Double Dilemma

(Start with 7/18/07)


Dusty needed to think long and hard now about her bunnies and her life. Her bunnies were safely hidden away. Should she let them out and hope that the cleaning crew doesn’t return, or should she keep them in hiding a bit longer? And maybe Augusta would return, and maybe he wasn’t quite as crazy about her hairy creatures as she was.

And then there is the matter of love. Her heart had been given to Softy. Little did she know that he was still alive. But Augusta had some redeemable qualities. So what should she do?

What she always done when facing a double dilemma. She sat in her dustiest chair and started counting her breathes. She knew that if she could empty her mind and create infinite space then the answers would come upon returning to earthly consciousness.

As she sat in the chair a big cloud of dust appeared. Wow, she thought, how fortunate I am to have such a wonderful dirty home.

Thoughts raced through her head. “Chatter” was the word for this that she had learned in a meditation workshop. She started with a very simple goal: to complete one breath without thinking of anything else. Soon she went to two. Then she started to think of her accomplishment of getting to two breaths and realized that this thought of success was also chatter, so maybe she should go back to one breath at a time.

It wasn’t long that the monthly air raid sirens rang and woke Dusty from her meditative state. She did feel calmer, though, and knew that she could now resolve her double dilemma.

The first issue was whether or not to let the bunnies out. She thought about how the key to Buddhism was to take the middle ground, so she decided to let out half of her bunnies. That way she could put them back in less time, should the need arise.

The second issue was a little more complex. Who should she choose for her next soul mate, Softy or Augusta? She decided to make a list highlighting each of their virtues, thinking that she’d give her heart who ever had the most positive virtues. She knew that both had some negative virtues so she would have to subtract those from the positive ones. Then she started thinking that a negative virtue is at lease two times more significant than a positive virtue, so she’d have to subtract two positives for every negative.

At first she thought she’d analyze one man at a time, but then she thought it would be better to consider issue by issue.

In all fairness to both men, she thought she should first come up with a list of issues, and then she could evaluate each according issue by issue. She’d give the same weight to each issue, knowing that though she’d be underrating some issues and overrating others, in the end things would even out.