It's New Year's Day, and I'm sitting on the ferry on my way back to Nanaimo.
There are muted voices swirling all around, but piercing clearly through them is the sound of a toddler screaming. It's not the sound of "I'm hurt" or "I'm hungry" or "I'm tired."
Those sounds are distinctive, if one really listens. It's the sound of "I want." And whatever the child wants, she clearly isn't getting.
The child desires something greatly and is using her voice in an attempt to control others around her - namely her parents.
Hoping the sound will be disturbing enough to her parents, and/or if need be, disturbing enough to others around them, the child wails to get her desire fulfilled. There is a definite unwillingness to release this desire in the way the child's pitch increases.
As I listen to the crescendoing sound, I realize just how similarly we adults behave when faced with the thwarting of our own desires.
There is a wonderful saying I once came upon. Its general meaning goes something like this: "It is not our preferences that cause suffering, but our attachments to our preferences."
How true this is.
Reflect upon what you desire. How do you behave, emotionally, mentally, physically, when those desires seem kept from you by others in the equation?
Do you hold onto your desire, refusing to relinquish it? Do you dig your heels in? We all do, although the extent to which we do it depends on the extent to which we are invested in the desire.
The more invested we are in our desire, the more attached we are. The more attached we are, the more frenzied we become in our attempt to achieve the desire, especially in the face of what appears to be external obstacles to this desire.
We may become obsessive, abusive or irrational. We may even turn toward manipulation, much the way the child has with her screams.
Attachment is the third klesha, or root cause of suffering, according to Yoga. And as we see with the child, it manifests early on in our experience of this world.
The greater our attachments, the greater our suffering. But if we can work to limit our attachment to our desires, we can limit our suffering in this life.
If we would but let go of our attachments to our preferences, our reality would be quite different.
Eventually, I hear this wisdom taking hold.
The child allows herself to let go of her still unfulfilled desire and there is peace again.