Myself as an Idiot

Just recently, a condensed version of one of my blogs (about riding my first endurance ride) was published in the national Endurance Ride magazine.  At first, it is an honor to see yourself in print in a national magazine.  But as I read over the article again, which was written to be a humourous piece, I realized I sounded like a total idiot.

I’ve been an idiot many times.  I’ve been treated like an idiot times when I am not, and at times treated seriously when I was behaving like an idiot.  So I am very much used to feeling like an idiot.  It seems to be a frequent way of life for me.

But what I got to thinking about this time was:  Should it bother me that I’m an idiot?

In any moment, you take all of your experiences, emotions, past memories and a bit of logic… mix them together in a mush, and then ACT.  (or in most cases TALK).  Then why, why, why, assuming you have a reasonable amount of intelligence, does the mush still come out as if it came from an idiot?

I don’t know the answer to that question.  If I did, I’d stop doing it…and get a bumper sticker  that says “IDIOT NO MORE”.

Since I can’t seem to stop it, I’ll use some Buddhism training to accept it.  Buddhism says to accept reality as it is, rather than live in a dream of what could (or should) be.  So rather than dreaming as if I will do and say all kinds of WISE things, I will accept that most likely I will continue to do and say IDIOT things… and stop beating myself up about it.

And I will practice saying, “Boy, I was being such an idiot when I said (or did) that.”

I’ll practice my humanity, idiocy and all.

Now if I can just get all these OTHER IDIOTS in my world to go away, I’d be much happier.