Just talked to a co-worker, one of our catering stewards, about her holiday. She and her husband returned home to Guatemala for the first time in 19 years. Their work visas would not allow them to travel back and forth, but they just received new documents that allow them to leave and return.

When I asked her about her holiday, her eyes lit up.  A trip home to see friends and family after two tough decades in Guatemala.  I can’t even imagine.

It made me realize how much I take the simple things for granted.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

Assume a sweeping, almost radical political movement were to take hold in this country. What would it look like? And what would it feel like?

What if tomorrow, people in America decided that this nation should be energy-independent by 2020. What would I see from my perspective, living in a city that has the sometimes too-close-for-comfort front row seat to American politics. Would I hear politicians from across the spectrum talking about the need for change, doing their best to rally their disparate supporters to the cause? And would other politicians make adjustments, large and small, to their messages until it resonated with the broadest or most strategic swath of the people in their camp?

I’m at a loss for how to gauge what is happening in American politics right now — today, in fact, as “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire goes to the primary polls. I am getting caught up in it emotionally because everything I hear coming from Barack Obama makes so much sense. But how to approach a situation like this, one that hasn’t really happened in my lifetime (as far as I can tell)?

My perspective is so narrow when compared to the range of views that people hold in this country, and when I hear Obama talk about a “post-partisan America,” I have to recognize that this resonates with me because it’s my belief that the United States should be post-partisan, especially since I know first-hand about the damage that the Politics of Division has created.

But who am I? Just one person — a person recognizes that we’re all going to have different views, different beliefs and different perspectives, and that it’s ultimately foolish to hold on to any view as this is just the basis for even more suffering.

Still, I wonder, what exactly is it that I (and apparently a lot of other people) are feeling right now?

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

I took dinner to a friend’s house last night, and when arrived at his condo building, there wasn’t a single parking space within two blocks. So I parked illegally on the corner, knowing full well that I could get a ticket.

When I came out 90 minutes later, there it was, flapping in the wind under my windshield wiper. I drove two blocks to my house and then grabbed it off the windshield, only glancing at the total — $30.

I took a close look at the ticket this morning while waiting at a traffic light and noticed that the parking enforcement officer got one of the letters wrong in my license plate number; she typed an “H” instead of an “N.” Super, I thought, I don’t have to pay this ticket because it will never show up in the system for my car!

After settling in at my desk for the day, I had all but resolved to trash the ticket. I asked a couple of coworkers, all of whom said to pitch it. But then I remembered something from yoga class last week.

Orly Jalowski, the substitute teacher for my class, started that night with a simple tonglen meditation. She came to class with a monster headache, and several of my classmates felt as if they were coming down with something. So we used the first 10 minutes of class to meditate on the fact that our particular instances of pain were indeed ours, and that by having this specific pain right now, another being is spared from it.

I’ll admit, the first time I encountered this practice, I was baffled. But it is a time-proven way to help develop compassion and loving-kindness for all beings.

Funny, then, that my regular teacher couldn’t make class last week, and that Orly brought her headache and led us through a short tonglen meditation. Because otherwise, there’s a good chance I would have thrown this parking ticket away without realizing that another person — the person who has the “H” on their tag — would get a letter in the mail next month telling them that their fine had doubled to $60.

They would have then had to go to Traffic Adjudication Court (which is itself like walking through a Hell Realm on Earth) and make their case.

Of course I should have automatically thought about the other person, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to make the choice.  It’s the best $30 I’ll spend.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp