SpinOff Scenarios From The AbbyVerse
Little Vignettes Lisa Wrote
PAIN
Abby: My life sucks so bad!
Kreshi: Oh?
Abby: All the time, people blame me, dump on me, insult me, cut me down, make me do stuff that’s wrong or awful!
Kreshi: That sucks, all right.
Abby: I don’t want it to be like that any more!
Kreshi: You want it to be easy, nice, pleasant.
Abby: Totally! Who wouldn’t?!
Kreshi: Yes, totally.
Abby: It’d be crazy to want a hard life!
Kreshi: Erm …
Abby: Tell me one person who would want a hard life.
Kreshi: Well, maybe, Abdu’l-Bahá.
Abby: WHAT?!
Kreshi: Yuter, what’s that quote about being happy you have sorrows?
Yuter: The more difficulties one sees in the world the more perfect one becomes. The more you plough and dig the ground the more fertile it becomes. The more you cut the branches of a tree the higher and stronger it grows. The more you put the gold in the fire the purer it becomes. The more you sharpen the steel by grinding the better it cuts. Therefore, the more sorrows one sees the more perfect one becomes… The more often the captain of a ship is in the tempest and difficult sailing the greater his knowledge becomes. Therefore I am happy that you have had great tribulations and difficulties… Strange it is that I love you and still I am happy that you have sorrows. – ,Abdul-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 8, p. 41.
Kreshi: That’s the one. And the other one about proof of nobility?
Yuter: Quoting: Anybody can be happy in the state of comfort, ease, health, success, pleasure and joy; but if one will be happy and contented in the time of trouble, hardship and prevailing disease, it is the proof of nobility…
Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets Vol 2
Kreshi: Now you’re stunned AND mad, Abby!
Abby: Yeah, lemme just pick my jaw up off the floor. I can’t even!
Kreshi: With the advantage of a few centuries of thinking about this, may I offer some ideas?
Abby: I guess.
Kreshi: I think we have to start with the basic description that the purpose of life, well, one of them, is to grow and gain qualities, virtues.
Abby: Koala tees, huh ? Haha Koala tees of mercy …
Kreshi (listens to the Yuter explain): Haha, yes, the koala teas of mercy are not strained, a Buddhist joke, very good. Mercy is a good virtue, and good for the koala getting more merciful, right?
Abby laughs but is still a little torqued.
Kreshi: So if we see earth as a school …
Abby: Don’t talk to me about school! Earther schools are just torture.
Kreshi: So maybe Erdean schools, ok?
Abby: Ok. Earth at its best is sort of like Erdean schools. Still work, but not horrible.
Kreshi: Looking, looking for a way forward with my explanation, Abby-fabulous.
Abby: Ok, go ahead, thanks for Tending; I’m just still peeved, is all.
Kreshi: How about we go with, Earth life is like military training from your time.’
Abby: Daddy would say, ‘boot camp.’ Which is pretty bad.
Kreshi: How about, Earth in your time is like boot camp in your time. The earth is different in Erden, and military training is different, too, so … positing that earth in any era is a training ground for humans … that’s actually what Abdu’l Baha called it … we can imagine that human nature is to want to take things easy, but that’s not going to get people learning and striving and trying as much as they should or could.
Abby: Ugh.
Kreshi: So life is set up to MAKE us grow and expand. Sort of like the obstacle courses in the military. Obstacles of needing to eat, to clothe ourselves, to breathe, to speak, to clean ourselves, just at the physical, childish level. Just those basic needs propels us up and out and around and trying.
Abby: Yeah, ok.
Kreshi: And then we start wondering things at a very early age, and we hear about amazing, unlikely things, and we wonder about the world and what’s beyond it, and we get told about the universe, and maybe about God, or Goddesses, or the Great Spirit, or Allah, or the Universe, or whatever the Supreme Being might be called, and plus we have inborn, permanent tendencies and yearnings on a higher level that call to us. That start pulling us through the obstacles.
Abby: Ok, I can kind of see that.
Kreshi: And it’s tempting to want to zip past all the hardship and struggle and arrive at maturity, and accomplishment, and understanding, and all, but it’s exactly by going thru the struggle and learning the ins and outs, dos and don’ts, ups and downs that we learn most thoroughly.
Abby: Maybe, but I can still wish …
Kreshi: It’s like the lessons that are coated in struggle, pain, hardship, sink in deeper; we learn them more thoroughly when they were painful.
Abby: I hate that you might be right.
Kreshi: It’s easier if you get told this, and learn techniques and resources to handle the struggle and pain, when you’re little. One children’s book I still remember about this talked about an accident-prone child. Very careless, active kid he was, and got all kinds of scrapes and cuts and bumps, even broken bones. Growing up, the cuts that were the most jagged and painful, he remembered better, remembered how he got them and how to avoid them in the future, but some of the smaller, less painful, smoother scars, he didn’t even remember how he got them, let alone how to avoid them in the future.
Abby: The scar on my stomach and the leftover hole in my head say you’re right.
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SOUND ADVICE
Abby: But why should I not scream and throw bricks through windows and steal from the rich?
Kreshi: Because that makes you no better than the ones you despise. They think they’re doing the right thing, too.
Abby: So I should let them get away with all the bad things?
Kreshi: I can understand your frustration. Where does your anger live?
Abby: What?
Kreshi: We hold our tension someplace in our body. Me, it’s my thighs. You? What’s tense right now?
Abby: I dunno!
Kreshi: It looks like your shoulders are up near your ears. Do you gather tension in your shoulders?
Abby (remembering many hunched, tense dinners with Mother): I guess.
Kreshi: Let’s use a bit from Mr. Wells’ class. Breathe and reach up.
They do this together.
Kreshi: We can’t think well when we’re all wound up. We can unwind physically as the most accessible first step to calming down.
Abby: well, yeah …
Kreshi: and in Bahá’í Consultation, we have to be not only open mentally but loving and receptive emotionally. Those are like a middle step. Then if we get those lined up and listening, we might be able to hear the whispers and intuition from the spiritual realm. Have to orient ourselves and prepare ourselves first, though.
Abby, unhappily: Makes sense, but it’s hard.
Kreshi: Yup, it is. More steps up the mountains I so love to climb. The more we have to work for something, the more real it is to us, the more thoroughly we learn it, and the bigger the thrill when we reach an achievement, even if it’s a temporary stop along the way.
Abby: Dang it, I want it to be quick and easy!
Kreshi (consulting his yuter): Like they say in your, “Quick, cheap and well-done – pick any two.”
Abby, (laughing): True dat.
Kreshi: advertisers and media sailed a long way on the portrayal and false promises of quick, easy and cheap. The truth is that this world is a boot camp for learning, which is a more palatable word for struggling, floundering, failing, and falling. I coach myself with this motto: “the only thing worse than the struggle is not even trying.” Lots of people try giving up, but that works even worse than keeping on slogging.
Abby: I sort of see that. But what do I do about the injustice, the bad things?
Kreshi: bottom line, we can only hope to control ourselves, and not even that perfectly. We can try to influence others, but we have to start with ourselves. Build skills, awareness, maturity, virtues … refine our understanding, improve our communications to better share our thoughts and plans. Practice.
Abby: Practice perfectly … or at least, well.
Kreshi: Is that a natural horsemanship thing?
Abby: yes. Not saying I know how to practice what you said perfectly, but I do agree we shouldn’t practice badly or practice the wrong things.
Kreshi: There ya go. So, since you seem calmer now, let’s talk about how screaming and throwing bricks and stealing will build a just, peaceful world.
Abby, laughing: OK, I see that now – it won’t. You’re so right, as usual.
Kreshi: So a better idea might be … ?
Abby: What’s that saying? “Culture eats change for lunch?” But changing the culture is the only real way, isn’t it? Bit by bit, we need to build different mindsets, different Big Ideas. And spend money … Daddy would say “investing” … in different things … education, but a different type of school that kids like to go to …
Kreshi: education is huge, and in your time, learning … I mean actually reading, and remembering, and applying … was hindered by so many mental disabilities. People need real health, not just more drugs and surgery …
Abby: and the time, money and energy to do art, and crafts, and animals, like horses …
Kreshi: A much better use of bricks, methinks.
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