I had one comment from my last posting regarding my recent craigslist experience. It was from Craig…yes that Craig. Frankly, I was surprised. But mostly I was impressed by his interest and concern. He offered to contact the man that I had the exchange with to let him know that his communication wasn’t appropriate. Again, I was impressed. We agreed in the end that this was minor compared to some of the things happening on the net and that it would probably just agitate the guy… he does have my email after all.
What did I learn? Craigslist is still kind and indeed Craig is very kind and a person of great integrity. There are mean people everywhere. I have to include myself in that assessment. [My apologies to the shuttle driver at BWI last month]. My best friend Chad says that mean people are our best teachers. They provide us an opportunity to just love them for all they are and all they are not. It’s easy to love people when they’re behaving. The mastery comes in the moment when some one calls you an imbecile and to still have a loving heart. Buddha had the same notion. I definitely got the dharma from this drama.
Cheers.
I lived in San Francisco at the beginning of craigslist , in fact I met “craig” at a party on Church Street one night. I found more great stuff and potential jobs on craigslist back in those days. It really was a great community. I was excited when I moved to Denver to see that it had expanded there and to other cities. Now it’s practically everywhere.
I’m in Massachusetts now. I inquired about a camera recently from a man near Boston. He proceeded to berate me over email for what I could see was no good reason… Now I know you are not supposed to assume the emotional state of an email…but when someone calls you an imbecile in an email, my guess is that it’s somewhat hostile if not just mean-spirited. I was pretty upset. See, I’m not someone that emails to anyone I don’t know. So shame on me for not going through the process of setting up a whole other gmail or yahoo or hotmail account just to buy a camera.
I was a little freaked out from the exchange and disappointed by once again being reminded how humanity has not advanced at the same rate as technology. Then I remembered all of those adages…don’t take it personally…he’s not responding to you….have compassion for those who mistreat you…. So while I can summon up the grace to bless and release this miserable soul and pray that he has some joy in his life at some point. I think I’ll head to Best Buy for my new camera and I will be weary to inquire at craigslist for a while…which sucks because I really want to buy a windsurfer this summer.
