I don't blame myself for making mistakes. I love myself for offering lessons.

There's some family troubles in my family, like in all families.

I have a hard time dealing with my dad, since I get really uncomfortable with him.  I generally find him to be unsupportive and uncaring, and it frightens me how fast he can go from zero to angry and irritable.

My dad typically says nothing to me but, 'have a nice day' when he leaves for work.  He doesn't take the time to say 'have a nice day', and he doesn't look at me when he says it or seem caring.  Instead, he usually says it just as he is leaving out the door in a rush - the door shutting as he finishes his hello and goodbye sentence to me for the day.

 I react in a thousandfold negative ways to this: 'He just speaks in generalizations', 'have a nice day' isn't even an authentic thought, its just something he says without meaning, 'he really doesn't care about me at all in fact',' he is so bothersome and irritating how he's always in a rush', 'he doesn't ever act like he hears my 'you too / thanks' - he doesn't respond to it and he's already out the door.

I have a lot of negativity towards my dad and can be overly touchy.  I have a buildup on grievances.

Our most recent 'situation': my dad told me multiple times that he would 'show me how to turn on the bike light' that he just attached to my bike, 'because its not working correctly and I should just show you how to turn it on'.

My reaction is: I feel demeaned that he thinks I can't figure out how to turn on a bike light and on top of it, bothered that he isn't even allowing me the chance to try it myself.  He has already tried to show how to fix things multiple times, with the assumption that I can't figure it out myself.  Also, I am incredibly sensitive to him and want to avoid any contact with him.  That includes avoiding giving him a few minutes with me to show me whatever isn't working on the bike light.

 To make it worse, he is always 'just trying to help', so in his point of view he is always in the right.  If I so much as comment on his tone of voice, I get an immediate blaming 'Marissa you are wrong; Marissa I am trying to help you and you're not letting me'.  He can't understand that I Do Not want help to learn something if I am going to feel this amount of tension over the manner of the help itself.  I also try extra hard not to let him help me because I know that he wants to help me, which would make him feel good about himself, and my resentment is pretty high to allow for that. 

When my dad tries to show me things, he has this incredibly authoritative, over-acting stuck-upness in his teaching role that I find incredibly displeasing.  He speaks with too much diction, and he gets really frustrated at not having words come out smoothly.   His words spit out sharply and with excess pressure of quality and tone, and I feel so irritated in that presence.

Instead of being casual, he acts with an authoritative role and I feel below him, student to teacher.  He overexaggerates all of his movements as he shows me how to do things.  For example, instead of just saying 'move this counter clockwise' and trusting that I understand that, he says 'move this cOUNter-clockwise' with this pressured angry movement in his face as he emphasizes 'counter' versus clockwise.  In his hand motions, he over-emphasizes his arms making a left circular motion by doing it multiple times. 

 I'm so bothered as to create alot of weasling around effort to avoid those three minutes with my dad where he wants to help me.  I find his body language and speech to be ugly.  Everything in me wants to look away, flee, forget about the task he is showing me and bury it in its now worthlessness- just not worth it -below mountains of tension that I hate. I tighten up, wishing he would stop 'teaching me' and that we didn't have such a poor relationship.  What goes from something small leads to my being angry.

In my most recent situation - my dad kept bringing up this wish to help me with the bike light.  I hadn't ridden my bike in a week and didn't have plans to, so the bike light wasn't important to me and I didn't particularly care.  Also, I assumed I could figure it out myself, and didn't want my dad's help.  Some day, some day, I will tell my dad of the Buddhist notion of 'joyful effort', and how utterly lacking he is in joyful effort in his efforts to help. 

But, my dad really harps on things.  In fact, I've stopped ever mentioning things I want, like say a car squeegee, because he goes out of his way to do things that people mention offhandedly.  So, my dad was harping on the bike light, and it was fairly high on his priorities.  He'd mentioned it a few times so I knew it was pretty stuck on his radar.  On the phone, he brought it up again, that he would show me how to turn it on.  My immediate reaction is to be all sensitive about how he doesn't have the faith in me to trust that I can figure this out for myself. 

I am not about to pick an argument since I will be blamed, and I dislike the tension of arguing.   I hold it in like usual that I don't like his help because he makes me so uncomfortable, the tone, the body language, and I don't refuse his help but I don't give in to him either; this is how I am weasly passive-aggressive.  I say 'yes well, I think I got it' .  He repeats that he should show me.  I say 'yes well I'll try it and call you if it doesn't work'.  I am still withholding the real problem of, 'Come on! I can do this! YOU AREN'T SUPPORTING ME, and never have to a good enough degree for me to learn self confidence'.  He replies 'look its easier if I just show you'.  I know at this point that his perspective is - he is trying to help me and sees me as being resisting, immature, hard to work with, that I am at fault, and that he is FRUSTRATED with me.  I reply a taut 'try me', and he huffs back an angry 'Fine. Suit Yourself. Bye'.  Click.

As always, I am relieved as soon as I get off the phone with him.  I am under some conflict stress of blaming myself, 'why can't I just let things slide, I could just give him the few minutes that he wants with me?  And yet I make such a big deal about it, but still withhold the real issue I have - why can't I be better at voicing my grievances?

I'm frustrated with my dad and with myself.  I'm blaming myself for essentially, not being perfect, for having unvirtuous, not right thoughts and actions (overly resentful instead of helpful, passive-aggressive instead of active).  I'm essentially blaming myself for being imperfect and taking on my dad's blame too.

Why should I perfect? Why should I even strive towards that?  I'm sick of blaming myself.

I came to the most delicious thought ever during introspection on this and other arguments.  Firstly, I don't have to take responsibility for my dad's anger.  He can learn how to deal with his own problems and stop being so angry at me for refusing his help.  This anger is his own karma that is working against him, and I am not the sole cause of blame.  In a more compassionate state of mind, he just as easily could have not been frustrated by me, not sweat the small stuff, not been attached to needing to help me or to his role as the knower and my role as the 'don't know how to do it', and could have said 'okay, try it, talk to you later'.  Unfortunately, he is not yet at that state of mind.  In the meantime, I do not have to absorb his negative Karma and be at fault for that, too; I don't need to take it personally.   My relationship with my dad is not all about me and my faults, that's me being overly critical of myself.

Not only that, but I can be proud of myself: I was giving my dad the chance to recognize his faults and learn from them.  If I just kept my frustration completely held in and didn't try this passive refusal response, and if I let him 'show me how to work the bike light', he wouldn't have had the chance to learn about his anger.  I am offering him the opportunity to learn from.  He could bow to me for helping him, for teaching him in the kindest way of letting people reach their own conclusions.

I giggled a lot when I came to this conclusion.  Suddenly, everything was so lighthearted.  I don't make mistakes and they aren't my faults - I just give people and myself the chance to learn lessons from.  Opportunities to learn from.  No blame, no judgements in an opportunity.

I can do no wrong! I just go around helping people out, letting them learn about themselves.  Mira told me that its very Buddhist to pretend, that pretending 'I'm going to act like things are okay, that I am okay' is a very high principled effort.  My dad can deal with his own Karma.  I can go about pretending that I am just bungling around, being ridiculous, whatever I do, and in doing so, let the pressure I put on myself recede.

Another example: my dad gets all ugly and mad at me when I don't put my dishes away.  His body gets rigid, and his voice comes out chokingly tight. I am sensitive and get frightened by my dad easily. 

Not putting dishes away is practically the only thing I do wrong at home right now.  At first, I was blaming myself for leaving dishes out since its bad manners, and disrespectful even. I don't know why I have so much resistance against putting my dishes away, but I do.  In all other respects, I have cleaned up extraordinarily - picking up clothes, and shoes, keeping my room neat and clean, having an offerings place on my desk.

Then I had the thought - my dad can deal with his own karma; better yet, my not picking up my dishes is offering him the chance!

My dad is smart and has every ability to see, acknowledge, and drop his anger and irritability.  He could choose a kinder response - he could help me out and pick up my dishes in loving kindness for me.  That shouldn't even be so much to ask, in my opinion.  But given where we are at, its a big proposition.  You think big in Buddhism, and you make your Karma grow bountiful.  Seriously, this was the most positive and hopeful, growth-oriented thought for someone else I've ever had.  So, I am offering him the chance in my wrongdoing to improve himself and generate good Karma!  Its great - I don't have to be perfect, judge or blame myself, and I still am creating an offering.

I am being facetious and not trying to avoid all responsibility; I am just trying to decrease self-criticism.  I am neat and clean in a million ways of kind speech and actions, and I have always washed everyone's dishes everywhere I have lived, not just washed my own (out of this strict conscientiousness I have).  I deserve some credit for that.  My dad doesn't know I have done that, but why is he getting so mad at me about this little thing?  I don't know, but its really not my problem.  I currently have too much resistance against him to try to help him, so rather than blame myself and add to the negativity, I will offer him my faults and mistakes.  I will offer him my plate left on the table and my cup left on the desk- I am offering my real, imperfect self.   He can respond kindly or he can add fuel to his own Karma fire, if he so makes the choice to do.  His happiness and inner peace isn't dependent on my rightful actions; they are dependent on his own. He might not realize this now, but maybe he will come around in the future.  

Pretending is fun.

I already feel my resistance lifting and more willingness to pick up the dishes out of kindness and respect, instead of being resentfully and unwillingly submissive. 

What if I had overcome my prideful and resentful faults and let him show me how to turn on the bike light?  What if I hadn't offered my faults and hadn't gotten him riled up at me yet again?

Well, I wouldn't have had the chance to learn for myself and see that nothing was wrong with the bike light at all.  I turned it on, and on it went. Simple.  The conflict around it, not so much.  But the act itself in this instance - effortless.