For me, there is no greater Zen Master for patience, understanding and tolerance…
…than a computer. I know. I know. It isn’t human. How can I possibly learn from a computer? Feel for a computer? Relate to a machine?
Well, for one thing, it allows me to be less anthropocentric. I can demonstrate compassion and patience, even for a non-living, inorganic machine that is only doing what it is programmed to do, with little in the way of conscious thought, save for a bit of fuzzy logic that allows some of its programs to extrapolate and learn. There may be ideosyncratic differences twixt the languages I understand and some of my computer’s programming languages, but if I make the attempt to understand and learn what it is trying to say, I can get to know what this machine expects from me. Most of all, the computer is an imperfect thing that is programmed to to interrupt my processes, correct my processes, and consume my time with often necessary tasks and inquiries, but with a rude and impassionate sense of timing. This morning, for instance, was a diversion into my credit card acccount, where a merchant had double-charged me for a restaurant bill. This consumed a half hour of extra time without resolution of the problem which is still pending. I had hoped to spend the morning writing a longer blog post, and not about these issues. I was also diverted into maintenance issues in my email client program, as well as tweaking my scanner/copier/printer for clearer automatic text scans. All of these things consumed most of my two-hour vested time for computing and Internet. I am not angry, nor disappointed, nor frustrated, for all of the diversions were necessary for various reasons and will make my computing, account management, and online time easier for future sessions.
I have a great appreciation for the artistic minds that can focus upon a specific task, be it writing, painting or sculpting, and not be diverted by other things. A writer with a computer must either be putting many computing processes on hold to focus on word processing, or he or she owns a MAC, which thus negates the extraneous computing updates and tweaks that seem to plague most of us Windows system users. I write with a PC, and use the extraneous and nagging update/tweaking/bug-fixing processes as a focal point from which to write, to learn, and to report on my lessons.
I am out of time, at this point however, and I haven’t begun to express my thoughts.
Lesson learned today? Put off until tomorrow even those things which you could have done today.
Amen.
MH Pathfinder
