I did a load of laundry this afternoon in a bit of a rush and accidentally left a tissue in my laundry. It is truly sickening to open the machine door and see ones dark brown robe flecked with soggy white tissue.
The silent conversation went something like: 'Who left a tissue in the machine'? Then, 'this is a horrible situation, it will take a long time to make this wearable again'. And latter remembering the tissue I'd tucked in a tee shirt sleeve, 'Oh, it was me! We have probably all done this at one time or another, ay? It's socks and sweaters that suffer most, and brown robes in my case.
When something like this happens I tend to move quickly to being ever so grateful it was my laundry that got wrecked and not somebody else's. Being on the sharp end of blame can be distressing, be it blaming oneself, blaming somebody else or simply blaming the situation for ones current unhappiness.
In one of our writings there is a phrase which goes something like, 'by accident the course of karma was started'. I'd read this every day and gradually I noticed how angry I was becoming. 'Just who was it who started the course of karma'. 'How could somebody make such a stupid mistake!' How very personally one can take life!
Now I'm off to deal with my robe...
