliefs—that, for example, space aliens or perhaps one government or another is sending messages into my brain by electric means.

The first known appearance of a tinfoil hat is in a science fiction story published in 1927 by the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. In that story, tinfoil hats prevent interference from mental telepathy.

Now, if you look for how tinfoil hats work on Yahoo Answers, you will discover this advice:

Tin foil does not work. I tried aluminum foil for my first thought screen helmet in 1998 and it was a failure. Thought screens made from velostat work. I’ve been making them since 1999 and sending them to abductees all over the world for free for 13 years.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121017081732AAn0A1T

Now, in case you’re like me and didn’t know, velostat is a packing material used to block electronic effects. So it goes.

I want to notice two things about this brief look at tinfoil hats. First, “tinfoil hat” has come to mean something way beyond merely a hat made of a particular material. And, second, how quickly we rocket from a discussion of tinfoil hats to a discussion of more efficient hats to evade thought surveillance.

Both of these things have to do with the human imagination. How the human imagination works. We make symbols. Then, often, we fall into the trap of treating a symbol as if it were a reality. We easily mistake symbols, and symbolic statements, for literal truths.

The simplest example is perhaps flags. We create a flag to symbolize a nation or some other grouping of people. Then we create rules and customs around how flags must be treated.

I’ve heard people debate whether a particular piece of cloth is a flag or only bunting—because you can burn bunting, but burning a flag might get you into trouble.

We create a symbol, then we treat the symbol as a reality. The flag becomes the nation. And so on.

Educator Hugh Mearns had something to say about this propensity back in 1899 when he wrote a poem in response to a brouhaha in the town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia concerning a ghost sighting. One of the poem’s verses goes like this:

 Last night I saw upon the stair,

A little man who wasn’t there,

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away…

It appears that we can make symbols of things that aren’t there at all. And then the symbol becomes a thing we can imagine.

We enter into pretend realms very early in childhood—you be Batman; I’ll be Joker. I’m an elephant. I’m a unicorn. When we play these games, we agree to certain rules. We agree to be bound by the logic of the game. Just as do the folks who wear tinfoil hats or who set out to make a better tinfoil hat. Or who imagine little men on stairs that aren’t there.

We can go to a murder mystery dinner party set in the 1920s and act as if we have murdered someone. Or act as if we are a Belgian detective. We can go to a Renaissance festival where corporate lawyers become barmaids and carpenters become knights.

We choose a game, we agree to obey the rules of the game, and then we act . . . as if.

This is how fiction works. There are all sorts of fictions, each written according to the rules of the game that the author asks us to play. Perhaps the novel is naturalistic—in that case, everything that happens will happen according to the observable and describable rules of the universe.

We can have “magical realism,” in which the world operates more or less as it does in our own world, but occasionally odd things happen—such as people flying away.

We can also have fantasy—that is, a world in which the rules we know do not apply. But even there, notice, there ARE rules of the game. Devotees of Star Trek or of the World of Warcraft will be quick to point out when an action goes outside the rules of that particular fantasy world.

We agree to the rules of a particular form of government. Or of economics. Of of religion. In these cases, usually, we have very little in the way of choice about playing the game—we are born in places where a set of games with rules are already in place—this is called culture and tradition.

Those who choose to ignore the rules are ostracized or punished. The rules of the games called culture and tradition often insist that you WILL see the little man on the stair—or at least say you do—, even if you cannot see the little man.

However, the difference between knowing you are playing a game with rules and thinking you are seeing reality are very different things, aren’t they?

Some games we choose, and some we don’t. No one is born wearing a tinfoil hat. Or saluting a particular flag. Or worshiping a particular god. Mostly, such games with their particular rules are forced upon us by geography or social status or educational attainment or mental health.

Am I really equating tin foil hats and patriotism, you might be asking. Yes, I am. Because I think the examined life requires that sort of examination. Until we see the games we are enmeshed in with some clarity, we have seen neither truth nor reality. We have not examined life.

So, what’s your game? Do tinfoil hats come in handy?

In the stillness and the quiet

The house is still and quiet. The only sounds are the low gurgle of the fish tank filter and my fingers tapping on the computer keys. The soft light of morning is just creeping over the pine trees out my back window and the streets are blanketed in just enough darkness that the cars outside my front window drive with their lights on.

In a few minutes, the house will be a flurry of activity. The boys will stumble down the stairs with messy hair and hungry stomachs. The dogs will need to go out. Cereal will be poured. Showers will be turned on. Coffee will be brewed, the dishwasher unloaded.

But for now, for a few more moments, the house is still and quiet.

As a child, I could never understand why my mom didn’t like the television and the radio on when we were at home. “Too much noise,” she would tell me.

Too much noise?, I pondered incredulously. How is that possible?

But now, now I get it.

There is just too much noise.

Noise on the television, noise in our workplaces, noise outside our car windows. Noise in the media and magazines, noise on Facebook and Instagram. Noise coming from internal pressures to do more and be more. Noise telling us to do this or be that. Noise complaining about this issue or that problem. Too much noise filling up space in our heads and blocking out sounds in our hearts.

Too.Much.Noise.

Lately I find myself craving less noise, and more sounds. More laughter and listening to the voices that really count. More music. More meditation, prayer and reflection, more awareness and gratitude, more stillness and quiet.

Clumsy feet are thundering down the stairs now; the morning frenzy is about to begin. Maybe you are already in the midst of your own frenzy.

We can never completely block out the noise, of course, nor do I think that we should. But maybe we could all use a little less noise? And a little more sound?

So here’s my wish for the day: May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference between the noise and the sounds. May we learn to hear our own strong and true voice inside, and may we have the courage to listen to it. And may we all have a few moments of stillness and quiet.

How do you quiet the noise?

*****

Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s website.

Here is the beautiful truth—saints and sinners are the same from the start.

Hsu Yun, Chinese Chan Buddhist (freely adapted by me)

As a young writer, I read everything I could find on the subject of writing. One of the books that impressed me at the time was written by novelist John Gardner called Moral Fiction. If my memory serves me, it is in that book that Gardner argues that every writer has a wound which drives his or her writing. By “wound” Gardner meant a psychological trauma so devastating that the writer revisits and seeks to re-write this trauma constantly in her or his work. (This theory predates the concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.)

It’s not surprising that Gardner should have developed such a theory, since he had suffered a severe trauma in his own life. John Gardner grew up on a farm and, as is often the case, he drove tractors when he was quite young. One day Gardner was driving a tractor with his brother riding on the back. His brother fell off and was killed by the implement the tractor was pulling.

For the rest of his life, Gardner replayed and replayed in his mind the image of his brother falling. He blamed himself for his brother’s death. He never stopped asking himself, “What could I have done?”

Gardner himself eventually died in a motorcycle accident.

As I made my own attempts at writing, I discovered that the old cliche “truth is stranger than fiction” is partially true because writers can’t help attempting to make sense of the random happenings of the world. The human mind can’t help trying. Creative writing is, if nothing else, an assertion of the self in the face of what often appears to be a completely random reality. It’s the human need to create meaning that makes fiction less strange than truth.

But it is not true that only writers have wounds. Sure, some people become writers because of the need to process trauma. But the fact is, as the Buddha observed long ago, life itself is loss. We suffer because nothing is permanent except change.

Think for a moment about something you are hanging onto. Something that you just can’t let go. Something that makes you cringe when you think of it. Something that you replay, like an old movie in your head.

Now. Allow me to ask a very simple question: what do you gain by hanging on to what you are hanging on to?

Pain makes us individualists. As Shakespeare put it,

I will be flesh and blood,

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently,

However they have writ the style of gods

And made a push at chance and sufferance.

I think that Shakespeare is driving at the insight psychologist Carl Jung had when he coined the phrase “wounded healer.” It isn’t that therapists or ministers or anybody else have the answers to life’s wounds. It is, rather, that dwelling on those wounds drives many of us to be therapists or ministers or philosophers.

And the insight we find, when and if we find it, is that pain makes us individualists, but the cure for pain is reaching out. However we write the style of our gods, we must accept our flesh and blood and dependency on others before healing begins. This is perhaps not an entirely reassuring insight. We would rather see our healers as experts. But that attitude, too, is a fall into individualism. The answer is in reaching out.

The Chinese Chan Buddhist Hsu Yun said it simply:

 Here is the beautiful truth—

saints and sinners are the same

from the start.

please… please.. please…please.

I whispered the words softly, quietly.

As I stood in the bridal waiting room at the back of the church, ten years ago, ready to step out to a church filled with family and friends where my soon-to-be-husband was standing at the altar, I breathed those simple words.

Please. Please. Please.

I chanted the words silently, but strongly.

The words were half prayer, holding a sea of emotions, hopes, and fears.  Not a prayer for divine intervention, but rather an appeal for serenity, strength, and mindfulness.   As one of the most basic religious exercises, prayer has been shown to improve calmness, by strengthening brain regions that foster compassion and by calming brain regions linked to fear and anger.

And the words were also half mantra meditation, helping to calm my mind – my monkey mind, as Buddhists call it.  Derived from the Sanskit work for “mind tool,” mantra meditation involves chanting a single word or phrase in order to focus the mind.  Eventually the mind focuses more on the rhythm of the words, and less on the words themselves.

Please.

Please don’t let me trip walking down the aisle.

Please don’t let me break into uncontrollable sobbing.

Please let my husband feel as sure about this day as I am.

Please.

Please let this be more than just the wedding I dreamed of, but also the marriage that we both deserve.

Please make us family.

Please give me strength.

Please give us strength.

Please.

Please…such a simple word, but a profound word.  As I chanted that simple word in sighs and whispers, the clouds of nervousness, anxiety, and worry parted.  The rays of strength, confidence, hopefulness, and faith shone down.

Please…the holiest of prayers because what follows can contain the depths of our heart. The Spirit knows what follows that little word please. The Divine knows the unspoken that lies hidden in sighs and tears and deep breaths, even if we don’t.

Please...my favorite prayer, my truest prayer.

And thank you. The only response that ever seems appropriate for all that the Spirit bestows.

**********

How do you pray? What is your favorite prayer?

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This post originally appeared on the author’s website here.