milk of magnesia

[darren_stranger]

This is just to make note of a thought that's come up this weekend, that i want to remember and think more on.  Not a great revelation, but something i should be mindful of.

As we were walking around Croydon yesterday, something reminded me about a pattern i've noticed lately - that i'm becoming a real snob when it comes to the people around me.  I know that for a few years the political climate of this country has left me with certain disdain for my fellow Australian and the mean-spirited values that seem to dominate our culture, but i'm realising there's also a real arrogance in there, a part of me that really does think i'm better than other people.  Moving out to the burbs seems to have heightened it somehow, with the greater sense of difference and not fitting in, but it's more than just an underlying fear of getting bashed for looking like a "poofter" that it's coming from.  It also whiffs of the exact "better than you" attitude that would inspire that sort of violent resentment in the first place. 

Then today, as i was meditating by the train line after a good two hour poomsae session, i heard a couple of guys in the back yard behind me, talking about gardening in ocker accents, and it reminded me of yesterday's thought.  At the time i was looking for a "seed thought" to use in the meditation, and this struck me as a perfect choice - to focus on thoughts of kindness and understanding toward other people, particularly those i might have animosity or fear toward (much in the vein of the Buddhist idea of 'Compassion Meditation').  I decided that getting over this sort of snobbery is something i really need to work on, and would be a really good thing to add to the areas of self-improvement i keep talking about.  Perhaps including this in meditation is one way to help me internalise this better attitude.

Somehow, i have to be able to keep my own identity without being the 'pine-haired turd' of TISM's Fosters Carpark Blues.