The Gift Wrapped in Shit

We all get them, these gifts wrapped in shit. They arrive when we least expect them, and certainly didn't want them. But if we unwrap them carefully, we find that they invariably have a heart of gold. Think of Al Gore. He was screwed out of the presidency and ended up with an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.

That's actually a bad example, because the gift is not about prizes and awards. It's about the inner teaching such gifts bring with them, and we'd have to find out from Al himself just exactly what the gift was.

Here, in brief, are two examples from my own history:

First, a big one. I spent twenty-five years of my life in academia. In each of the three major appointments I held in that period, the job came to a painful end. The first, in a tenure battle, which I won. But lost, in the deeper sense. I got to keep the job, but it wasn't what my heart or soul needed. The second ended after a war with a governing board and a new administration. The third exploded into a battle with the Carmelite priest who was my Academic Vice President: I quit. Here was the gift, which it took me twenty-five years to unwrap: I was never supposed to be an academic from the start. I was always supposed to be a writer. The gift was the guts to recognize that fact, and to open up my life to what it was given me for. (Or, to be punctiliously Churchillian, "to that for which it was given me.")

Alternatively a little one, about which I wrote at greater length in The Buddha Diaries the other day. I was standing outside the house at night, when a maniac rounded the bend by our hillside house at a great rate of speed and I indicated my disapproval with a relatively innocent gesture (NOT the proverbial finger!) In appreciation, the driver flung a paper cup filled with ice cubes at me as he roared on past. The gift in this alarming piece of sh*t--beyond the clear justification of my mild action--was a glimpse into the self-righteousness that provoked it, and an opportunity to look at myself from the driver's point of view. Interesting--and instructive.

Thus we learn about ourselves, in pieces large and small. This is the kind of thing we're looking for in "Accidental Dharma": your stories. What was the shit that happened to be flung in your direction? And, if you were fortunate enough to pause for long enough to tease it out, what was the gift?

FEEL FREE TO LET US KNOW BY SENDING YOUR STORY TO ACCIDENTAL DHARMA@MAC.COM. WE CAN'T PROMISE TO POST ALL OF THEM, BUT WE'LL POST AS MANY AS WE CAN AT ACCIDENTAL DHARMA